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Based on the agency and resource dependence theories, this study aims to investigate whether nomination committee (NC) characteristics could serve as key attributes for reducing environmental, social and governance (ESG) disputes and whether NC composition affects the appointment of ESG-friendly directors to the board.

This study focuses on a sample of 30 global systemically important banks from 2015 to 2021. The authors estimate panel data models with fixed effects, clustering heteroskedastic standard errors at the bank level to account for the serial correlation of the dependent variables for each bank.

Banks’ exposure to ESG controversies can be reduced when NC members have specific skills, in particular when at least one member of this committee also belongs to the sustainability committee and is a foreign director. Moreover, banks’ ESG disputes decrease when the NC members are younger, while the share of independent NC members has a negative impact. Finally, a positive influence of NC composition and its members’ features as well as the appointment of ESG-friendly directors on the board is found.

The findings are particularly useful during periods such as the current one, when there is growing attention to both banks’ corporate governance, the subcommittees’ role and functioning and social and environmental issues. This study shows that the NC is important in reducing the likelihood of banks incurring ESG disputes and in appointing more ESG-friendly directors. NC effective functioning and its members’ qualities serve as a key attribute for fulfilling objective assessment and improving board effectiveness.

Several studies show that identity is a critical success factor in design-intensive industries, leading managers and executives to identify solutions that enable firms to simultaneously innovate while preserving their link with the past. Accordingly, scholars have recently revealed the role of the so-called innovation through tradition strategy. Thus, the purpose of this study/paper is to understand how design intensive firms may exploit knowledge pertaining to the past.

The research contributes to this line of inquiry by conducting a longitudinal analysis of two leading Italian design-intensive firms, B&B Italia and Cassina S.p.A. Specifically, through almost 30 h of interviews with 11 key informants and the analysis of various secondary sources, a unique database of over 900 products covering the period of 1960-2016 was developed.

The findings reveal that both firms leverage knowledge from the past mainly to preserve firm identity, as indicated by the two indicators used to capture the use of knowledge pertaining to the past (i.e., design tradition intensity and design tradition depth). In addition, the study shows that the values of these indicators significantly increase when ownership control shifts from family-based to fund-based.

The paper looks at design artifacts as a source of knowledge, exploring how they can support firms in reinforcing their identity. The original contribution to the design through traditional literature is in unveiling the product signs dimension of this particular innovation strategy.

Ericsson Business Consulting has placed much effort in trying to find better ways to measure and manage the company’s intangible assets. Illuminates how the company has worked with three modern management concepts: balanced scorecard, knowledge management, and intellectual capital. For Ericsson Business Consulting, the three concepts are closely related and represent different stages in a development process that can be described by five logical steps: categorisation of the intangible assets; transforming strategy into actions; management and communication of the intangible assets; capturing the dynamics of the intangible assets; and looking into future developments. For each development step, the article will describe a number of key learning points based on the company’s experiences.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to measure and compare the efficiency change of French, German, Italian, Spanish and UK banking groups in a context of financial crisis, over the period 2006-2010; second, it attempts to analyse the internal and environmental determinants of banking groups efficiency.

In this paper the efficiency is estimated by a two-stage semi-parametric procedure. In the first stage, we build a common production frontier across countries using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) (Debreu, 1951; Farrell, 1957). To further analyse the efficiency changes over years we use the Malmquist total factor productivity index, based on DEA technique. In the second stage, in order to determine the factors that impact on bank efficiency, the authors perform a bootstrapped truncated regression model with discretionary inputs as independent variables, following Simar and Wilson (2007).

The empirical results show that overall the “large” banking groups are more efficient than the “small” ones. However the Malmquist total factor productivity analysis highlights that during the crisis, in particular between 2007 and 2009, unless Britain, in all countries the small banks show a better cost performance than the larger ones. In general, the authors find a moderate efficiency convergence between countries and between large and small banking groups. As regards the determinants of banking groups efficiency, we find that more liquid, less capitalized banking groups and those more oriented towards the traditional activity of lending are more efficient.

The authors find a positive and high statistically significant relationship between both long- and short-term liquidity degree and the cost efficiency of the banking groups. The policy implication of this result is very significative also in the light of the new banking regulation introduced by Basel III that imposes new rules to strengthen the liquidity risk management.

The authors find that the macroeconomic environment variables have some impact on efficiency: the higher the debt and the GDP per capita of the country the lower the bank’s efficiency.

Unlike the most literature on this topic, that usually considers individual banks even if they belong to the same financial conglomerate, the authors analyse only banking groups. In particular, the authors consider all banking groups belonging to the most industrialized European countries in a context of financial crisis and cross-border aggregation movements. Furhermore the authors compare cross-country cost performance of small and large groups, considering the loan loss provisions as an additional input in order to correct the efficiency score for credit risk.

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the development of an effective incentive policy implementation model, through an in-depth analysis of the stock option and/or stock grant schemes adopted by the major Italian banking groups.

Out of the 77 banking groups operating in Italy on 30 June 2011, The paper selected 12 banking institutions that implemented either stock option or stock grant plans over the years 2007-2010. The documentary analysis was carried out on 22 stock option and/or stock grant schemes and based on the examination of corporate governance reports, as well as information memoranda on incentive plans.

The results show a limited implementation of equity-based incentive plans in the Italian banking sector during the investigation period (2007-2010) and clearly demonstrates that, as far as these types of incentives are concerned, there is ample room for improvement as well as substantial adjustments.

The research covers a limited period of time. Therefore, further extending the scope of its survey will definitely be of great academic interest in the light of the latest regulatory changes made to the banking sector remuneration regime.

By giving a clear indication of the critical points that should be addressed to improve the policies in force, this research study aims to provide greater knowledge about the remuneration practices adopted by Italian banks, in terms of equity-based incentive plans.

Design approaches to innovation are booming in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Tech giants are proposing different methodologies to develop technological innovation leveraging design principles, for example, Amazon with working backward and Google with Design Sprint. However, little is known on the role of these methodologies in managing the knowledge translation among different stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate how Design Sprint approaches can face digital challenges and foster collaborations.

Through interviews and participatory observations of ten exploratory cases of SME adoption of the Design Sprint methodology, data were collected, organized, clustered and then validated. Furthermore, by adopting a configuration theory perspective, the data have been processed to contribute to the emergence of two Design Sprint organizational taxonomy.

Competences, type of design challenge and the process followed emerge from the cases as key drivers of different Design Sprint configurations. Moreover, the configuration theory helped in identifying two Design Sprint taxonomies named Willing and Wondering configurations. Finally, the paper provides managers with practical guidelines on how to leverage these configurations to make this approach more effective for SMEs and how this method helps the knowledge translation.

The value and originality of the paper are in defining Design Sprint from a theoretical point of view and offering practical guidelines on how to adapt it to the particular context of collaborative digital environments of SMEs. Moreover, it contributes to enlarging the relevance of configurational theory in the creative industries.

Several healthcare quality assessment tools measure the processes and outcomes of the care system. The actual physical infrastructure (buildings and organizational) aspects are, however, rarely considered. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of validation and weighting of an evidence-informed framework for the quality assessment of hospital facilities from social, environmental and organizational perspectives to complement other assessments.

Sustainable High-quality Healthcare version 2 (SustHealth v2) is the updated version of an existing framework composed of three domains (social, environmental and organizational quality). To validate and establish a relevant weighting, interviews were conducted with 15 professionals within the field of healthcare planning, design, research and management. The study has been conducted through semi-structured interviews and the application of the Simon Roy Figueras (SRF) procedure for the elicitation of weights criteria. The data collected have been processed through the DecSpace web platform.

Among the three domains, the organizational qualities appear to be the most important (W = 49%), followed by the environmental (W = 29%) and social aspects (W = 22%). Relevant indicators such as future-proofing, wayfinding and users’ space control emerged as the most important within each macro-area. Those results are confirmed by the outcome of the interviews that highlight user/patient-centeredness, wayfinding strategies and space functionality as the most important concepts to foster in existing healthcare facilities improvement.

The study highlights important structural and organizational aspects that hospital managers and planners can consider when dealing with healthcare facilities’ quality improvement.

The use of the SRF multicriteria method is novel in this context when used to weight an assessment tool with a focus on hospital built environment.

Mastering innovation in highly regulated markets might require companies to overcome significant barriers. Rules, laws and limitations on social, economic and institutional dimensions can hinder the ability of a company to transfer knowledge within and across organizational boundaries. However, as recent research in innovation management increasingly advocates user involvement and early understanding of user needs as best practices, the inability to freely interact with customers due to highly regulated market restrictions can hinder the company’s capability to innovate. Hence, this paper aims to shed light on how an emerging managerial approach, such as Design Sprint, can support companies operating in highly regulated markets to overcome user involvement limitations and boost human-centered innovation.

This paper sheds light on how to boost innovation in a highly regulated market by leveraging an in-depth case study. The study investigates the use of the Design Sprint approach adopted by the pharmaceutical multinational Johnson & Johnson to revise the way its R&D department orchestrates the new product development process, overcoming the user involvement challenges of highly regulated markets.

In analyzing six different projects undertaken in the past two years, the findings illustrate three microfoundational dimensions of the Design Sprint approach in highly regulated markets, the so-called 3T model: team, time and tools. Indeed, deploying the Design Sprint in a highly regulated market has proven that being able to experiment in the early stages, building rough prototypes in real-time and openly collaborating with partners is crucial to boost innovation and anticipate constraints.

The paper sheds light on the Design Sprint approach by initially grounding an emerging managerial approach on organizational and management theory, leveraging the lens of microfoundations. In doing so, this study suggests how Design Sprint is based on the pillars of experimentation, knowledge transfer and co-creation usually neglected in highly regulated markets where user involvement is challenging. Finally, this study discloses the importance of using a design-based methodology in fostering innovation in highly regulated markets.