L’archeosismologia in architettura

This volume deals with the very current issue of prevention and protection of the historical buildings from seismic risk, offering a methodology of investigation, called “archaeoseismology”, developed within university environments and refined by several discussions with professionals and experts of the field. The text is not only intended for an audience with an archaeological background, but also for the different people operating in the field of cultural heritage and seismic risk, be these architects, restorers, structural engineers, historians or seismologists. The book, therefore, aims at acting as a first step towards the affirmation of a news discipline, analysing and enhancing its applicability and potential, and providing unpublished and indispensable data for the knowledge, enhancement and protection of cultural heritage

Materiali e tecniche costruttive del Mugello tra basso Medioevo e prima Età Moderna

[it] Il Mugello è un'area a medio-alto rischio sismico situata sulla catena montuosa appenninica a confine fra la Toscana e l'Emilia Romagna. Il territorio si caratterizza per una nutrita presenza di insediamenti di lunga durata caratterizzata da edifici storici ben conservati, dei quali la maggior parte risultano strutture religiose. Una zona del Mugello, tra il 2010 ed il 2014, è stata interessata dal progetto "Archeologia dell'architettura e rischio sismico in Mugello", una ricerca incentrata sulla sperimentazione del potenziale informativo del processo di analisi archeologica come forma di conoscenza, prevenzione e tutela dell'edilizia medievale dal rischio sismico. Fra i risultati che sono emersi dalle indagini archeologiche hanno svolto un ruolo centrale le considerazioni inerenti l'approvvigionamento ed utilizzo dei materiali costruttivi per l'edificazione e la modifica delle strutture architettoniche, in un periodo compreso fra il Basso Medioevo e l'Età Moderna

Archeosismologia e restauro in architettura

In the wide, heterogeneous and average seismic panorama of Italy, characterized by a rich presence of architectural heritage to protect, the recent "Guidelines for the evaluation and reduction of the seismic risk of cultural heritage” (MIBAC, 2010) proposed a solution to regulate all interventions in architecture. More closely, the most evident aspect in the publication is the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach in the study of artefacts, an approach obtainable through the interaction of analysis conducted by both scientific and humanistic disciplines. The application of archaeology to the study of architecture in seismic risk areas can contribute in a significant and innovative way to the knowledge of cultural assets and their context, as requested by the ministerial guidelines. In addition, the results obtained from this kind of approach can provide, both quantitatively and qualitatively, additional information on telluric phenomena in antiquity. This data, if well interpreted, can potentially constitute useful elements for the preventive analysis on buildings and for the seismological knowledge of the territory

Economic crisis and firm exit: do intangibles matter?

The crisis regarding the Euro area has caused several business closures, especially in the periphery of the EMU. In this paper we use an orginal Italian firm-level dataset to determine why firms exit the market during times of economic crisis, paying particular attention to the role of intangibles. We argue that intangibles strenghten a firm's resilience, which improves the firm's ability to cope with adverse events and unexpected shocks. We obtain two main results: first, we show that the presence of intangibles significantly reduces the probability of firm exit, especially during the initial phase of the crisis, second, we find that financial constraints become more relevant than intangibles in explaining firm exit during the latest stages of the crisis. Thus, the process of firm selection during the crisis has undergone a rapid transformation, with distorsions that may lead even skilled firms to exit. Implications of these findings for EU recovery policies are discussed

Analisi storico-archeologica di una cisterna post-medievale del contado fiorentino

The paper is focused on the historical and archaeological analysis of a post-medieval cistern located in the municipality of Sesto Fiorentino, close to the city of Florence. The structure is well preserved but the intense transformations that has undergone the context in the last fifty years caused a “decontextualization” of the building within the landscape. The ancient landscape characterized by olive-groves and orchards with the sporadic presence of villas, during the last fifty years, became an industrial and residential area, with the consequent construction of numerous buildings that have profoundly transformed the landscape and the architecture. Today the few surviving ancient evidences may include some villas built during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and some artifacts of medieval period that is profoundly decontextualized. The object of study of this paper is a cistern located inside an industrial area whose first sources date back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; an interesting element that represent an evidence of constructive culture and methods of the florentine society for the exploitation of natural resources

Swimming upstream throughout the turmoil: evidence on firm growth during the Great recession

In contrast to the so-called cleansing effect, during the Great Recession we observe highly heterogeneous firm performances. In particular, a not negligible subset of firms grew considerably despite of the general tendency towards downsizing. In this paper we explain the behaviour of theseswimming upstream firms(SUFs). We obtain three main results. First, SUFs exhibitcertainfirm-specific characteristics: they are younger and relatively more productive than non-SUFs. Second, SUFs adopt highly proactive strategic profiles, which assignsignificant importancetoactivities related to innovation, intangibles and internationalization. Third, SUFs tend to react to changes in market opportunities, although they suffer from sticky processes of resourcereallocation between exiting and surviving firms. Moreover, their growth seems to take place primarily within a regime of cumulative destruction rather thancreative destruction. Some of the implications of these results for managers and policy makers are discussed

IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP

In recent years, the ethnic entrepreneurship has assumed a role of major importance in Italy. Firms managed by immigrants are a significant part of Italian business world, but they are also an opportunity for exchange between populations of different origin, an opportunity for social mobility, the search for autonomy (individual and group) and, in some circumstances, a factor strengthening social cohesion. Not a few, finally, are the experiences that provide for their involvement in transnational initiatives and projects in co-development. This panel session has explored the issue and provided an update on the state of the art research with several contributions by scholars working in the Italian universities, according to different disciplinary approache

Beyond the enclave? Break-outs into mainstream markets and multicultural hybridism in ethnic firms

The literature on immigrant entrepreneurship has richly described the characteristics and peculiarities of ethnic businesses catering to enclave markets. However, several indications suggest that immigrant-owned firms are increasingly entering mainstream markets and changing both their internal structures and their external networks with resource providers. One of the most substantial changes, which has been overlooked by researchers, consists of the appearance of what we define as \u2018multiculturally hybrid firms\u2019, which are firms that rely on inter-ethnic managerial or labour resources to carry out their activities. Therefore, in this paper we provide an understanding of the variables that affect the recourse to solutions of multicultural hybridism in the entrepreneurial teams and personnel of immigrant-owned firms. We conduct our empirical analyses on data collected through interviews on a sample of 130 immigrant entrepreneurs in Italy. Our results show that multicultural hybridism is mainly driven by the size of the founding team, the business's maturity, the entrepreneurs' host-country language competence and by entrepreneurs' motivation by individual goals rather than community goals. This research advances our knowledge about immigrant entrepreneurship by focusing on firm-level dimensions such as the diversity of entrepreneurial teams and employees, which are increasingly relevant in our multicultural societies