Work-Life Balance: tools and methods that an organization should adopt to guarantee work-life balance for employees

openIl seguente elaborato si propone di analizzare, partendo dalla sua origine, l’equilibrio vita – lavoro e tutti gli strumenti che concorrono al suo conseguimento. Lo scopo è proprio quello di esaminare le modalità con cui il dominio lavorativo e quello privato possono coesistere, quali vantaggi traggono gli individui e le Organizzazioni da questa conciliazione e cosa emerge dagli studi a riguardo. Verranno, infatti, presentati due studi, i quali considereranno il ruolo che il conflitto e l’equilibrio vita – lavoro giocano su benessere psicologico e soddisfazione lavorativa. Infine, verrà illustrato un esempio pratico di gestione del work life balance all’interno di una nota azienda di fama mondiale

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

Educational context and entrepreneurial intentions of university students: An Italian study

In this chapter the authors explore some drivers of entrepreneurial intentions using the theory of planned behaviour on a sample of Italian students. Our objective is twofold. First, the study investigates if both perceiving that becoming an entrepreneur is risky and having nonfinancial career motivations affect university students\u2019 entrepreneurial intentions. Second, it investigates if students\u2019 perception that university education has an effect on their entrepreneurial skills and attitudes and their perception that the university favours and supports entrepreneurship moderate the relationship between cognitive antecedents of intentions (i.e. attitudes, norms and control) and entrepreneurial intentions. This chapter presents an analysis of a sample of more than 1,500 students from the University of Padova (Italy). According to the national ranking, this University - which is one of Italy\u2019s oldest and largest universities - has been classified as the one with the best Faculty of Economics and Statistics in terms of teaching for more than 10 years among 45 Italian public universities. Data from the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students\u2019 Survey (GUESSS) carried out in 2013 was used. Our analysis highlights not only on the importance of individual characteristics, but also on the role of the learning experience students have during their university studies. This means that it is important to consider how much students perceive that their university education has an effect on entrepreneurial skills and attitudes

Governance Practices in Action: Ways to Support Family Business Development

Tognazzo, Gianecchini and Gubitta explore a subset of (mostly) SMEs having shared and unique characteristics, these being family businesses and examine how well-designed and adaptable governance practices can support their growth and development. They offer recommendations as to how those involved in such enterprises should plan and organise their governance structures and processes so as to take full advantage of their strengths as family businesses but at the same time, prevent those same characteristics becoming a hindrance to prosperity

"My Old and My New Family" - The Impact of Family Relationships on Students' Entrepreneurial Intentions: An Italian Study.

Previous research that explored entrepreneurial intentions through the Theory of Planned Behavior has found that intentions are reliable predictors of entrepreneurial behavior. Less however is still known about background factors that might drive intentions. Scholars have found that family financial support and prior family business exposure can influence intentions to start a business. By focusing on the entrepreneurial intentions of a wide sample of Italian university students, we aim to uncover if some characteristics of the family of origin (i.e. having self-employed parents and older siblings) and of their family of formation (i.e. living with a partner) are related to their entrepreneurial intentions. Our results suggest that having self-employed parents, older siblings and living with a partner increase the entrepreneurial intentions of the individuals. The effect of such family-related variables is mediated by cognitive variables (perceived behavioral control, subjective norms and attitude towards entrepreneurship)

Imprenditorialità giovanile: il caso dell’Università di Padova

Dai report annuali del Global Entrepreneurship Monitor emerge che la maggiore propensione imprenditoriale si rileva nella classe di età 25-34 anni. Le imprese fondate e dirette da giovani presentano una più elevata probabilità di fallimento e non sono tra quelle che generano più occupazione o che hanno i tassi di crescita più elevati. Ciò nonostante, si tratta di imprese di interesse, perché presentano livelli più elevati in termini di innovazione, esplorazione di nuovi business, adozione di nuove strutture organizzative e impiego di nuove tecnologie. Vista da questa prospettiva, quindi, il tasso di imprenditorialità giovanile è un indicatore del potenziale di sviluppo nei settori meno consolidati, che generalmente si caratterizzano per un rischio più elevato associato ad altrettanto elevate prospettive di rendimento. Il quadro appena definito è lo sfondo sul quale si inserisce questo capitolo, che analizza i fattori che incidono sulla propensione imprenditoriale nelle giovani generazioni: le aspirazioni personali, la rete sociale fornita dalla famiglia, il contesto locale di riferimento. Il capitolo è organizzato nel modo seguente. Nella prima parte viene fornita una breve panoramica sulla situazione economica della provincia di Padova e una descrizione di alcune dinamiche in atto a Nord Est. Quindi, sono presentati e discussi i risultati della ricerca condotta tra gli studenti della Facoltà di Economia di Padova, con alcune implicazioni per futuri approfondimenti e indicazioni per le politiche di intervento

Probing Mixed-Genotype Infections II: High Multiplicity in Natural Infections of the Trypanosomatid, Crithidia bombi, in Its Host, Bombus spp

Mixed-genotype infections have major consequences for many essential elements of host-parasite interactions. With genetic exchange between co-infecting parasite genotypes increased diversity among parasite offspring and the emergence of novel genotypes from infected hosts is possible. We here investigated mixed- genotype infections using the host, Bombus spp. and its trypanosome parasite Crithidia bombi as our study case. The natural infections of C. bombi were genotyped with a novel method for a representative sample of workers and spring queens in Switzerland. We found that around 60% of all infected hosts showed mixed-genotype infections with an average of 2.47±0.22 (S.E.) and 3.65±1.02 genotypes per worker or queen, respectively. Queens, however, harboured up to 29 different genotypes. Based on the genotypes of co-infecting strains, these could be putatively assigned to either ‘primary’ and ‘derived’ genotypes - the latter resulting from genetic exchange among the primary genotypes. High genetic relatedness among co-infecting derived but not primary genotypes supported this scenario. Co-infection in queens seems to be a major driver for the diversity of genotypes circulating in host populations.ISSN:1932-620

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Firm Performance in SMEs. A preliminary stydy

Small and medium-sized family businesses are strongly influenced in their ability to survive, achieve profitability, and stimulate growth by the leader of the firm. His/her entrepreneurial capacity gives these firms a foundation for building and exploiting these abilities. Applying a definition of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) associated to the competences of the entrepreneurs to a sample of 40 family SMEs, this study highlights the relationship between EO and firm performance in family SME\u2019s context. Our research shows which components of EO mainly affects perceived and archival performance (risk taking and proactiveness) and which are the contingent organizational variables that affect the shape of the EO (perceived performance and gender). Consistent with this focus, we also emphasize the differences in terms of EO considering various characteristics of family SMEs. These results urge SMEs to capitalize on the skills and talents of their family members in promoting entrepreneurship and selective venturing into new market arenas