Cognitive pathways in small businesses decision-making processes

Research on small firms decision-making processes has stimulated accounting scholars to investigate how peculiarities of these firms could affect the way how they are managed, focusing on the limited diffusion of managerial accounting practices in these contexts. Controversial results on how managerial accounting practices work in small firms, claim for further research that mostly focus on how managerial accounting systems work in the decision-making processes of small firms. In this view, adopting a sociological perspective managerial accounting practices are interpreted as tools for making sense of past decisions and to discover future alternatives through cognitive pathways. Thus, the attention is on learning processes activated through balance sheet analysis in a small firm that was implementing this tool. The main contribution of this paper concerns the crucial role that balance sheet analyses play in supporting the organizational actors to monitor the state of the company and the decision-making processes. The discussion of balance sheet analyses results enabled the owner and his staff to appraise the current situation and pinpoint weaknesses, allowing them to analyse past events with a new lens and activating new knowledge pathways. Case evidence supports theoretical contributions to the decision-making processes of small businesses helping to better understand how managerial accounting practices work to discover future alternatives through cognitive pathways. The paper provides also a practical contribution concerning the crucial role that balance sheet analyses play in small firms

Experiments and modeling of supercritical CO2 extraction of lipids from microalgae

Lo scopo del presente lavoro di tesi è ottimizzare le condizioni operative e modellare la cinetica e la solubilità dell'estrazione di olio dalle microalghe con CO2 supercritica. La tesi comprende esperimenti a diverse condizioni, applicazione di tre modelli basati su cellule rotte e intatte per descrivere la cinetica, applicazione di tre modelli semi-empirici per correlare la solubilità alla densità e analisi dei lipidi per confrontare diverse tecniche, specie e condizioni operativeope

Analisi e ottimizzazione di un inceneritore di rifiuti

Descrizione del processo di incenerimento di un impianto che si occupa dello smaltimento di rifiuti solidi urbani e speciali. Calcolo dei bilanci di materia ed energia delle varie sezioni d'impianto. Formulazione di proposte che mirano all'ottimizzazione del processo.ope

The Bank Lending Process: Accounting Information Role in Constructing Realities or Illusions

In the last decades the Bank and finance literature have paid a growing attention to the bank lending process. Considering the different kinds of information, such as hard and soft information, involved in the risk evaluation, contributions to the bank lending literature have highlighted that small banks are better able to collect and act on soft information than large banks. In the bank lending process the risk can be assessed differently among actors, so the communication plays an important role in creating the firm rating evaluation. This paper aims to understand how the accounting information, as a language, could facilitate a successful functioning reality construction or an illusionary one. Drawing on the pragmatic constructivist perspective, which assumes the reality construction as the integration between facts, values, possibilities and communication, we try to understand how the actors integrate their different calculative cultures (calculative idealism and calculative pragmatism) in the bank lending process. In doing so, we carry out two case studies at two small banks operating in the South of Italy. The empirical evidences show how the presence of multiple calculative cultures has entailed disagreement, slowing down the lending process. The integration of the two calculative cultures has been showed underlining their complementarities. This paper contributes to highlight the useful role of the pragmatic constructivist approach to study the problem of the co-presence of different cultures within an organization, explaining how an integration can occur

GPER agonist G-1 decreases adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) cell growth in vitro and in vivo

We have previously demonstrated that estrogen receptor (ER) alpha (ESR1) increases proliferation of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) through both an estrogen-dependent and -independent (induced by IGF-II/IGF1R pathways) manner. Then, the use of tamoxifen, a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), appears effective in reducing ACC growth in vitro and in vivo. However, tamoxifen not only exerts antiestrogenic activity, but also acts as full agonist on the G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER). Aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a non-steroidal GPER agonist G-1 in modulating ACC cell growth. We found that G-1 is able to exert a growth inhibitory effect on H295R cells both in vitro and, as xenograft model, in vivo. Treatment of H295R cells with G-1 induced cell cycle arrest, DNA damage and cell death by the activation of the intrinsic apoptotic mechanism. These events required sustained extracellular regulated kinase (ERK) 1/2 activation. Silencing of GPER by a specific shRNA partially reversed G-1-mediated cell growth inhibition without affecting ERK activation. These data suggest the existence of G-1 activated but GPER-independent effects that remain to be clarified. In conclusion, this study provides a rational to further study G-1 mechanism of action in order to include this drug as a treatment option to the limited therapy of ACC

Experiments and modeling of supercritical CO2 extraction of lipids from microalgae

Lo scopo del presente lavoro di tesi è ottimizzare le condizioni operative e modellare la cinetica e la solubilità dell'estrazione di olio dalle microalghe con CO2 supercritica. La tesi comprende esperimenti a diverse condizioni, applicazione di tre modelli basati su cellule rotte e intatte per descrivere la cinetica, applicazione di tre modelli semi-empirici per correlare la solubilità alla densità e analisi dei lipidi per confrontare diverse tecniche, specie e condizioni operativ

The role of management accounting in the construction of the new generation leadership in family firms: An Actor- Reality perspective

Succession in family firms may determine the survival or the failure of the business itself. Management accountingliterature has added little to this issue, mainly focusing on the process of succession and change (Songini et. al, 2013;Giovannoni et al., 2011). The present study deals with new management accounting (MA) practices that the juniorgeneration may introduce during the process of succession. The aim of the study is to show that the introduction of newMA practices can contribute to construct the leadership profile of the junior generation. Drawing on the perspective ofActor-Reality Construction, we conducted a case study at a small-sized, family firm producing solar shading systems.We examined how the process of succession derives from the integration of four dimensions of reality: facts,possibilities, values and communication. Such an integration is facilitated by the introduction of a new accountinginformation system and cost report. The case evidence highlights that the construction of the new generation leadershipmay emerge as unintended consequence of the introduction of new MA practices. From the emergent perspective ofActor-Reality Construction, the paper investigates the role of new management accounting practices in the actor-worldrelation constructing the new generation leadership

The Bank Lending Process: Accounting Information Role in Constructing Realities or Illusions

In the last decades the Bank and finance literature have paid a growing attention to the bank lending process. Considering the different kinds of information, such as hard and soft information, involved in the risk evaluation, contributions to the bank lending literature have highlighted that small banks are better able to collect and act on soft information than large banks. In the bank lending process the risk can be assessed differently among actors, so the communication plays an important role in creating the firm rating evaluation. This paper aims to understand how the accounting information, as a language, could facilitate a successful functioning reality construction or an illusionary one. Drawing on the pragmatic constructivist perspective, which assumes the reality construction as the integration between facts, values, possibilities and communication, we try to understand how the actors integrate their different calculative cultures (calculative idealism and calculative pragmatism) in the bank lending process. In doing so, we carry out two case studies at two small banks operating in the South of Italy. The empirical evidences show how the presence of multiple calculative cultures has entailed disagreement, slowing down the lending process. The integration of the two calculative cultures has been showed underlining their complementarities. This paper contributes to highlight the useful role of the pragmatic constructivist approach to study the problem of the co-presence of different cultures within an organization, explaining how an integration can occur