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This research explores how contextual elements and significant events influence the changing storylines within a company's directors' reports spanning a period of six decades. These elements and events encompass the internal dynamics of the family that owns the company, industry-specific advancements, political and socioeconomic climates, and explicit guidelines related to corporate reporting.

This research employs a case study methodology to analyse the directors' reports of Barilla, a prominent Italian food manufacturer, within the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism. A systematic content analysis is conducted on sixty directors' reports published between 1961 and 2021. The study also identifies and examines significant contextual events within this six-decade period, which are linked to four key institutional factors.

Based on the research findings, the directors' reports exhibited notable fluctuations throughout the studied timeframe in reaction to shifts in the institutional setting. Our investigation highlights that each institutional element experienced crucial pivotal moments, and given their interconnected nature, modifications in one factor impacted the others. It was noted that these pivotal moments resulted in alterations in the directors' reports' content across various thematic areas. Additionally, despite Barilla being a multinational company, it was found that national events within Italy had a more pronounced influence on the evolving narratives than global events.

Previous research on directors' reports or chairman's statements has primarily focused on the influence of macro-level institutional factors on the narratives. In contrast, our study considers both macro-level and micro-level institutions, specifically examining the internal events within a family business and how they shape the content of directors' reports. Our study is also distinctive in its analysis of specific critical junctures and their interactions with the investigated institutional factors. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, few existing studies span a timeframe of sixty years, particularly concerning an Italian company.

To investigate the role of domestic and foreign economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in driving the corporate bond yields in emerging markets.

The study utilizes monthly data from January 2008 to June 2023 from the selected emerging economies. The data analysis is conducted using univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques. The study includes bond market liquidity and global volatility (VIX) as control variables.

Domestic EPU has a significant role in driving corporate bond yields in these markets. The study finds weak evidence to support the role of the USA EPU in influencing corporate bond yields in emerging economies. Domestic EPU holds more weight and influence than the EPU originating from the United States of America.

The findings provide useful insights to policymakers about the potential impact of policy uncertainty on corporate bond yields and enable them to make informed decisions regarding economic policies that maintains financial stability. Understanding the relationship between EPU and corporate bond yields enables investors to optimize their investment decisions in emerging market economies, opens the scope for further research on the interaction between EPU and volatility and other attributes of fixed income markets.

Focuses specifically on the emerging market economies in Asia, providing an in-depth analysis of the dynamics and challenges faced by these countries, Explores the influence of both domestic and the USA EPU on corporate bond yields in emerging markets, offering valuable insights into the transmission channels and impact of EPU from various sources.

This paper aims to appraise the effectiveness of gender quotas in breaking the glass ceiling for women on boards (WoBs) in companies that are legally obliged to comply with quotas (listed companies and state-owned companies, LP) and in those that are not (unlisted companies and nonstate-owned companies, NLNP). Furthermore, it investigates the glass cliff phenomenon, according to which women are more likely to be appointed to apical positions in underperforming companies.

A balanced panel data of the top 116 Italian companies by total assets, which are present in both 2010 and 2017, is used for estimating ANOVA tests across sectors and fixed-effects panel regression models.

WoBs significantly increased in both the LP and the NLNP companies, and this increase was greater in the financial sector. Furthermore, the relationship between the percentage of WoBs and firm performance is not linear but depends on the financial corporate health. Specifically, the situation in which a woman ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high (glass cliff phenomenon) is only present in companies with the lowest performance in the sample, in other words, when negative values of Roe and negative or zero values of Roa occur together.

These findings have relevant policy implications that encourage the adoption of gender quotas even in specific top positions, such as CEO or president, as this could lead to a “double spillover effect” both vertically, that is, in other job positions, and horizontally, toward other companies not targeted by quotas. Practical interventions to support women in glass cliff positions, on the other hand, relate to the extent of supervisor mentoring and support to prevent women from leaving director roles and strengthen their chances for career advancement.

The authors explore the ability of gender quotas to break through the glass ceiling in companies that are not legally obliged to do so, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the glass cliff phenomenon in the Italian context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore two financial inclusion measures adopted within the local welfare context of the city of Milan, Italy, examining their functioning and underpinning representations. The aim is also to understand how such representations take concrete shape in the practices of local actors, and their implications for the opportunities and constraints regarding individuals' effective inclusion. To this end, this paper takes a wide-ranging look at the interplay between the rise of financial inclusion and the individualisation and responsibilisation models informing welfare policies, within the broader context of financialisation processes overall.

This paper draws on the sociology of public action approach and provides a qualitative analysis of two case studies, a social microcredit service and a financial education programme, based on direct observation and semi-structured interviews conducted with key policy actors.

This paper sheds light on the rationale behind two financial inclusion services and illustrates how the instruments involved incorporate and tend to reproduce, individualising logics that reduce the problem of financial exclusion, and the social and economic vulnerability which underlies it, to a matter of personal responsibility, thus fuelling depoliticising tendencies in public action. It also discusses the contradictions underlying financial inclusion instruments, showing how local actors negotiate views and strategies on the problems to be addressed.

The paper makes an original contribution to the field of sociology and social policy by focusing on two under-researched instruments of financial inclusion and improving understanding of the finance-welfare state nexus and of the contradictions underpinning attempts at financial inclusion of the most vulnerable.

This study investigates the relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and the time to Initial Public Offering (IPO), which stands as an entrepreneurially risky choice, particularly challenging in family firms. We also investigate the moderating role of family ownership dispersion (FOD).

We draw on an integrated theoretical framework bringing together the upper echelons theory and the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective and on hand-collected data on a sample of Italian family IPOs that occurred in the period 2000–2020. We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and alternative model estimations to test our hypotheses.

BGD positively affects the time to IPO, thus, it increases the time required to go public. FOD negatively moderates this relationship. Our findings remain robust with different measures for BGD, FOD, and family business definition as well as with different econometric models.

The article develops literature on family firms and IPO and it enriches the academic debate about gender and IPOs in family firms. It adds to studies addressing the determinants of the time to IPO by incorporating gender diversity and the FOD into the discussion. Finally, it contributes to research on women and outcomes in family firms.

Due to the constantly increasing competitiveness along with the complexity of knowledge, firms perceive collaboration as a key strategy that preserves firms' radical innovation performance. In this context, this paper aims to examine how firms’ partners’ diversity in open innovation activities influences the development of radical innovations, critical for social development. In particular, this study analyzes how the functional and geographical breadth of the firm’s collaboration portfolio affects its radical innovation performance. Furthermore, it also explores the role of firm size as a moderator in the relationships proposed.

This research employs panel data analysis, using a sample of 4,677 Spanish firms, with data sourced from the PITEC database.

The results of this study show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the functional and the geographical breadth of collaborations and the firms’ radical innovation performance. Moreover, this study finds partial support for the moderating role of firm size, in the sense that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms vary in their optimal number of diversity of partners.

This research provides a better understanding on how partners’ functional and geographical diversity, along with organizational characteristics such as firm size, affect how firms benefit from collaboration for innovation. This study shows that both SMEs and large firms experience diminishing returns when their collaboration networks become overly diverse in pursuit of radical innovation, due to increased costs. However, in SMEs, the turning point occurs at a later stage, consistent with the idea that small firms need broader functional networks to access complementary and novel resources they usually lack.

This paper aims to elucidate responsible leadership as a construct with strong moral and ethical underpinnings, as well as a focus on multiple stakeholders and the triple bottom line. This paper also highlights the interdependence of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of a business to achieve corporate sustainability.

This conceptual paper is the outcome of analysing and synthesizing the findings of the literature review on three main constructs: responsible leadership, triple bottom line and corporate sustainability. This review enabled the development of logical associations among these constructs.

The literature revealed logical associations between responsible leadership, the triple bottom line and corporate sustainability. All three constructs embody the three dimensions of economic, social and environmental sustainability, which form the basis of the associations.

Responsible leadership, grounded in stakeholder theory, goes beyond the traditional dyadic leader–follower relationship to influence multiple stakeholders within and outside the organization and achieve positive outcomes for both the organization and society. Multiple levels of outcomes and higher levels of organizational performance for businesses are the hallmarks of responsible leadership.

This paper highlights the importance of responsible leadership and triple bottom-line performance for corporate sustainability. Responsible leadership has the potential to create significant impact on business and society, to achieve long-term corporate sustainability. A conceptual model of responsible leadership is also proposed to show the association between responsible leadership, the triple bottom line and corporate sustainability.

In metropolitan areas experiencing rapid urbanization and housing production, the size of housing units emerges as a crucial factor to consider in housing policy formulation. This study aims to focus on Turkey, a developing country undergoing rapid urbanization and a construction boom in recent years, to examine households’ housing size preferences. Through a detailed analysis, this research delves into the causal relationships between income, education and housing size preferences.

This study uses the Family Structure Survey in Turkey 2016 data set collected nationwide by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat). To address potential endogeneity issues related to income and education levels in households’ choice of house size, an extended regression model is used. In addition, survey weights are applied to the statistical model to generalize the results of the study.

The study demonstrates that household income correlates with an increase in house size, while household education is associated with a decrease in house size. Variables such as household age, composition and vehicle ownership are found to impact the choice of house size. Particularly, one-person and couple-only households tend to prefer smaller dwellings compared to others. Lastly, the results reveal that the influence of household composition on dwelling size varies according to household age.

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the determinants influencing households’ housing size preferences within the framework of a developing country context, focusing on Turkey. It specifically offers insights into the causal impact of education and income levels on housing size preferences, as well as the intricate interplay between household characteristics in shaping these preferences.

The purpose of this study is to examine how informational faultlines on a board affect the management of knowledge owned by directors and the consequences on organizational performance. In this study, informational faultlines are defined as hypothetical lines that divide a group into relatively homogeneous subgroups based on the alignment of several informational attributes among board members.

The study uses unique hand-collected panel data covering 7,247 board members at 106 publicly traded firms to provide strong support for the hypothesized U-shaped relationship. The authors use a fixed effects approach and a system generalized method of moments approach to test the hypothesis.

The study finds that the relationship between informational faultlines on a board and organizational performance is U shaped, with the least optimal organizational performance experienced when boards have moderate informational faultlines. More specifically, informational faultlines within boards are negatively related to organizational performance across the weak-to-moderate range of informational faultlines and positively related to organizational performance across the moderate-to-strong range.

By explaining the mechanisms through which informational faultlines are related to organizational performance, the authors contribute to the literature in a number of ways. By conceptualizing how the management of knowledge plays an important role in the particular setting of corporate boards, the authors add not only to literature on knowledge management but also to the faultline and corporate governance literature.

This study offers a rationale for prior mixed findings by providing an alternative theoretical basis to explain the effect of informational faultlines within boards on organizational performance. To advance the field, the authors build on the concept of knowledge demonstrability to illuminate how informational faultlines affect the management of knowledge within boards, which will translate to organizational performance.

The fast fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries. For this reason, the industry should look into new circular business models in order to reduce its material footprint as well as the amount of waste produced. This article focuses on the question of how the sharing economy, as one possible circular business model, can contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12) “Ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production.” After a brief introduction to SDG 12, a short outline of the current development of the sharing economy in the fast fashion sector is given. To develop consumer buying behavior toward environmental sustainability, it is important to understand their motives. Utilitarian and hedonic motives are examined in order to determine to what extent they can positively influence buying intention and thus the acceptance of fashion sharing platforms. The database gathered through a master thesis is used to investigate the specific influence these motives have on buying intention. To increase the acceptance and thus the use of fashion sharing platforms, recommendations for action are developed in the final step of this chapter throughout the five steps of the buying cycle model. Circular business models will play a key role in the context of sustainable transformation in the future. Therefore, it is particularly important to derive concrete recommendations for action based on research in order to get the ecological footprint of environmentally harmful industries – such as the fast fashion industry – under control.