RISULTATI RICERCA

Relatively little research has addressed questions on how companies integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and management control, and this study attempts to respond to recent calls for further investigation. Taking the perspective, advanced in the extant literature, that CSR can be regarded as a form of management control, the study has the objective to show how a socially responsible initiative, such as the implementation of an employee welfare plan undertaken by a SME, can address control issues. In particular, the company has designed the employee welfare plan as an incentive system. The study adopts an interventionist research (IVR) approach to accomplish with the research objective, and the results of the interventionist case study are interpreted based on the Merchant and Van der Stede object-of-control framework. In particular, results indicate that the implementation of the welfare plan has enabled the application of different types of control and provided incentive-related benefits, suggesting the potential impact of CSR as a management control device.

The purpose of this study is mainly to investigate the use of Target Costing (TC) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to support New Product Development (NPD) strate-gies in large international companies. Another purpose is to determine how com-panies apply the TC concept and why this strategic costing technique is adopted to support NPD strategies. The study involves interviews in 7 organizations based in Europe and the United States and operating in Italy. It appears that TC, together with value engineering (VE) activities, is used in all 7 organizations in supporting NPD strategies, while only 2 organizations tend to use LCC. The contributions of this study to the accounting literature pertain to its research content and design. In particular, the paper offers new evidence for the debate concerning the relevance of strategic costing techniques, such as TC and LLC, in supporting NPD as a cen-tral dimension of the corporate strategies of the companies.

Management accounting practices (MAP) appear to be a prerequisite for entrepreneur-ial orientation (EO) to positively influence profitability. In addition, critical capacities are a precondition to develop and maintain MAP. Studies revealed that small and me-dium enterprises use informal MAP and they generally lack managerial competences (MC) to develop and implement effective control systems to respond to environmental challenges. However, those who develop MC are more likely to implement MAP. The aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between the use of MAP and the devel-opment of EO, where EO is measured through the independent dimensions of innova-tiveness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Further, the paper argues that the use of MAP is positively affected by the possession of MC. The paper adopts structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses, focusing on a sample of 339 Italian community pharmacies (response rate 54.6%). Findings support a positive relationship between MC and MAP and between MAP and EO, contributing to a field that is underexplored and providing suggestions for managers, practitioners and educators.

This paper aims to provide a contribution on how the small and medium enterpris-es (SMEs) may reduce the gap between theory and practice on management con-trol knowledge. The paper adopts a knowledge transfer (KT) approach grounded on Liyanage et al.’s (2009) framework. A project of management accounting (MA) implementation in a SME located in Umbria is presented and discussed fol-lowing a strong interventionist research approach. The case demonstrates the knowledge management relevance on MA implementation, able to integrate and reinforce the influence of contingency variables and institutional pressures. It con-tributes to show how the MA implementation has been positively influenced by the SME absorptive capacity (AC) and willingness to learn (WTL), connected to some educational and technical conditions characterizing the entrepreneur and the organization. This paper provides a practical contribution for practitioners and SMEs involved in the implementation of MA tools, demonstrating that successful implementation requires gradual learning cycles and some organizational pre-conditions to bring successful results. It also contributes to scientific debate en-hancing the active role of the actors in designing and implementing managerial control systems, as well as providing an original view that involves the supply and demand for innovation in managerial systems as sources and receivers of man-agement control knowledge.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence of the factors considered relevant in promoting the adoption of Management Accounting (MA) tools, and those able to hinder their spread in Italian manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study represents a bridge between theory and practice as it allows us to investigate which MA tools are adopted in a firms daily practice and which are the main factors fostering/hindering MA tools implementation. In 2018 a ques-tionnaire was sent to a total population of 1,100 Italian manufacturing SMEs; 102 responses were obtained. The findings show that SMEs mainly use budgeting tools, customer satisfaction, benchmarking analysis, economic and financial indexes. Additionally, the principal variable promoting the adoption of MA practices seems to be the competition increase, which is an input deriving from outside rising the information needs of entrepreneurs. Internal firm-specific factors significantly contribute to favouring the adoption of MA tools, particularly a corporate culture oriented to the management control to support decision-making processes, pro-moted by entrepreneurs and employees. Contrary, the lack of knowledge concern-ing the potentiality of MA tools and the lack of resources would seem to hinder the spread of these tools. Thus, the role of entrepreneurs, employees, and Universities in promoting knowledge transferring and sharing becomes pivotal to adopt effec-tive MAS.

La globalizzazione e l’iper-connessione perenne ad opera della diffusione di tecnologie per le comunicazioni, apparentemente sempre piu in grado di annichilire la prossimita geografica, hanno riacceso il recente dibattito scientifico sul tema delle esternalita di rete, soprattutto quando queste riguardano il nesso relativo ad attivita di ricerca tra universita ed imprese localizzate nel territorio di afferenza. Ha senso, pertanto, interrogarsi circa la valenza di configurazione di cluster spaziali dei soggetti che intrattengono tali relazioni, investigandone la loro natura e intensita. Tale contributo, attraverso la sintesi di una attivita di ricerca sviluppata nell’ambito di un progetto pluriennale finanziato dal Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico italiano, propone un approccio induttivo a partire da un caso studio concreto che e stato oggetto di analisi. L’approccio metodologico induttivo proposto, basato sulla determinazione di cluster tematici e sulla successiva analisi della natura e della tipologia delle relazioni scambiate, pur nella consapevolezza della complessita concettuale relativa alla enorme varieta di configurazioni che il sistema di relazioni universita-impresa ed intra-imprese e le relative modellazioni assumono, si rivela funzionale ad argomentare una risposta critica all’interrogativo posto.

Le carte convenzionali proposte dai media sui flussi migratori rappresentano il fenomeno attraverso una scelta di simboli e variabili cartografiche che semplificano l’esperienza migratoria e disumanizzano i soggetti protagonisti. Diversamente, la cartografia sensibile e partecipativa permette di focalizzarsi sulle esperienze individuali di attraversamento dello spazio, con potenziali effetti positivi sia sul destinatario-lettore sia sul creatore della carta. All’interno di questa riflessione teorica, l’articolo presenta un’analisi e una comparazione tra le carte geografiche ‘tradizionali’ e le cartografie sensibili e soggettive prodotte da alcuni giovani migranti intervistati, le quali mostrano da due prospettive differenti la rotta della migrazione contemporanea dall’Africa sub-sahariana verso l’Europa.

Lo spazio e il rapporto tra potere e punizione nelle carceri sono stati analizzati attraverso un dialogo tra l’approccio disciplinare della Carceral Geography e un materiale differenziato di contributi e analisi intorno alla condizione detentiva italiana. In particolare, si e descritto lo spazio carcerario in relazione alla premialita e alla differenziazione. All’interno di queste analisi emergono alcuni elementi intrinseci come la collaborazione e l’imperscrutabilita che vanno a caratterizzare l’esplicarsi di alcuni strumenti di potere come l’isolamento e il trasferimento.

This article is one of the results of an ongoing project focussed on the refugee Balkan Route, which began in 2015. In adopting a style and structure that have been deliberately conceived as a first hand fieldnote-based account, we discuss the informal mobilities of refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the country was incorporated in the Balkan Route in 2018. In particular, we investigate how this change in the Route has impacted the Bosnian Canton of Una-Sana with the arrival of thousands of refugees in the cities of Bihac and Velika Kladusa. After discussing in detail the emergence of several makeshift and semi-formal camps in these two cities, and the related difficult living conditions experienced by a growing number of refugees waiting to cross the Croatian border and enter the EU, the article concludes with a few general considerations on the geopolitical relevance of the new Balkan Route and on how the border politics in the region tends to be, literally, ‘marked’ on the bodies of the refugees.