Gender Equity in Corporate Boards: A Sustainability Goal for European Companies

The board of directors has a considerable role in the achievement of sustainable company’s goals, according with the UN 2030 Agenda. The gender diversity in corporate boards seems to have impact on corporate sustainability objectives and strategies; furthermore, the promotion of gender equity in corporate boards is considered one of the tool to support the gender diversity in society as a whole. The scarce presence of women on boards is not justified by their supposed lower educational background, so, in the last decade, many European countries decided to promote mandatory or voluntary initiatives and a proposal of Directive is under attention by European Commission. Our analysis, using secondary data in the period 2000-2016, lead us to affirm that only the awareness by companies for sustainability is the real driver for the gender equity in boards of directors

Sustainable Business Model Innovation: From Value Uncaptured to Value Opportunities

COVID-19 pandemic crisis threatened the stability of economy and the survival of many firms, but it has been also the chance to challenge the current economic development path and to rethink firms’ business models according to a more sustainable approach. Academic literature states that business models (BMs) innovation is a driver for the transition to sustainability. Sustainable business models (SBMs) incorporate sustainability vision in the main components of the business model, which are value proposition, value creation and value capturing. Nevertheless, the usual approach to business models, based on a positive concept of value, can underestimate some areas of potential opportunities to catch. For this reason, in this paper we suggest to adopt a novelty approach that emphasizes the negative concept of value (value uncaptured) to identify unexploited value opportunities according to multi-stakeholder view. This approach can help firms innovating their BMs towards SBMs

Liability for IoT Standards in the EU. ‘And yet it moves’?

Businesses all over the world consider standards essential enablers of technological development. Standards are sets of processes that allow to build products in the most efficient and, hopefully, safe way. From a decision-making point of view, standards represent the consensus of a precise group of stakeholders on what it takes for a product to be considered ‘state of the art’. These considerations also apply to the Internet of Things (IoT), a technology based on sensors incorporated in objects connected to cloud spaces. If standards do not work as they should private law issues will arise. Imagine that a manufacturer of a IoT object applies a standard that is considered state of the art from the major stake-holders in its field. Imagine damage happens because of the application of this standard and, as a consequence, people are severely injured. Think further and make the hypothesis that through a legal action it is ascertained that the standard caused the object to malfunction. Who is to be considered liable? The aim of this blogpost is to investigate the slow evolution of the IoT standards liability debate within Member States (MS) by considering also the Data Act, one of the most recent EU proposed regulations applicable to the IoT

The transition towards a circular economy. A framework for SMEs

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) contribute significantly to the European GDP and play a pivotal role in the ecological transition from a linear to a circular economy (CE). According to transition management theory, which emphasizes the active role of firms as accelerators of global transition processes, and based on qualitative content analysis of the literature, we found key pillars of CE (governance, relations with stakeholders and innovation) that SMEs should manage in an integrated way to increase the speed of the transition towards circularity. The result of this study is a conceptual framework that explains the development of the identified pillars in the context of the transition towards CE. This study addresses a gap in the literature concerning SMEs’ transition towards circularity, emphasizing the importance of a dynamic vision and the integrated management of a variety of key dimensions. The study also provides pragmatic advice to facilitate self-assessments by SMEs with respect to their path of transition and to maximize the effectiveness of policy-makers’ interventions to support SMEs. Finally, the study has societal implications: promoting the transition of SMEs towards CE can accelerate the global green transition due to the proximity of SMEs to the local environment and work force

The Preliminary Report of the Sector Inquiry into Consumer Internet of Things: what is new for EU Consumer and Data Protection law?

This short report concerns a firs evaluation of the EU Commission Inquiry into the Consumer Internet of Things from a Consumer and Data Protection law point of vie

What Liability with the Internet of Things? Insights from the European Case-Law of the PIP Affair

The purpose of this article is to explain why it is relevant to connect the European case-law on the Medical Devices Directive (MDD), by focussing on the defective breasts prostheses saga, to the future regulation of liability for healthcare IoT objects. I believe that by examining the recent case-law dealing with shortcomings in the regulation of medical devices, it will be possible to build a future liability scheme for defective IoT objects with medical functions. The article discusses how the new Medical Devices Regulation (MDR) is different from the previous MDD and whether it is likely to influence liability schemes for healthcare IoT objects. In conclusion, I argue that, however imperfect, the MDR could support the application of national liability systems in order to provide more effective and more protective liability schemes for IoT objects with medical functions

The Governance of Credit Rating Agencies in the European Regulation: the Right Way to Enhance Market Competition?

Since 2007 financial markets worldwide have been suffering from a confidence crisis which has emphasised the discussion about the Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) and the opportunity to enhance the competition in such a highly concentrated sector. The reform process, carried out by European and American regulators, aims at reinforcing the external surveillance on CRAs and, at the same time, improving the governance of the agencies in terms of board composition, internal control systems and disclosure. After an in-depth and comparative analysis of the legal rules, the article shows and discusses the results of an investigation focalised on the contents and quality of the disclosure of 32 selected CRAs, with the purpose of foreseeing the future competitive conditions in the European rating market, since the new European Regulation should break the oligopoly of the largest American agencies by introducing minimal governance requirements

European training path for 21st century school leaders

This article investigates the competences of school leaders needed to develop learning communities (LCs) in the context of European school governance systems. It shows the output of a two-years project “School Governance to build a Learning Community” supported by European Union, with the involvement of Sweden, The Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Romania. Basing on an empirical research, we designed an “European Training Path” for school leaders who want to build LCs. The training path is planned to be sharable in the EU countries and, at the same time, differentiable on the basis of each country’s particular needs.peer-reviewe

The dark side of the circular economy: The value uncaptured in bioeconomy business models

The bioeconomy, grounded in the shift from fossils to bio-based resources, plays an important role in the Net Zero 2050 scenario. However, even if rooted in circular thinking, bioeconomy business models are not free from environmental, social, and economic concerns. This paper deals with the causes of the unsustainability of business models in the biofuels sector, embracing an unconventional approach that focuses on the uncaptured value. The value uncaptured is the negative aspect of value, and it consists of creating too much or not enough value during the product lifecycle. Value uncaptured can threaten the sustainability of circular business models, which is why it constitutes the ‘dark side’ of circular strategies. Starting from a gap in the existing literature and supported by theoretical background, this study aims to suggest a theoretical framework to identify the causes of the negative value in the biofuel sector. The paper uses a qualitative tool, namely a case study analysis. The findings reveal that circular business models can suffer from value uncaptured, which can take the form of value absence, value destroyed, value surplus, and value missed. Identifying these forms of value can transform them into opportunities for value creation. These results enrich the research on the circular economy with a new and unconventional approach. The elaborated theoretical framework can become a qualitative tool to identify what causes companies’ circular business models to underperform

Corporate Social Responsibility and Shareholder Relations

The diffusion of social responsibility principles, together with the globalization of financial market highlight the importance of the value creation in the long run for both companies and investors. Stable relations with investors are based on corporate decision making processes privileging the creation of greater value in the future instead of maximizing immediate profits, when a trade-off between long and short run exists. These corporate behaviours reduce both the business risk of companies and the investment risk of shareholders. This conceptual article aims to highlight the importance of the relationships between the assertion of corporate social responsibility by companies and investors, according to a management model able to create sustainable value optimizing the satisfaction of the interests of shareholders and other stakeholders