Ethical judgment and radical business changes: the role of entrepreneurial perspicacity

This study examines the implications of practical reason for entrepreneurial activities. Our study is based on Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of such virtue, with a particular focus on the partition of practical reason in potential parts such as synesis, or common sense, and gnome, or perspicacity. Since entrepreneurial acts and actions deal with extremely uncertain situations, we argue that only this perspicacity, as the ability of correctly judging in exceptional cases, has the power to find wisdom under such blurred conditions. Perspicacity frees entrepreneurs from their cognitive schemata rendering them able to be truly entrepreneurial. Based on this vision and thanks to a semantic analysis of the meaning of the Greek word gnome, we construct an interpretative model for entrepreneurial judgment composed of three dimensions, specifically, knowledge-cognitive, external-affective and personal-reflective. The model highlights how a ‘successful’ entrepreneurial judgment is also such from a holistic point of view

What sparks ethical decision making? The interplay between moral intuition and moral reasoning: lessons from the scholastic doctrine

Recent theories on cognitive science have stressed the significance of moral intuition as a counter to and complementary part of moral reasoning in decision making. Thus, the aim of this paper is to create an integrated framework that can account for both intuitive and reflective cognitive processes, in order to explore the antecedents of ethical decision making. To do that, we build on Scholasticism, an important medieval school of thought from which descends the main pillars of the modern Catholic social doctrine. Particularly, the focus will be on the scholastic concept of synderesis, which is an innate human faculty that constantly inclines decision makers toward universal moral principles. Managerial implications are discussed, stressing how a rediscovery of decision makers’ intuitive moral judgments could be relevant in the reflective thinking practice of managers’ ethical reasoning, thus saving them from rational insensitivity to ethical dilemmas

Strategie di internazionalizzazione e grande distribuzione nel settore dell'abbigliamento

The Stanze della Moda project has set up an Observatory with the purpose of economic and management monitoring of the fabric of the Florentine companies through a marketing and research workshop. The analysis of several major international retailers demonstrates the emergence of a successful business model which, albeit in some respects idiosyncratic and difficult to transfer, represents an innovative stimulus for companies in the sector that want to redefine their competitiveness in the face of the altered market conditions. The focus on the Florentine companies delineates the ways in which the local manufacturers intercept the purchasing channels of major retail, creating a mediated form of sales on the international markets.Il progetto Stanze della Moda ha istituito un Osservatorio con finalità di monitoraggio economicoe gestionale del tessuto di aziende fi orentine attraverso un laboratorio di marketing e di ricerca. L'analisi di alcuni grandi retailer internazionali dimostra l'emergere di un modello di business vincente che, anche se per alcuni aspetti idiosincratico e diffi cilmente trasferibile, rappresenta lo spunto innovativo per imprese del settore che vogliono ridefinire la propria competitività di fronte alle mutate condizioni del mercato. Il focus sulle imprese fiorentine delinea le modalità attraverso le quali i produttori locali intercettano i canali di acquisto della grande distribuzione realizzando una forma mediata di vendita sui mercati internazionali

Philosophy Theory Into Entrepreneurial Education Practice: A Holistic Model

In the entrepreneurial education field, the “perfect” program of teaching entrepreneurship has been largely debated. In this paper, provocatively, we used only different philosophical thoughts in order to reconstruct a holistic pedagogical model suitable for entrepreneurial education. The model is based on two famous philosophical dichotomies, respectively the Kantian opposition of freedom versus determinism and the Aristotelian division into praxis and poiesis. These elements, specifically adapted to an entrepreneurial context, may lead educators and curricula developers in the “tangle forest” of contents and skills that should be transferred to students. In particular the model offers an easy tool that clearly defines areas of intervention to teach entrepreneurship. The final scope is to offer simultaneously appealing to students concerning entrepreneurial activities, as desirability, and tools for such activities as feasibility, articulated in two degrees of outcomes: one internal, as conduct and experience, and one pragmatic, as technical skills