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The entirety of a region’s architectural expressions, that is, its building culture, has a strong impact on a region’s atmosphere. Being a collective and networked endeavour, building culture is difficult to coordinate. Against this background, this chapter presents an empirically informed reflection on architectural governance. The chapter is based on a multiple case study which compares five regions in the European Alps in terms of their coordination mechanisms in the areas of architecture and spatial planning, that is, architectural governance. The analysed regions include Grisons (Switzerland), Vorarlberg, Tyrol (both Austria), South Tyrol and Trentino (both in Italy). By combining conceptual considerations with empirical evidence, the chapter concludes with hypothesised relationships between architectural governance, building culture, socio-economic development dynamics and tourism.

This book chapter uses structuration theory and aims to study cross-sectoral collaborations for co-creating public value and their implications in terms of the role and the relationships of the public sector with the private and third sector.

Our research is exploratory and our main research question is: What are the modalities of structuration of cross-sectoral collaborations for co-creating public value? Our analysis is based on a multiple case study analyses conducted in the region of Trentino – South Tyrol (Italy), and it draws on primary and secondary data collected through six extensive semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis on about fifty organizations participating in six cross-sectoral collaborations. We found that the co-creation of public value led public organizations to structure cross-sectoral collaborations involving private and third-sector organizations, but preexistent structures of signification, domination, and legitimation hampered the public sector as a whole to fully democratically meta-govern the modalities of structuration.

The chapter provides insights for practice by highlighting the elements of structuration theory as a useful framework of analysis for decision-making of public managers involved in cross-sectoral collaborations. Research implications deal with using structuration theory and critical approaches at a macrolevel (e.g., the role of the public sector as a whole) within public management studies.

The emerging challenges of the tourism market determine a strategic and urgent need to introduce the sustainability paradigm into destination planning in order to pursue balanced development and achieve or maintain a long-term competitive advantage. This chapter focuses on destination governance to build projects on the principles of sustainability by involving local stakeholders in decision making. The discussion on the application of an embedded governance model relates to marginal rural areas of Central European countries (Italy, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia), where the European Project Listen to the Voice of Villages leverages sustainable tourism to improve the welfare and quality of life of local communities.

This chapter highlights some features of the current structure of Italian agriculture by focusing on the regional patterns of agrarian change. These patterns are followed mainly by comparing the data of the 5th and 6th Census of Agriculture and the data of holdings registered to the Chambers of Commerce. The analysis confirms the Northern-Southern dichotomy of Italian agriculture as the physical and economic dimensions of Northern regions’ holdings are appreciably higher than those in the South. Other traits of farms, not usually included in most traditional analyses, help explain that Northern-Southern dichotomy: the farmers’ educational level and the ICT availability on farms. The agriculture of Southern regions has been affected less by the structural adjustment and has maintained some traits of more ‘traditional’ farming. However, important innovations, such as organic farming and direct selling to ‘consumers in house’, have been adopted more readily by Southern farms. The marked regional duality of Italian agriculture corresponds to the several ways in which farmers and their activities interconnect with territorial development models that have shown a deep regional differentiation.

Technological progress in recent decades has driven a true digital revolution. The promise of greater efficiency, immediacy, and effectiveness of processes accompany this digital transition. However, to prove effective, it needs the development of quantitative instruments to assess the quality and competitiveness of the national and international digital strategies. Under this perspective, the study proposes the construction of a statistical index in the Italian context built on the five digital development dimensions of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), that is, connectivity, human capital, use of Internet services, integration of digital technologies and digital public services. The elaboration of a DESI at a regional level (NUTS-2) allows to identify more precisely the possible digital gaps existing in the national territory. The findings make it possible to explain Italy's extreme backwardness within the European rankings. The study identifies the strong digital gap between the northern regions and the southern area of the country as one of the main criticalities, as well as human capital and integration of digital technologies.

Are radically novel practices more likely to attract recognition when the evaluating audience is composed of external evaluators? Our baseline argument asserts that radical novelty is more likely to be positively evaluated by an external audience and that peripheral (rather than core) producers have higher incentives to adopt novel practices that depart from tradition. Yet, because peripheral producers often lack the necessary support and legitimacy to promote novelty, audiences play a critical role in recognizing their innovative efforts. How can peripheral producers mitigate the challenges associated with novelty recognition? To answer this question, we explore how peripheral producers’ collaboration with acclaimed consultants affects the process of external audience recognition in the context of the Italian wine field from 1997 to 2006. Our findings suggest that radical novelty is positively received by an external audience composed of critics, although we do not find a significant difference between core and peripheral producers. However, external audiences are more open to recognizing peripheral producers’ use of novel practices when they collaborate with well-connected consultants. We find that the use of central consultants produces a “boosting” effect that accentuates the differences between evaluations of peripheral producers who embrace novelty and evaluations of those that follow the tradition. Our study thus advances theory by providing empirical evidence of the value of considering third-party actors such as consultants, who sit at the nexus between the agency required for innovation and external audiences’ recognition of novelty, when studying novelty evaluation and recognition.

Globalization has contributed to unprecedented economic growth but with some criticalities such as increasing inequality, growing environmental degradation, and uncertainty about the future of new generations. In order to remedy this difficult situation, over the years the United Nations (UN) have outlined several sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be achieved at the global level. Given the many facets of the international framework, it can be useful to assess national progress by paying attention to the regional specificities. The Italian case is particularly delicate, since it is characterized by a large gap between the North-Center regions – among the most developed in Europe – and the South – with an economy mainly based on agriculture. Our work aims at quantifying the sustainable development level achieved by the Italian regions. Starting from the theoretical framework of Salvati and Carlucci, we build a composite index to measure the regional sustainable development performance. The method adopted to construct the index is the Pena's distance (DP2). The results confirm the existence of a gap, splitting the country into two parts. The regions of the North and Center-North stand out as the most virtuous, while the Southern regions show a state of backwardness in achieving the SDGs. In addition, we find that where the sustainable development levels are higher, there are higher levels of gross domestic product per capita and less inequality.

In this chapter, we reflect on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on an Innovation and Entrepreneurship educational programme by comparing two editions of the Start-up Lab, a three-month hands-on laboratory organised at the University of Trento (Italy), focused on the development of entrepreneurial ideas by international students. The 2019 edition of the course, before the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, was held in attendance, whereas the 2021 edition was held online. For the latter, the authors decided to introduce a self-directed learning approach, assuming it could better support remote teamwork and the acquisition of transversal skills. In this chapter, the authors critically question the effectiveness of remote working and the self-directed learning approach in innovation and entrepreneurship education programmes. The authors provide early evidence about some critical aspects of online and distance learning and teamwork, mostly related to self-efficacy skills, such as the ability to motivate others to work together and collaborative work. Despite the negative effects of distance working on some entrepreneurial skills, the authors demonstrate that the ability to reflect on learning experience is a driver for improving specific entrepreneurial and innovation skills. Students who have had the opportunity to reflect on their learning experiences feel more confident about becoming entrepreneurs or working in companies with a stronger entrepreneurial mindset.

The COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to causing a very serious economic crisis, has slowed the path taken toward achieving gender equality. For example, the closure of third sector activities by governments has meant the loss of many jobs in this female-dominated sector (ILO, 2020; UN, 2020) slowing and hindering the professional careers of many women (Carli, 2020).

The objective of this work is to identify gender differences by analyzing the levels of sustainable development achieved by Italian regions. The Italian case in fact is very peculiar due to its historical territorial gap between the regions of the North (among the most developed) and those of the Center-South, which still show high gender inequalities. A Gender Sustainable Development Index (GSDI) will be constructed through the use of 50 indicators from the Benessere Equo e Sostenibile survey of Istat. The technique used is the stacking method (Landi, Ivaldi, & Testi, 2017; Norman, 2010), which was chosen for its high replicability of results. The results show that only 40% of Italian regions have higher levels of female sustainable development than male sustainable development. Moreover, the regions with the worst levels of both female and male sustainable development are located in the Center-South of the country, confirming the strong territorial gap present within the Italian Peninsula.

Generally, tourism is perceived as an economic-driving force that contributes to accelerate the processes of economic and social development. On the other hand it creates pressure and transforms the environment (both urban and natural), especially when the transformation is fast. Several studies analyze in depth the role of tourism in the development of the destinations. The effects are different and also depend on where the pressure manifests. In cities, in addition to the risk of overcoming the carrying capacity in social and environmental terms, tourism brings the loss of identity. This is even more true in proximity of economic shocks, where the sudden reduction in tourist flows and the need to contain costs for businesses are risks for the sustainability of the tourist destination. In this sense, the case of Sicily is emblematic. This Italian region in recent years has grown in international tourist flows, with a growing appreciation for its natural and cultural elements. The purpose of this chapter is therefore to describe the behaviour of the main urban tourism destinations in Sicily with respect to the economic shock that occurred in Italy in 2008, through a quantitative analysis that thus highlights the resilience of the cities to changes in the relative tourist flows.