RISULTATI RICERCA

The impact and consequences of ICT revolution on global economies are actually under reconsideration due to the present crisis of the so-called new economy. But global crises show their consequences also at a local level. In Tuscany, after some years of optimism in which ICT was thought to be one of the possible drivers of future growth, a careful analysis needs now to be undertaken in order to assess the real solidity of ICT-related activities, in particular with regard to innovative capability. The empirical evidence presented in this paper is based on the results of a survey realised in 2001. Thanks to a cluster analysis performed on a sample of 263 firms, the main typologies of ICT firms in Tuscany are identified. These are classified on the basis of a wide set of variables size, R&D intensity, main markets, sources of innovation, human capital-, in order to assess their potential for technological innovation. Through this analysis four main typologies are identified, among which innovative firms (i. e. those delivering products or services which are close to the (technological frontier) represent a small minority. Instead ICT firms in Tuscany are specialized in less advanced activities, like customer-relationship services on behalf of large national firms, standard hardware assembling, software development or customisation for local SMEs. It seems thus unlikely that these firms will be one of the main driver for future regional growth, unless effective policies are developed at a regional and local level.

Various authors have brought forth the idea that the increase in context turbulence and the relentless change in today’s economic and competitive environments have rendered it essential for an effective strategy to combine both value appropriation and value creation (Porter, 1996; Moran & Ghoshal, 1999; Venkataraman & Sarasvathy, 2001; Hitt et al., 2001). However, the methodological basis and the assumptions that characterize contributions concerning value appropriation, on the one hand, and value creation, on the other, are notably different and in many respects opposite to one another. These profound methodological differences hinder the possibility of a combined consideration of value appropriation and value creation issues within a unitary interpretative framework (Schultze, 1994). By reinterpreting more conventional strategy studies in the light of the neoAustrian process view, this article builds a framework which is able to consider and render mutually compatible both value appropriation and value creation within the unitary process of firm development. In addition, the use of the neoAustrian approach as an interpretative lense enables an evolution of the resource-based theory that consents it, not only to grasp the mechanisms behind value appropriation, but also to suggest new ways of viewing post-industrial firm behavior that help to interpret its dynamic and proactive role in the value creation process.

Strategic literature has extensively recognized the importance of R&D-related assets for the firm’s success in the long run. However, in spite of the growing attention to the role of R&D activity, we are still lacking satisfactory methods to assess its economic value. Indeed, the valuation of technological assets is complicated by several difficulties related to both the very nature of the knowledge generated through the R&D investments and the uncertainty connected to the subsequent technology commercialization. This shortcoming affects several important funding decisions inside and outside the firm. However, a stream of empirical literature drawing from the fields of industrial organization and financial economics has extensively coped with the questions concerning the valuation of firms’ innovation activities by the financial markets. In this respect, several different estimation methodologies, data sources and variables have been adopted. The objective of this article is to review the methods and the results of these studies in a systematic way and suggest the potential contributions they can provide to the literature on the management of innovation. In the conclusions, this article also highlights the main insights that the empirical literature reviewed could gain from the firm-level studies on the determinants of innovation performance.

This study is based on the observation that the Alzheimer patient’s conversational competence tends to decrease and disappear before the neurofunctional damage has cancelled it irreversibly.Previous studies by Giampaolo Lai have showed that such a competence can be awakened and kept alive by means of a special conversational technique (named Conversationalisme) performed by a competent therapist. In this paper we will report about five training sessions with the wife of an Alzheimer’s patient aimed at enabling her to have a conversation that could keep her husband’s conversational competence alive. The technique is based on the study of some recorded and taped everyday conversations between husband and wife.

This study aims to test empirically the theory that obesity is psychologically linked to the semantics of power (Ugazio, 1998). The hypothesis was that personal meanings of winner/loser and associated meanings are pre-eminent for obese people.The Repertory Grid Test (Kelly, 1955) was applied to two groups of young subjects, Group 1 obese/overweight and Group 2 of normal weight, to elicit their most significant personal constructs. The constructs were grouped in semantic categories and the data compared using Student’s t test. Group 1’s constructs were found to be significantly more connected to the semantics of power than Group 2’s. The empirical data seems to confirm the hypothesis. The results are discussed in the light of methodological problems encountered.

This article is the result of a psychotherapy with two groups of people with Panic Disorder (both with 1 terapist, 1 co-terapist and 10 patients). It has been supposed that group perspective, in some respects, should prove more advantageous for specific PD’s features. We aimed at understanding how much Panic Attack reveals itself in relationship’s establishment and at helping patients to move in different ways, also by short steps, towards an improvement. For keeping psychotherapy accessible to most people, a therapy pattern that should be as successful for symptomatology as for personality organisation was proposed, keeping in mind stronger hypothesis about psychological and biological PD’s development. The epistemological background is systemic-relational. We tried to find a therapy that should allow for either unsettled clinic situations or for indispensable goals. An hypothesis for change and for mental transformation, rather than an inflexible therapy model, was pursued, assessing the whole factors for specific situations, acting on the ones considered more active, and then testing the outcomes that interventions in a specific area arouses in the others. The treatment with these groups pursued specific aims: To reach symptomatology’s control and reduction; To recover relational functioning; To change where possible, some outlooks on world which represent the individual personality organization; to assume to pass to a self-help group, at the end of the psychotherapy.This work argues that panic fear, through group psychotherapy process, turns out to be less painful. Moreover, the group bears a best emotive and social level of functioning, meeting the patients expectations for both effectiveness and cheapness.

In the clinical practice with couples, Family Mediation has its own function. In particular, this intervention can achieve its goals only under certain relational conditions. The present contribution focuses on such conditions through examining the following two variables: the power preconception towards the ties with the other and the different forms of divorce. The resulting consequence is that only a part of divorced couples can negotiate. Thus, emphasizing family mediation is sometime out of place.The value of a preliminary time, that is a time in which questions need to be arised, is pointed out for every intervention to the divorced family. Five fundamental questions in particular are considered: each of them deals with crucial matters connected to the relational and generational perspective. This is in order to make emerge partners’ power preconceptions about the relationship with oneself/with the other and the way partners manage/do not manage the pain related to the end of the bond with the other.