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This paper aims to study the effects of innovation on the profitability of large wineries. In particular, organic growth is evaluated versus external growth.

Data from balance sheets over more than a decade are used. The analysis is limited to large Italian wineries to include firms that constantly invest in R&D in the sample. The analysis focuses on 25 Italian wineries observed over eight years. Panel data estimation is used to analyse these data.

The paper shows that investments in R&D increase the profitability of innovative wineries in the long run but decrease it in the short run. Moreover, because of financial constraints, some wineries may invest too few resources in R&D.

The main limitation is that the focus is restricted to large wine producers, while many small producers that do not generally invest in R&D exist in the market. The practical implication is that governments should support R&D investments of wineries.

The main contributions are to show empirically the effects of investing in R&D on the profitability of large wineries and to highlight the possible presence of severe financial constraints, which require policy interventions.

Despite agency theory and resource dependence theory suggesting that – albeit through different mechanisms – board independence positively influences firm internationalization, empirical evidence on this relationship has been mixed and inconclusive. Based on this, the purpose of the present study is twofold: first, to analyze and synthesize the existing empirical literature and, second, to develop new theoretical insights on the effect of board independence on firm internationalization.

The authors used advanced meta-analytic techniques that allowed them, first, to synthesize the existing empirical literature on the board independence–firm internationalization relationship and, second, to examine the effect of several contingencies on such relationship. This study relies on data from 87 primary studies (published and unpublished) carried out in multiple academic fields in the period 1998–2021 and covering 49 countries.

The results confirm the established agency and resource-dependence arguments, suggesting that higher board independence is associated with greater firm internationalization. Moreover, the results show that the focal relationship is moderated by home-country formal and informal institutional factors, and in particular, the legal protection of minority shareholders and family business legitimacy. The authors do not find evidence that CEO duality and board size moderate the focal relationship or that board independence has a stronger effect on breadth than on depth of internationalization.

This study lies at the intersection of the literatures on corporate governance and firm internationalization and on comparative corporate governance of the multinational firm, shedding further light on the role played by institutional environments in determining the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms.

Explore the factors making emergency procurement more prone to corruption by advancing explanations for when rules and transparency are relaxed allowing corrupt practices to emerge. Describe institutional factors, such as corruption syndrome (Johnston, 2005, 2015) and legal system, and their impact on procurement rules changes.

A qualitative event study using publicly available data offer a timeline and explanation of government procurement control mechanisms and transparency roles in emergencies by comparing two countries. Argentina and Canada had very similar and advanced food procurement systems prior to COVID-19, but they took different stances when the pandemic broke out.

Legal systems and corruption syndrome are linked, where Civil Law is related to Elite Cartels (Argentina) and Common Law with Influence Markets (Canada). The study contributes to understand the role of transparency to minimize the opportunity for direct purchases (electronic trails of decisions, justifications and approvals). Judicial system's actions favor corrupt practices and are aligned with elites despite the civil society outcry.

Research on corrupt practices has limited access to primary data due to fear of reprisals. Informal conversations revealing glimpses of corruption were used to identify publicly available documents. Numbers play a role in emergencies and performativity theory literature is enriched by providing an example of different interpretation of information when frameworks differ between civil society and courts.

A comparative analysis that evidences the role of pre-existing institutional and social conditions shows when emergency situations will be used as an excuse to relax procurement control and transparency mechanisms which in turn facilitate corrupt practices.