RISULTATI RICERCA

In questo dialogo Bob Resnick e Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb sostengono differenti posizioni in merito alla lezione di Isadore From sul ruolo del terapeuta nel setting gestaltico. Bob Resnick critica il fatto che il maestro centralizzasse la presenza del terapeuta nel vissuto del paziente. Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb spiega la lezione di Isadore in chiave di campo fenomenologico e di co-costruzione del confine di contatto e dunque dell’esperienza narrativa che paziente e terapeuta co-costruiscono. Il dialogo rappresenta un approfondimento importante delle due posizioni, spesso antitetiche nella psicoterapia della Gestalt, tra la prospettiva individualistica e quella relazionale. Non pervenendo ad un avvicinamento delle loro posizioni teoriche, gli autori si ripropongono di sperimentarsi in un workshop, per ritrovare nella pratica le loro divergenze e similitudini.

Various countries have adopted pioneering social accounting with different approaches and projects. This analysis concentrates specifically on U.S. account-ing research. The source of this study is U.S. accounting journals of the 1970s, which pub-lished papers studying data and information about the social and environmental effects of firms’ activities. This is a crucial and very often forgotten step in the his-tory of accounting theories and practices, because it shows that, despite some limits and flaws, accounting culture had a sound basis for the birth of social ac-counting. This study focuses particularly on two pioneering models of that time, namely, those of Linowes (1973) and Epstein, Flamholtz, and McDonough (1976), which were developed at a time when the term ‘social accounting’ was unknown or misunderstood. These models are chosen because they were strictly and coher-ently led by the notion of the accounting nature of social/sustainability accounting. Therefore, the research aim of this study is to show that these two pioneering models of the 1970s are historically important for affirming the role of accounting research and profession in social/sustainability accounting, particularly for helping to tackle managerial capture and greenwashing.

The author aims to find the systematic causal links between majorities and minor-ities, especially to demonstrate how, even as corporate governance systems change, the same links remained unchanged, at least starting from the original forms of limited liability (colonial) companies. The main cause of the oppression of minorities lies in the power of control, which instead of belonging to the major-ity of share capital holders, is held by close minority shareholders. For this pur-pose, the author presents a historical reconstruction of the problem concerning the balance of powers between dominant minorities and disjoint majorities within the groups of companies.

There have been several studies of medieval bookkeeping practices. This paper adds to that literature by focusing on the treatment of errors in the ledger of the Medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, most of which were for the years 1395-6. The analysis shows that, contrary to the perception in the literature, accountants of that period not only detected errors, but also devised methods to address them that ensured that the overall financial result reflected a fair presentation of what had occurred, and that they did not simply use the account for Profits and losses as an easy outlet in which to record an amount that balanced the books. In addition, the accuracy of individual ledger accounts was not deemed important once they had been balanced, even after errors were detected.

The disclosure in financial statements is one of the pillars of the framework of the International Financial Statements (IFRS). All the standards include a relevant section with indication about the information and data to be disclosed in the notes, however the feedbacks received from the stakeholders and users indicated the existence of concerns about the effectiveness of disclosures in financial statements and about the disclosure overload. In order to respond to the above concerns and feedbacks, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) launched the Disclosure Initiative in 2013. The Disclosure Initiative is a multi-faced project that involves various IFRSs aiming to limit the disclosure in the financial statements and improving the financial information, it is part of the global project “Better Communication in Financial Reporting that will be implemented in order to improve the way financial information is prepared by the IFRS entities. The purpose of the following review is to analyse the different stages of the Disclosure initiative between the four completed phases and the on-going projects and to comment its results.

The present research explores non-financial mandatory disclosure in Italy in light of the recent Italian Legislative Decree No. 254/2016, which transposes the Directive 2014/95/EU on "the disclosure of non-financial and diversity information". The study pursues a twofold aim: first, it seeks to measure the level of compliance of non-financial information (NFI) with non-financial mandatory disclosure; and second, it seeks to identify which determinants favor higher compliance levels in the first year of the regulatory adequacy. To these ends, the study examines the non-financial 2017 statements of 50 listed Italian companies to test by means of a NFI Disclosure Score three determinants that could explain the level of compliance. The NFI Disclosure Score was set at 52.58%. Moreover, findings suggest that the type of reporting channels (stand-alone report or disclosure included in the Annual Report), the Guidelines Reporting Initiative (GRI) options chosen by the companies, and the presence of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Committee within the board all affect compliance levels. This study is one of the first research conducted on mandatory NFI disclosure providing indications for regulators and companies on how to improve NFI disclosure.

The first case in the world of a mandatory requirement to disclose business model (BM) in the annual report is represented by Companies Act 2013 issued in the UK. The BM offers a simplified representation of a company’s key resources and of how these are combined to create value. For this reason, a systematic communication of BM should affect the way a company’s book value and its capability to generate earnings are perceived. The purpose of this work is to investigate the impact of mandatory BM disclosure on the value relevance of traditional financial measures. Focusing on a sample of UK listed companies over a six-year period, Ohlson model is utilized to assess the value relevance of book value and net income and their interactions with a dummy variable that accounts for the introduction of mandatory disclosure of BM. In line with previous studies on non-financial disclosure regulations, results show that the introduction of the mandatory requirement to disclose BM has a negative moderating effect on book value of equity and a positive moderating effect on net income. As this is the first study to investigate the effects of a mandatory BM disclosure regime, it could be of interest for both academics and standard-setters.

In this paper, we study whether and how impression management in the letter to shareholders (LTS) is affected and related to the role of signatory (i.e. the person whose signature appears in the letter). Specifically, we argue and expect that impression management is associated with the underlying incentives to mislead outsiders that stem from the role of signatory. We find that impression management is more present when Insiders (executives or major shareholders) sign. We also find that the highest level of impression management is when the signatory holds an executive position and is not a major shareholder. Our evidence also suggests that the dichotomous classification between Insiders and Independent Directors is not sufficient to explain cross-sectional variation in impression management.

According to literature on the value relevance of intellectual capital (IC), a gap between the market and book value of a company larger than one indicates the contribution of IC resources (mostly off-balance sheet) to the value creation potential of a firm as perceived by investors. In Italy, with the introduction of Legislative Decree no. 32/2007 (by which the EU Directive No. 2003/51/CE was partially implemented into Italian law), companies are encouraged (for the first time in Italy) to disclose in the management commentary for the fiscal year-end of 2008 and for subsequent years non-financial information about employee matters. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a more virtuous corporate disclosure behaviour on nonfinancial IC information relating to the human capital significantly contributes to better explain (more than other IC components) the market-to-book value gap. In addition, this paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of IC disclosure in improving the accuracy of market valuation process. The results demonstrate that both human capital performance and the related (human capital) non-financial disclosure tend to significantly explain the market-to-book value gap, playing a unique role in the market valuation process of high-tech companies. Moreover, a greater disclosure on IC appears to be determinant in improving the accuracy of market assessment of high-tech companies characterised by higher IC performance.