Oltre le ragioni: tempi e distanza nei processi di reshoring delle imprese italiane

Giornali e riviste riportano con sempre maggiore frequenza notizie casi di imprese che scelgono di lasciare Paesi a basso costo del lavoro per riportare la produzione in Italia. L\u2019emergere di questo fenomeno, che prende il nome di reshoring o backshoring, porta a chiedersi quali siano i motivi che spingono le imprese a rivalutare le loro scelte di localizzazione produttiva. Al di l\ue0 delle ragioni, tuttavia, sembra opportuno sottolineare che si tratta di processi complessi dove le ragioni del reshoring appaiono solo come uno degli elementi da analizzare per averne una visione completa. Se si considera che le operazioni di reshoring stanno avvenendo da Paesi diversi, attraverso modalit\ue0 diverse, in tempi diversi, viene quasi scontato chiedersi se esistono delle regolarit\ue0 tra le varie operazioni e se s\uec, rispetto a quali variabili. Questo lavoro, attraverso un\u2019analisi su 32 operazioni di reshoring avvenute in Italia, fa emergere che il tempo intercorso tra la scelta di offshoring e quella di reshoring, e la distanza (geografica e culturale) tra il Paese di origine e il Paese estero da cui avviene il rientro sono due variabili significative per spiegare la variet\ue0 dei casi. Tempo e distanza, infatti, si qualificano in chiave organizzativa, rispettivamente come proxy per il rischio di perdita di competenze e per i costi di coordinamento e controllo associati alla gestione delle attivit\ue0 delocalizzate. La nostra analisi suggerisce pertanto che un\u2019approfondita analisi delle operazioni di reshoring deve necessariamente essere collegata alle caratteristiche della (precedente) operazione di offshoring

Organizational life cycle models: a design perspective

New competitive and environmental challenges have fostered renewed attention towards organizational design. This scenario calls for a significant return to organizational design studies that embrace a holistic approach, especially those focusing on the simultaneous interaction of multiple design elements. Organizational life cycle (OLC) models provide a fitting response to this call. In this paper, we review the organizational design characteristics of five seminal OLC models. We show that according to these OLC models, growth in size—which is described as unavoidable—generates business issues that firms are forced to solve by adopting only one possible organizational configuration, here following a deterministic organizational approach. We challenge this approach and propose conceiving of OLC as an evolutionary process, which calls for a variety of equifinal organizational solutions. We conclude by proposing future research avenues

Career diversity. Men's and women's careers in Human Resource Management

Résumé Les changements observés dans les structures organisationnelles et dans les institutions du marché du travail favorisent l'expansion de parcours de carrière individuels se développant hors des limites d'une seule entreprise. Cet article suggère l'idée que les femmes présentent des caractéristiques qui peuvent les rendre plus aptes à affronter des parcours de carrière boundaryless. En effet, leurs exigences personnelles et familiales, leur formation et les politiques de gestion des ressources humaines les ont traditionnellement contraintes à des carrières plus mobiles que les hommes, en termes de professions et de changements d'entreprise. Une enquête empirique a été menée sur un échantillon de 60 managers italiens travaillant dans des Directions du Personnel. Les résultats de la recherche montrent que les déterminants du succès professionnel des femmes sont différents de ceux des hommes et que pour atteindre des postes à responsabilités les femmes affrontent un nombre plus élevé de changements de postes

Quasi-successful and Quasi-failing academic spin-offs: The role of technological and commercial alliances

Preface and acknowledgements This volume grows out of a three-year research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (PRIN, 2010). The project involved eleven teams operating in different Italian universities from various parts of the country, and its main goal was to understand the main determinants of firms\u2019 growth in high-technology sectors. The topic is of particular concern to Italian policy makers, given the notorious dwarfism of Italian companies (90% of the companies have less than 5 employees) and the particularly high level of youth unemployment (44.5% at the time of the writing of this book). Identifying the determinants of firm growth in high-technology sectors has been considered particularly crucial for the future of the Italian economy, so much so that the project was one out of only eight financed in 2010 in the Management/Economics and Statistics area, and it received the highest budget. Large Italian companies (leaving aside banks and media services) operate primarily in the medium-low tech manufacturing sectors, which are typically mature industries that are facing extreme difficulties in absorbing the younger generations of highly educated Italian students. Small companies are predominantly family businesses that rely on the activities of the family members and hardly follow trajectories of sustainable growth, opting for a small, easier to manage, size. High-tech companies, both manufacturing and service, though growing in number and size, today represent only a tiny fraction of the country\u2019s value added. In the past few years, rather late in comparison with other advanced countries, a conspicuous number of start-ups have appeared on the business stage, mostly driven by business plan competitions organised by universities, incubators within technology parks or as the result of spin-off processes from established companies. While most of these companies stay small (the list of the best start-ups of 2015 includes companies with an average of three employees), a good number of those established in the last ten years have reached an interesting size, different rounds of venture funding and an established presence in the international arena. Besides being among the slowest growth economies of the OECD, Italy has been systematically included among the medium-low innovative countries (see, for example, subsequent editions of the Innobarometer by CORDIS, or the various results of the CIS surveys), mainly as a result of a lack of a supportive Innovation System. Among others, the reasons are to be found in the low public and private investments in RandD, the underdeveloped venture capital industry, the various obstacles that the public administration poses in starting a business and the rigidity of the labour market. Understanding the conditions under which a number of companies in the high-technology sectors have succeeded in proceeding along trajectories of high growth through innovation, despite the adverse conditions, is therefore of great interest both for theory building and for the managerial implications of the phenomenon. This book is entirely based on novel research. With respect to its theoretical foundations, the book adopts an eclectic approach, as it relies on a variety of perspectives, consistent with the desire to capture a multifaceted phenomenon. We seek an integrative approach, which may help to overcome the lack of consistent results and comprehensive conceptualisations characterising the state-of-the-art of the literature on this topic. Given the different research specialisations of the teams participating in the project, we organised the study according to three main pillars, namely contexts, actors and strategies. Due to the shortage of companies with histories of outstanding performance in the country, we have been in the interesting position of studying a good section of the population of young outliers. The research team analysed sixty-six companies in depth and carried out a survey on nearly a thousand companies established in the last seven years. The cases included in this book are those that, among others, represent instances of how the absence of a National Innovation System may not be an obstacle to growth in high-technology sectors. At this point, it is customary to acknowledge the help and advice of those who anonymously reviewed the project proposal and the draft chapters, and those who commented on parts of the book presented at conferences and seminars. Notably, we thank Robert Garret, Stephen Syrett, Elias Hadjielias, Vangelis Souitairs, Elisa Salvador, Mitja Ruzzier, Uriel Stettner, Antti Johannes Kauppinen, and Aard Groen. We also thank our Scientific Committee made up of some of the most renowned Italian scholars in the Economics, Management and Engineering fields who supported in planning and concluding the project, namely Giovanni Costa, Alberto Felice De Toni, Enzo Rullani, Riccardo Varaldo, Enrico Zaninotto. We apologise if we were not able to fully exploit the excellent advice we received

Organizational design configurations in the early stages of firm’s life cycle

http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/CARMA/CARMA2016Mosca, L.; Gianecchini, M.; Campagnolo, D. (2017). Organizational design configurations in the early stages of firm’s life cycle. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2016.2015.3104OC

Linee guida per il Bilancio di Genere negli Atenei italiani

l Bilancio di Genere è un documento che, da un lato, fotografa la distribuzione di genere delle diverse componenti all’interno dell’Università nonché la partecipazione di donne e uomini negli organi di gestione dell’Ateneo e, dall’altro, monitora le azioni dell’Ateneo a favore dell’eguaglianza di genere, e valuta l’impatto di queste e delle politiche dell’Ateneo, compresi gli impegni economici-finanziari, su donne e uomini. Il Bilancio di Genere è dunque uno strumento essenziale per realizzare l’eguaglianza di genere nelle Università e per integrare la prospettiva di genere in tutte le politiche dell’Ateneo. L’importanza di portare la questione di genere al centro dell’attenzione degli Atenei, è evidente se si considera che in Italia, le donne rappresentano solo il 20 % dei professori ordinari e, tra i Rettori italiani, solo il 7% sono donne. Le forbici che descrivono le carriere di donne e uomini all’interno degli Atenei provano inoltre il c.d. fenomeno del “tubo che perde”: al progredire della carriera universitaria, il numero di donne diminuisce e l’Università perde le relative risorse. La diseguaglianza di genere causa dunque un problema di perdita di capacità e cattivo utilizzo di risorse pubbliche. La CRUI ha da tempo intrapreso un percorso a favore della tutela dell’eguaglianza tra donne e uomini nelle Università e ha assunto un impegno preciso per implementare e monitorare la diffusione e l’utilizzo del Bilancio di Genere quale strumento fondamentale per inserire la parità di genere nella più ampia strategia di sviluppo degli Atenei. A tal fine, ha dato mandato a un Gruppo di lavoro di esperte di elaborare le linee guida e la metodologia per realizzare il Bilancio di Genere delle Università e facilitare, così, una sua capillare diffusione tra gli Atenei italiani. Il volume illustrata nel dettaglio il processo di redazione del Bilancio di Genere - dalla costituzione del gruppo di lavoro, sino alla diffusione degli esiti del Bilancio di Genere - qual è il suo contenuto - mediante la individuazione di ambiti e fenomeni da analizzare con l’identificazione dei corrispondenti indicatori e delle relative rappresentazioni - e come il Bilancio di Genere debba essere adoperato come strumento di governance dell’Ateneo, attraverso l’integrazione con i principali documenti di programmazione e rendicontazione, al fine di promuovere l’eguaglianza sostanziale all’interno degli Atenei

The disabling effects of enabling social policies on organisations’ human capital development practices for women

Paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are social policies designed to enhance parents' labour force participation. These policies influence not only men's and women's decisions regarding their labour market activity but also organisational decision makers' (ODMs) expectations about their employees' availability to work and thus, their willingness to invest in their employees' human capital. Using a sample of over 13,000 individuals from 19 countries, we investigate the interaction between gender and social policies on human capital development practices. In line with statistical discrimination theory, which suggests that ODMs hold different expectations about female and male productivity, we find that paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are negatively associated with the provision of human capital development for women but not for men

Humans, resources, or what else?

The literature on human resource management shows growing attention to the “personal” dimension of the subject-organization relationship, while the subjectivist contributions do not disregard the discussion on managerial implications. This ebook proposes a reflection on this apparent convergence. It discusses the internal criticism arising from the mainstream literature and the criticism originating from different disciplinary perspectives (organization, sociology of science, psychology of work, and labor law). Alternatives to the idea of human resources are proposed through the reflection on the goals of the processes of actions and decisions, the ontological reflection on the idea of man, and the epistemological reflection on the choices that allow overcoming the objectivism/subjectivism antinomy

Career Success Schemas and their Contextual Embeddedness: A Comparative Configurational Perspective

We introduce career success schemas as critical for understanding how people in different contexts perceive and understand career success. Using a comparative configurational approach, we show, in a study of 13 countries, that two structural characteristics of career success schemas\u2014complexity and convergence\u2014differ across country contexts and are embedded in specific configurations of institutional factors. Adopting complexity and convergence as primary dimensions, we propose a taxonomy of career success schemas at the country level. Based on this taxonomy, we contribute to the understanding of subjective career success across countries, discuss the importance of schemas for organisational career systems in multinational enterprises, and propose specific guidelines for future comparative careers research

Still feeling employable with growing age? Exploring the moderating effects of developmental HR practices and country-level unemployment rates in the age–employability relationship

A compelling issue for organizations and societies at large is to ensure external employability of the workforce across workers’ entire work-life span. Using the frameworks of age norms, stereotyping and age meta-stereotypes, we investigate whether (a) age is negatively related to perceived external employability; and (b) the age-employability link is moderated by HR developmental practices (HRDPs) and unemployment rate. We argue that being aware of stereotypes and age norms in organizations, and holding also meta-stereotypes about their group, older workers perceive themselves as less externally employable. However, the context –HRDPs that one has experienced, and the country unemployment rate – would act as buffers. Using data from a large-scale survey from over 9000 individuals in 30 institutionally diverse countries, we found that the negative relationship between age and perceived external employability was significant across all countries. In addition, at the individual level, we found that HRDPs acted as a buffer for this negative relationship, such that the effect was less pronounced for individuals who have experienced more HRDPs during their working life. At the country level, the hypothesized moderating effect of unemployment rate was not observed. Limitations, future research directions, as well as practical implications of the study are discussed