Crisis in the European Automobile Industry: An “Organizational Adaptation” Perspective

The paper explores the determinants of corporate crisis through an «organizational adaptation» perspective. In this regard, a research framework recently developed by scholars is at first shown. It is then tested in the European automobile industry through the analysis of the huge Fiat group’s economic and financial crisis in the nineties. Empirical findings are drawn from public archival sources. The discussion of the main results and of the implications for further research on the crisis of firms follow. Among the different methodological and theoretical perspectives on the determinants of firms’ crisis developed by literature, the paper can help to enforce the scientific conciliation wished by scholars.Adaptation, automobile, crisis, decline, failure, Fiat, niche, population ecology, top management team, turnaround

Relations among corporate governance, codes of conduct, and the profitability of public utilities: an empirical study of companies on the Italian Stock Exchange

This research examines the relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance through the findings of an empirical longitudinal investigation of public utilities listed on the Italian Stock Exchange (2000 -2008). The data for the measurement of the corporate governance variables are taken from the latest edition of the Italian Preda Code of Best Governance Practices (2006). Standard ratios (Return on Assets, Return on Equity, Return on Sales, Tobin’s Q and Book to Market Ratio) were used to assess the performance variables. The results are not conclusive. Specifically, whereas most relationships with the performance variables were statistically significant, different relationships were found between the same corporate governance variables and different indicators of performance. These ‘conflicting’ findings suggest that further research is needed for the impact of corporate governance practices on the performance of firms to be fully understood

Reviewing cognitive distortions in managerial decision making: towards an integrative co-evolutionary framework

Purpose – Why and how do cognitive distortions in managerial decision making occur? All organizations are imperfect systems (Katz and Khan, 1966), with wrong decisions often just round the corner. As a consequence, addressing these important questions continues to be particularly lively in the management development area, especially in terms of its intended contribution to the de-biasing activity. Thus, through this critical review article we aim to provide the current scientific dialogue on the topic with updated lenses, which can also be innovative from some aspects. Design/methodology/approach – Our review framework is based on the recent, impactful article on biases in managerial decision making by Kahneman et al. (2011), and on Bazerman and Moore’s (2013) perspective on emanating heuristics, considered as the causes of biases. Accordingly, we derive four intertwined thematic clusters of heuristics, through which we systematically group and critically analyze the management literature mostly published on the topic since 2011. Findings – From the analyzed clusters we propose an integrative framework of emanating heuristics, which focuses on the co-evolving relationships and potentially self-reinforcing processes in and between them. Originality/value – The value of our contribution is threefold: 1) from a methodological perspective, to our knowledge, the studies adopted as the basis of our analysis have not yet been simultaneously used as a comprehensive ground for updated reviews on this topic; 2) from a conceptual perspective, the emerging integrative co-evolutionary framework can help explain the dangerous connections among cognitive traps and emanating heuristics; 3) from a practical perspective, our resulting framework can also be helpful for future de-biasing attempts in the business arena

Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival: key challenges for future research

How do social organizations evolve? How do they adapt to environmental pressures? What resources and capabilities determine their survival within dynamic competition? Charles Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species (1859) has provided a significant impact on the development of the management and organization theory literatures on organizational evolution. This article introduces the JMG Special Issue focused on Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival. We discuss key themes in the organizational evolution research that have emerged in recent years. These include the increasing adoption of the co-evolutionary approach, with a particular focus on the definition of appropriate units of analysis, such as routines, and related challenges associated with exploring the relationship between co-evolution, re-use of knowledge, adaptation, and exaptation processes. We then introduce the three articles that we have finally accepted in this Special Issue after an extensive, multi-round, triple blind-review process. We briefly outline how each of these articles contributes to understanding among scholars, practitioners and policy makers of the continuous evolutionary processes within and among social organizations and systems

Corporate governance in Italian listed firms: an overview

The paper provides an overview of the Italian corporate governance problem, which takes into account the key features of the ownership structure of domestic firms listed at the Milan Stock Exchange in 2004. Basically, it is argued that, although in recent years significant rules were issued to improve the Italian corporate governance system, effective and prompt reforms seem still urgent in the national research agenda. The paper is divided as follows. In section 2, some evidence concerning the general ownership structure of Italian listed firms is provided. In this regard, recent data would confirm the concentration of ownership as the basic feature of Italian listed firms, with 32% as the mean share of the majority shareholder. In section 3, some specific terms of the corporate governance problem for Italian listed firms are set. Basically, it is argued that the overall effectiveness of both external and internal controls might be, at some level, negatively influenced by the shareholders’ meeting, more deeply by the majority shareholder. In this regard, some evidence from the traditional governance structure of listed joint-stock companies is shown

Corporate governance in Italian listed firms: an overview

The paper provides an overview of the Italian corporate governance problem, which takes into account the key features of the ownership structure of domestic firms listed at the Milan Stock Exchange in 2004. Basically, it is argued that, although in recent years significant rules were issued to improve the Italian corporate governance system, effective and prompt reforms seem still urgent in the national research agenda. The paper is divided as follows. In section 2, some evidence concerning the general ownership structure of Italian listed firms is provided. In this regard, recent data would confirm the concentration of ownership as the basic feature of Italian listed firms, with 32% as the mean share of the majority shareholder. In section 3, some specific terms of the corporate governance problem for Italian listed firms are set. Basically, it is argued that the overall effectiveness of both external and internal controls might be, at some level, negatively influenced by the shareholders’ meeting, more deeply by the majority shareholder. In this regard, some evidence from the traditional governance structure of listed joint-stock companies is shown

Path dependent entrepreneurs? A decision making perspective

In November 2011, Zahra and Wright published a very thought-provoking article aimed at discussing the state of the art associated with the entrepre-neurship research domain. The main idea behind that article was that, alt-hough tremendously growing, entrepreneurship still lacks strong theoretical micro-foundations. Thus, this gap negatively affects the increasing efforts aimed at considering entrepreneurship itself as a per se discipline within the management literature. This research note seeks at contributing to fill this gap through explaining how the decision making literature can be useful to develop these micro-foundations. In particular, the research note uses the concepts of hidden traps and heuristics in decision making for the interpreting of that organizational behavior widely known as path dependence. It is known that, despite the latest relevant attempts, path dependence can be considered, for many aspects, as a black box to date. Opening this black box can represent an important opportunity for the research and practice of management widely. At the same time, this opportunity appears as greatly relevant also for the research and practice of entrepreneurship specifically, in that it can help both scholars and practitioners to orient, towards higher rationality, a number of entrepreneurial decision making processes mostly associated with the earliest stages of the organizational life cycle