Editorial: New scenarios, growth paths and opportunities of emerging markets.

Dear readers! We are pleased to present the first issue of the journal Corporate and Business Strategy Review in 2022. The recent global financial crises, as well as the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, have made it necessary to rethink the basic principles of financial regulation. Nonetheless, financial development remains as strong as ever in emerging markets, although the focus is more on basic elements such as strengthening banking systems and widening the scope of the formal financial system, rather than sophisticated instruments and innovations

Seismic Performance of Sheathed Cold-formed Shear Walls

The paper presents and discusses the results of a research on the seismic behaviour of cold-formed steel stud shear walls, sheathed with wood-based (oriented strand board) and gypsum-based (wallboard) panels. Within this activity, this paper provides the outcomes of the results of experimental (capacity evaluation) and theoretical (demand evaluation) phases of the research. Moreover, a contribution is given for the .evaluation of the strength reduction factor of this structural typology

Stakeholder engagement via facebook. An analysis of world’s most popular museums

Over the last few years, social media (SM) have been emphasised as a means for organisations to foster stakeholder relationship with particular stress on their potential to promote community building and dialogic engagement with online audiences. These potential benefits of SM have been claimed also with respect to cultural organisations. However, the available research evidence on SM and museums suggests that museums still struggle to exploit these tools to their full potential. This paper adds further evidence on this issue by empirically investigating whether museums are using Facebook to promote follower engagement using a sample of top-attended museums worldwide. Results suggest that the frequency and content type of posts correlate to some extent with the degree of follower reactions. Nevertheless, sample museums predominantly use SM to publish promotional contents and as a result fail to achieve a true ‘dialogic’ follower engagement

Digitalization and firm financial performance in healthcare: the mediating role of intellectual capital efficiency

The digitalization of processes in healthcare sector firms is expected to reduce costs, improve the quality of healthcare service, customer care experience, and patient safety, and attain efficiency and efficacy in project implementation. This research investigates the impact of digitalization on the financial performance of healthcare-sector firms in the European Union. The study also examines whether a firm’s intellectual capital efficiency mediates the process of digitalization’s impact on a firm’s financial performance. Using a sample of 965 firm observations from 2017 to 2021, we find that digitalization positively affects financial performance. Further analysis suggests that capital-employed efficiency fully mediates the relationship between digitalization and firm performance. Partial mediation is also reported for intellectual capital efficiency, human capital efficiency, and structural capital efficiency in the process of digitalization impacting firm performance. These findings provide fresh insight into how digitalization impacts a firm’s financial performance, establishing intellectual capital efficiency as a mediating mechanism that may explain this impact

The relation between cash flows and economic performance in the digital age: An empirical analysis

Cash flows analysis plays an increasingly important role in the study of business dynamics since cash flows play a key role in the company's economic performance, not only from a standpoint but also in predictive terms. The literature on the subject is poor in number and depth of research, the samples analyzed so far are limited and the statistical tools are weak. Retracing the steps of past research, we studied the relationships between cash flows of several management areas and economic performance, using a complete sample of Italian listed companies in the 2008-2017 period with more solid statistical tools compared to previous studies. The database used to collect all the balance sheet data necessary to conduct our research is Amadeus of the Bureau Van Dijk platform, which already shows reclassified and easily comparable financial statements. Correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to assess if our cash flow proxies could be strong predictors of future cash flow and, consequently, of business performance. The flows for investments and the ability to generate cash, where the latter is positively correlated with future profitability, manage to explain, together with the net cash generation of the company, a large part of the variability of the operating income produced in subsequent periods. The flows from investments seem to be the most suitable for correctly classifying the most profitable companies in the medium-long term, while cash generation, deriving from the characteristic activity, contributes to providing answers, about corporate profitability, on shorter time horizons

Design Tools for Bolted End-Plate Beam-to-Column Joints

Predicting the response of beam-to-column joints is essential to evaluate the response of moment frames. The well-known component method is based on a mechanical modelling of the joint, through joint subdivision into more elementary components subsequently reassembled together to obtain the whole joint characteristics. Significant advantages of the component method are the following: (i) the mechanics-based modelling approach; (ii) the easier general characteristics of components. However, the method is commonly perceived by practicing engineers as being too laborious for practical applications. Within this context, this paper summarizes the results of a theoretical study aiming to develop simplified analysis tools for bolted end-plate beam-to-column joints, based on the Eurocode 3 component method. The accuracy of the component method was first evaluated, by comparing theoretical predictions of the plastic resistance and initial stiffness with corresponding experimental data collected from the available literature. Subsequently, design/analysis charts were developed through a parametric application of the component method by means of automatic calculation tools. They are easy and quick tools to be used in the first phases of the design process, in order to identify joint configurations and geometrical properties satisfying specified joint structural performances. The parametric analysis allowed also identifying further simplified analytical tools, in the form of nondimensional equations for predicting quickly the joint structural properties. With reference to selected geometries, the approximate equations were verified to provide sufficiently accurate predictions of both the stiffness and the resistance of the examined beam-to-column joints