Healthware S.p.A. – from an underdeveloped region of Italy – can it be a global firm?

Healthware, a digital communication agency specializing in healthcare, is based in Salerno Italy. The firm has 72 employees in two countries as well as clients in 14 countries. The case illustrates the location trade-offs of operating – and growing – a global digital company far from the epicenter of Italian business. The theme is universal. Once the firm is far from a nation’s epicenter, a dynamism may be absent but the advantages are quite tangible: lower costs and employee stability. This teaching case is based on actual companies, people, and events, though some details have been dramatized or disguised

Outsourcing and Innovation. A Comparative Study of Italy and the UK

This research has been conducted by Prof. Ilan Oshri, Director of the Research Centre for Global Sourcing and Services at Loughborough University, Prof. Giovanni Vaia, Director of the Digital Enterprise Lab at Ca’ Foscari University Venice, sponsored by Engineering, an Italian firm. The results of this study are based on a cross-industry survey carried out in 2015 with 150 client firms in Italy (75 firms) and the UK (75 firms) at the executive level who were directly involved in achieving innovation through outsourcing. In this study, researchers answer this question by comparing innovation performance of Italian and British client firms: how can companies achieve innovation through outsourcing engagements

The Concept of Governance in IT Outsourcing: A Literature Review

The significance of governance has been recognized in IT Outsourcing (ITO) research and practice. While the concept of governance is rooted from various reference disciplines, as a leading knowledge resource for outsourcing, the discipline of IS has contributed to the conceptualization of ITO governance with multiplex interpretations and from different aspects. To synthesize these contributions of IS scholars, we conducted a literature review within IS discipline, and identified two research strands: governance structure and governance mechanisms. With our findings, we describe how "structuring" the governance means defining the combination of an appropriate portfolio of governance structures, together with different coordination mechanisms at different stages of the ITO lifecycle. Furthermore, we discuss how the ITO research community can be informed by reference disciplines on the conceptualization of governance. On this basis, we suggest the existing gaps and future directions of research on ITO governance

The role of management accounting in family business succession

Family business succession is considered inherent to family businesses and represents a critical process that is generally characterised by resistance to change. This study aims to investigate the role of management accounting systems (MASs) in family business succession, in order to understand how changes in MASs during the succession across different family generations can help the succession process itself, facilitating the rise of the new leader, supporting changes, and reducing resistance to them. The research adopts a case study approach, focusing on organizational routines and their changes, at the same time taking into account the socioemotional wealth of the family firm. Evidence from the study shows the strategic role of MAS in managing the succession process, through the implementation of new routines and rules in helping the decision-making process and in achieving the firm’s leadershi

Investigating the Relationship between the Social and Economic-financial Performance

Hundreds of studies have explored and measured financial returns related to social performance (Margolis and Walsh, 2003), with controversial results. In addition to these studies‟ outcomes, we found, in this body of literature, a lot of innovation in the integration and adaptation of financial analysis tools and models to the study of statistical relationships. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial (and economic) performance, using multiple measures of financial and social performance and by looking statistically at the movement of actual financial and social performance over time. We emphasize the worth of statistical analysis in traditional financial representations. Our findings show how ratio analysis and statistical cause-and-effect validation are not alternatives for developing the financial analysis of sustainability and reporting. We show, through constant testing and a double learning process, the critical relationship between the key factors of financial, economic and social performance

The Effect of Network Centrality of Medical Specialists on Their Performance: Evidence from an Italian Health Information Exchange Platform

Health information exchanges (HIEs) are multi-sided platforms that exhibit network properties, whose value for each user resides in the information that spills over from the other users. Most of the studies fail to recognize that much of the institution

'It's Reducing a Human Being to a Percentage'; Perceptions of Justice in Algorithmic Decisions

Data-driven decision-making consequential to individuals raises important questions of accountability and justice. Indeed, European law provides individuals limited rights to 'meaningful information about the logic' behind significant, autonomous decisions such as loan approvals, insurance quotes, and CV filtering. We undertake three experimental studies examining people's perceptions of justice in algorithmic decision-making under different scenarios and explanation styles. Dimensions of justice previously observed in response to human decision-making appear similarly engaged in response to algorithmic decisions. Qualitative analysis identified several concerns and heuristics involved in justice perceptions including arbitrariness, generalisation, and (in)dignity. Quantitative analysis indicates that explanation styles primarily matter to justice perceptions only when subjects are exposed to multiple different styles---under repeated exposure of one style, scenario effects obscure any explanation effects. Our results suggests there may be no 'best' approach to explaining algorithmic decisions, and that reflection on their automated nature both implicates and mitigates justice dimensions.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'18), April 21--26, Montreal, Canad