Unemployment as a social cost

Over the last decade, workfare programmes provided support to the unemployed only insofar as they were willing to accept a job. The theoretical underpinnings of these programmes are that institutional constraints prevent labour supply from adjusting to the technologically determined requirements of labour demand. We contend that when individuals look for a job, they generally want to take into account non-monetary features such as occupational status. Status cannot be traded, it usually is complementary to income, it determines lifestyles and life possibilities. As for labour demand, its requirements do not reflect efficient behaviour and technical constraints because business ”efficiency” cannot be taken to be a measure of social efficiency and technology cannot be used as a benchmark to assess the efficiency of business conduct. We suggest that Sen’s notion of capabilities may constitute an appropriate benchmark to assess the social efficiency of the economic system. This leads us to a few policy implications. The ”capabilities benchmark” leads us to stress the importance of freedom to choose how to conduct one’s life. Acting in favour of freedom involves the understanding of how business strategies affect learning patterns and available choice sets. It also involves the assessment of policy issues - such as cooperation between the scientific community and business, scientific freedom, educational goals and their institutional implementation, and unemployment relief systems - which may influence the relation between business strategies and social learning.

Anticancer activity of multifunctional Pt(IV) prodrugs

The anticancer activity of Pt(II)-based drugs is limited by severe side effects, resistance and poor pharmacokinetic profile. To overcome these limits Pt(IV) prodrugs can be used: they are activated by reduction within hypoxic tumor environment, releasing the corresponding Pt(II) complex and two axial ligands, which can also be bioactive molecules, providing a synergistic activity with Pt(II) drugs (multi-action agents). The biological properties of such molecules have been reported in this thesis. A cisplatin-based Pt(IV) complex containing the Histone DeAcetylase inhibitor (HDACi) 2-(2-propynyl)octanoate (POA) as axial ligand showed a marked in vitro and in vivo anticancer activity compared with cisplatin and a Pt(IV) compound with two other known HDACis. Also a Pt(IV) derivate bearing POA but based on the oxaliplatin-analogue cis-dichlorido(cyclohexane-1R,2Rdiamine) platinum(II) (or [PtCl2(dach)]) was 1-2 orders of magnitude more active in vitro than the references cisplatin, oxaliplatin and [PtCl2(dach)], due to its high cellular accumulation. It exerted also a marked in vivo anticancer activity, inducing immunogenic cell death on colon cancer. The selectivity towards colon cancer of dach-based complexes was confirmed by the investigation of three couples of asymmetric Pt(IV) species, cisplatin- or dach-based, containing the bioactive axial ligands clofibrate, heptanoate or octanoate. The two series showed a marked in vitro antiproliferative activity (on 2D and 3D models) compared to the Pt(II) counterparts, due to a considerable accumulation in cancer cells. Finally, two cisplatin-based Pt(IV) complexes, containing inhibitors of cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymes as axial ligands, offered good antiproliferative performances, due to their enhanced lipophilicity. However, their biological effects were almost independent from COX-2 expression. In conclusion, the use of bioactive ligands leads to multi-action Pt(IV) complexes with promising pharmacological profile

SULLA NECESSITA DI RICONSIDERARE A FONDO L’ECONOMIA QUALE SCIENZA SOCIALE

Sul fatto che l’Economia sia una scienza sociale penso che non vi abbiano piu ad essere contestazioni. Eppure sotto l’influenza del secolo dei lumi, ed altre ancora successivamente, si sono perpetuati pesanti disastri sul piano pratico. VediamoloEconomia, economia generale, economia sociale

The Relationship between Open Innovation and Strategy: Data-Driven Analysis of the Mobile Value Services Industry

As academic and practitioner studies on the subject amassed in the last decade 2003 - 2013, Open Innovation (OI) has gained growing importance in the broad field of Management and Information Systems. However, existing literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of the relationship existing between OI and a firm's Strategy. Employing a data-driven research approach, based on forty-five qualitative interviews on firms operating in the Mobile Value Services Industry involved in OI undertakings, this study originally highlights six cross-themes the OI-Strategy relationship revolves around: 1) OI and Competitive Advantage, 2) OI and Strategic Positioning, 3) OI and Business Models, 4) OI in Networks, 5) OI and Co-opetition.; 6) OI and Resilient Business Advantages. For each theme, insights are provided concerning: sub themes, findings, criticalities, and areas of development. This reorganization of the real-world OI initiatives constitutes a comprehensive research agenda or roadmap, with value for both academics and practitioners

Financialization and Deindustrialization in the Southern European Periphery

Historically, Southern European countries have shared a \u2018semi-peripheral\u2019 model of capitalism which has been characterized by fundamental fragilities in the production system. The financialization induced by the EMU has rendered these economies more fragile and unstable. Liberalization and market reform policies have taken southern economies onto the path of a credit-based and passively-extroverted financialized economy that trap them into a low-cost-of-wages search of competitiveness. However, the lack of autonomy in macroeconomic policies has weakened Southern opportunity to react to the financial crisis. The \u2018internal devaluation\u2019 policies that followed have caused a deep and thorough process of de-industrialization. This has sped-up the centralization of the European economy that has its centre in a narrow space within Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Frankfurt

Mobile customer relationship management : An explorative investigation of the italian consumer market

Mobile customer relationship management (CRM) services seem to have all the characteristics commonly associated with successful mobile services and have accordingly been predicted to be among the most promising. However, real development of this sector has not been well explored so far, especially in relation to the actual supply of mobile CRM services to the public. The purpose of this paper is to reduce this gap by giving a first snapshot of the current development of the supply of mobile CRM services to consumers taken in the context of the Italian market. In order to do so, it firstly proposes a conceptual framework indicating the relevant aspects to investigate for assessing this kind of environments: the market, value propositions, actors and issues. Then it applies this framework to get an overview of the supply of mobile CRM services in Italy and provides some empirical insight about its current development obtained through an exhaustive survey of the current supply of 750 services from 353 firms

Consideraciones acerca del psicoanálisis en los EEUU. El caso de Jeffrey Masson

El desarrollo que ha alcanzado el psicoanálisis ha sido de lo más variado en los distintos suelos. En los EEUU, se volvió parte de la ciencia médica bien establecida, generando instituciones que, comparadas con las europeas, resultaron más rígidas. Al mismo tiempo, la convivencia de médicos y legos, no dejó de acarrar algunos conflictos. En tanto, desde el punto de vista teórico, existía la tendencia a hacer del psicoanálisis una “psicología del yo”. En este contexto, hemos de situar a la figura de Jefrrey Masson, quien en función de sus contactos logró acceder a la correspondencia sellada (Freud-Fliess), así como también consiguió encargarse de los Archivos Sigmund Freud. Desde su lugar gestará un movimiento que fuerza discurrir la obra freudiana por un camino que termina atentando contra los propios cimientos del psicoanálisis

Corporate psychology. How does Italian entrepreneurship change?

The analysis on the entrepreneurial system development in the world involves inevitably the question: why in some countries businesses made a specific evolutionary process unlike others? Certainly specific and social conditions as well as economic legacies or regulatory issues promoted by political systems involve. However, these factors are mainly relevant when comparing companies from countries with clear socio-economic disparities. In the presence of a homogeneous economic development, however, other significant factors seem to intervene. Corporate psychology therefore aims to identify the causes conditioning the entrepreneurial choices in developed economies. In Italy, the evolutionary behaviour of enterprises has been clearly conditioned from the entrepreneurs’ conception of doing business. This principle involves the choice of the entrepreneurial initiative, the subsequent managerial decisions, and more generally the entrepreneurial fabric development. This paper aims to introduce the topic of the corporate psychology related to new entrepreneurial initiatives in Italy and to propose it as a useful tool for a stable corporate development

A strategic Analysis of the European Companies in the ICT Sales Channel

The strategic role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is growing in various companies. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) adopt ICT solutions to support their processes and to improve their products and services. Because of SMEs’ scarce resources and inadequate ICT competencies, they need support from ICT suppliers in the ICT adoption process. Little attention has been paid to the business models and strategies of ICT suppliers in the academic and professional literature, and SMEs find it difficult to determine the characteristics of available ICT suppliers and to choose the supplier that best responds to their needs and aims. The goal of this paper is to provide a detailed picture of the ICT sales channel and its players in the European market. A classification framework is proposed and eleven different business models are identified. The paper is based on a case study methodology that included 53 semi‐standardized interviews with CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) and marketing and communications managers at leading European ICT suppliers coupled with the literature review