Sustainability and stakeholder approach in Olivetti from 1943 to 1960: a lesson from the past

Purpose of the paper: The sustainable enterprise focuses on its stakeholders’ interests. Today this perspective is a central one in the dialogue on enterprise goals and on the nature of the firm but it was already clear in the past history of some enlightened entrepreneurs like Adriano Olivetti. This important entrepreneur was able to balance economic responsibility and social ones in his managerial model and he showed that the pillars of sustainability, as we call them today, were internally coherent. Methodology: We apply an interpretative framework (Carroll’s pyramid) to analyze the entrepreneurial choices by Adriano Olivetti according to the various perspectives of Corporate Social Responsibility. Our analysis is based upon Adriano Olivetti’s texts and the transcriptions of his speeches, his biographies, and on interviews to managers that were active during the years of Adriano Olivetti’s administration of the Olivetti Group or later experienced the values left in the company after his untimely death. Findings: This article highlights how their extraordinary experience has demonstrated the full compatibility between social and economic responsibilities. Moreover, the article proves that the various dimensions of corporate social responsibility are tightly connected. Finally, it shows how good stakeholder management practices are a successful strategy.Research Limits: The article’s main limitation is that it is mostly based on anecdotal evidence and secondary sources. Practical implications: The analytical framework we employ can be useful in driving responsible management processes for modern managers and entrepreneurs. Originality of the paper: This article proposes two modified versions of a classic model on corporate social responsibility

Network Centrality and Homophily in Stakeholder Relationship Management: The Effects on a Social Enterprise’s Decision-Making Process

Managing relationships with all the stakeholders is a central issue in Social Enterprises' management; these enterprises, operating across the faded boundary between for profit and not for profit sectors, overcome having limit scarce resources dotation trough relationships with other organizations in order to reach success in the society. In our paper, we have studied the capability of this class of enterprises to create and sustain relationships on the basis of the concepts and principles of Stakeholder Theory, that according enterprises' survival capacity is linked to their manage ability those actors that affects or are affected by enterprise actions in their decision-making. Our empirical studies have focused on the social network, defined trough a snowballing process (degree = 3), insisting on a Social Cooperative in Naples with two world shops and one wholesale warehouse. Each node in the Social Cooperative's egonetwork has been tested for two classical measures of Social Network Analysis (Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Scott, 1991): centrality and proximity. These tests have been later used to compare actors and to analyze if more central or more homophilous actors, those who share similar interests, are better able to influence the social cooperative. Our paper highlights that homophily can better explain stakeholders' effects on the outcomes of strategic decision-making processe

Ethical Branding in the Modern Retail: A Comparison of Italy and UK Ethical Coffee Branding Strategies

Modern markets can be seen as complex systems of relationships where stakeholders are able to influence the firms’ decision-making processes and their value creation processes. Modern businesses should adopt a broader perspective in order to not focus their actions only on maximize economic performance, but to design them considering even their social and environmental impacts on the system as a whole. Firms have to respond to the stakeholders’ expectations as a way to obtain the legitimacy needed to create a beneficial environment that will help them in creating a positive effect out of their system of relations, without violating the social contract tying together all the actors in a given system. It follows that, when companies can effectively communicate to their systems’ actors how they are following the principles of sustainability and prove that their actions are socially responsible, they can get several advantages. One of the way companies must accomplish this feat is to ask third parties to certify their actions in order to be able to print on their products one of the various Ethical Labels. Using these labels to mark their products can be a tool to influence the consumer to buy from the firm over the competitors, leveraging on a higher legitimacy. In this paper, we have studied the evolution of the practice of non-financial disclosure trough ethical labels that 14 coffee brands, both in Italy and in England, as a way to understand how, in different markets they have changed over a 5-year time

Equity and Reward Crowdfunding: A Multiple Signal Analysis

This paper aims to analyse the success signals of initiatives through equity and reward crowdfunding, the two typologies most used by start-ups and SMEs. This article discusses and compares these two models, highlighting the main differences and similarities, by analyzing the factors that influence the success of initiatives through crowdfunding, measured both in terms of amount of funding raised and number of investors that funded the initiatives. The focus is on three sets of signals, venture quality (human capital, information about the establishment and the status of the initiatives), the level of information the company provides to reduce the degree of uncertainty and campaign quality. Using two distinct datasets, one of 235 equity-model initiatives and one of 274 reward-model initiatives, in both cases analyzing projects that have reached (or exceeded) the funding goal, it turns out that venture quality affects in both types, though distinctly, in particular in the reward model play an important role the awards, in addition to the rounds and the tutors (the latter two also present in the equity model), which constitute the status information of the company, while the information about the establishment and the human capital affects only the equity model. Equally for the equity model affects the level of information to reduce uncertainty, while campaign quality in both types seems to have a very slight impact

How to Engage the Crowds to Create Value? Evidence from the Pathfinder Arena Case

Reward-based crowdfunding has emerged in recent years as an interesting channel business that can leverage to obtain new financial resources outside the traditional ones. In this study, we explore how the creators of a reward-based crowdfunding campaign have engaged the crowd to create value and co-create knowledge to reduce both financial and market risks. Accordingly, we analyze the case study of the Kickstarter Campaign for Pathfinder Arena, a board game created by Giochi Uniti, an Italian Gaming Company. Through the lens of the social identity theory, we show that backers can generate the feedback processes needed to improve the product, when they want to belong in a community and when they want to interact with the creators. This research could have important implications for both researchers and future creators of reward-based crowdfunding projects, showing them the way to implement some instrument for involving the crowd to generate value

Perspectives of the App Economy: Tenets of the Innovative Phenomenon

The paper aims to explore the App Economy drawing on a configurational multiple-theory perspective (Meyer, Tsui & Hinings 1993; Miller, 1996), using the lens of Transaction Costs Theory, Regulation, Disruptive Innovation Theory and Systemic Approach. These theories are examined in the form of tenets. The choice of these theories as dimensions of our model is the output of two different activities. The first regards an ex-ante analysis of the previous studies in this field in order to find less investigated perspectives and find a connection between the topic of the App Economy and the main management theories; the second refers to a debate with some strategic management scholars in order to identify and choice the main theories for this research. This paper contributes to the existing literature by proposing an original interpretation of the App Economy and it tries to add new knowledge in this emerging research field by adding new tenets. The results of study are the formulation of eight different tenets: two for Transaction Costs Theory, one for Regulation, three for Disruptive Innovation Theory and two for Systemic Approach. These results have confirmed the linked between chosen theories and the new research field of the App Economy. In any case, this paper is a preliminary study to develop a theoretically grounded approach to understanding the emergence of the App Economy and how manage the changes that it brings into the markets. This study has implications for several stakeholders (such as managers, enterprises, institutions, Authorities, app developers, operators, platform managers and other organizations that work in this field), and for several industries being impacted by developments induced by this innovative sharing econom

New business model and local governance in supporting social and environmental solutions: a social network analysis to evaluate the Italian local action group’s “Terra è Vita” role

Current issues, such as climate change and social and economic disparities, are complex and context-dependent, influencing several economic and social actors. Micro-small and medium enterprises that populate rural areas often have lower risks than other companies but less innovation and fewer financial resources and capabilities. Here, a local convenor could help support these enterprises to drive their social, environmental, and economic behaviours to safeguard natural resources, respond to social community needs, and fulfil their economic goals. The European Union’s Community-Led Local Development programme defines local action groups as actors who help develop and grow local areas in social and economic fields. We analyse this role, highlighting that by focusing on social and environmental issues, the convenor can stimulate changes in the traditional business model and the social business model characterised by the business ambidexterity involved in producing economic value that is also relevant to addressing the community’s needs. We study the effectiveness of a local action group in its convenor role for local actors’ behaviours on economic, social, and environmental themes. The study uses social network analysis to extract the network backbone that links 150 local area entrepreneurs according to their perceptions of the local area’s main weaknesses. The results are twofold: they indicate that the local action group is perceived as an effective convenor and that its activities are instrumental in improving local area stakeholders’ performance

Evolutionary algorithms for hyperparameter optimization in machine learning for application in high energy physics

The analysis of vast amounts of data constitutes a major challenge in modern high energy physics experiments. Machine learning (ML) methods, typically trained on simulated data, are often employed to facilitate this task. Several choices need to be made by the user when training the ML algorithm. In addition to deciding which ML algorithm to use and choosing suitable observables as inputs, users typically need to choose among a plethora of algorithm-specific parameters. We refer to parameters that need to be chosen by the user as hyperparameters. These are to be distinguished from parameters that the ML algorithm learns autonomously during the training, without intervention by the user. The choice of hyperparameters is conventionally done manually by the user and often has a significant impact on the performance of the ML algorithm. In this paper, we explore two evolutionary algorithms: particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA), for the purposes of performing the choice of optimal hyperparameter values in an autonomous manner. Both of these algorithms will be tested on different datasets and compared to alternative methods.Comment: Corrected typos. Removed a remark on page 2 regarding the similarity of minimization and maximization problem. Removed a remark on page 9 (Summary) regarding thee ANN, since this was not studied in the pape

The Impact of Social Responsibility Disclosure on Corporate Financial Health: Evidences from Some Italian Public Companies

Companies are today often seen as one actor in a complex system linking all the actors with several, different ties, and binding them by a social contract asking each of them to meet the expectations of the other social actors in the same context, in order to get the legitimacy they need. Corporations can adopt social disclosure to increase their legitimacy towards all stakeholders, influencing their behavior and leading to the creation of a positive Corporate Association (Brown and Dacin, 1997). In this paper we investigate the relationship between Social Responsibility Disclosure practices and Corporate Performance. We develop a framework to study this topic through several perspectives: External evaluation (Ethical Ratings), utilization of specific behaviors (Ethical Labels), Principle (Code of Ethics) and Behaviors (Social Reports) disclosure. In order to get a first understanding of these relationships we have selected a sample of Italian Companies listed on the italian stock exchange