RISULTATI RICERCA

Sustainability is crucial for safeguarding ecosystems and promoting collective well-being, increasingly influencing company management practices through various institutional pressures. Leveraging extended institutional theory (Kauppi, 2013) and the institutional framework proposed by Gonzalez and Zamora-Ramirez (2016), this study explores the drivers that prompt micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt sustainable practices and it examines how these responses differ by firm size. Through an in-depth case study of the Apuan-Versilian marble industrial district in Italy, we analyze the dynamic interplay between institutional pressures and sustainability adoption patterns, and the role of management control. Our findings indicate that institutional pressures have led firms to transition from predominantly symbolic to more substantive sustainability responses. This shift was facilitated by recognizing the economic benefits inherent in sustainability-oriented practices, such as improved raw material efficiency, cost savings, and optimized packaging. Management control tools emerged not merely as outcomes of increased institutional pressures but also as essential enablers for integrating sustainability into strategic decision-making processes. Additionally, the consortium’s role as an institutional mediator significantly supported SMEs, enabling them to overcome resource constraints and adopt sophisticated sustainability practices. The study contributes to existing literature by clarifying the interplay among institutional pressures, firm size, and management control tools sustainability-oriented, highlighting the pivotal role of collective intermediaries.

This paper aims to explore a company’s transformation process into a Benefit Corporation (BC) by analysing the reasons behind their choice, the obstacles encountered, and the effects, also in terms of sustainability, obtained through the specific case of an SME operating in the cosmetics industry. Findings show that the decision to become a BC was driven by the founders’ intrinsic desire to preserve the company’s ethical mission and ensure the continuity of its social and environmental values. The participatory transformation process involved key steps: defining the company’s purpose, stakeholder mapping, materiality analysis, and setting common benefit objectives. Challenges emerged from internal engagement efforts and regulatory complexities. Results demonstrate that becoming a BC enhanced the company’s consistency, accountability, and sustainability performance, enabling it to structure pre-existing practices and increase stakeholder trust. The study contributes to the literature on hybrid organisations and offers practical insights for SMEs pursuing sustainable transformation.

The current entrepreneurial landscape is shaped by the twin transition, which requires companies to rethink their business models across ecological and digital dimensions. To handle these complex shifts effectively, firms should embed sustainability and digital integration within their core values system to ensure long-term socio-economic value creation. In this context, traditional Management Control Systems (MCS) are evolving into Sustainability Management Control Systems (SMCS). These new systems not only support the monitoring of multidimensional performance (economic, social, environmental, governance, and digital) but also enhance firm agility and resilience. Indeed, SMCS should play a crucial role in translating twin transition strategies into actionable initiatives, driving organizational behavior towards ESG objectives, and promoting a culture of sustainable and digitally enabled innovation. Despite their importance, more research is still needed on how MCS can be redesigned to fully support sustainability and digital integration. The articles contained in this issue contribute to reduce this gap across three key areas: (1) strategic corporate governance for sustainability; (2) performance measurement systems that incorporate multidimensional and multi-stakeholder perspectives; and (3) organizational enablers - including culture, risk management, and agile structures - that influence the MCS contribution to sustainable and digitally driven management.

Il contributo analizza il ruolo del romanzo nelle analisi di Henri Lefebvre, proponendolo come strumento di analisi urbana. Nella Produzione dello Spazio e in altre opere, Lefebvre utilizza il romanzo per comprendere la complessità dell’urbano, raccogliendo informazioni su pratiche, spazi, sogni, emozioni e ideologie. La seconda parte del saggio esamina l’uso che Lefebvre fa dell’Ulisse di James Joyce per analizzare lo spazio e la vita urbana capitalista.

Nel mondo anglofono, la prima traduzione inglese de La production de l’espace (1974), pubblicata nel 1991 dalla casa editrice Blackwell muta radicalmente il dibattito degli studi spaziali, tanto che nel campo delle scienze sociali e umane si inizia a parlare di “svolta spaziale”. L’obiettivo di questo articolo è di restituire al lettore l’analisi dell’origine e dello sviluppo della “svolta spaziale” e i suoi legami con il postmodernismo, dimostrando gli errori teorici che hanno portato alcuni autori a leggere Lefebvre in chiave postmoderna.

The research applies the analytical model of the ‘Geography of Discontent’ to examine the populist vote in the Bassano area. The findings suggest that the relationship between territory and populist voting is not as strong and clearcut as argued by the literature. Furthermore, the study focuses on an emerging new ‘conurbation’ that goes beyond the Bassano area to include also those of Cittadella and Castelfranco. This may represent a novel case for placesensitive policies.

Mentre le politiche di supporto alle PMI considerano raramente l’artigianato nello specifico, quelle rivolte alla tutela ed alla valorizzazione dello stesso come insieme di tradizioni e/o come patrimonio culturale trascurano spesso la dimensione aziendale di tali imprese. Attraverso sei casi studio tra Veneto e Normandia (Francia), il nostro contributo evidenzia quali sono gli attori coinvolti e gli strumenti con le quali le politiche pubbliche intervengono con riferimento all’artigianato.

Il terziario logistico sopravanza nel mercato immobiliare e si espande oltre le aree metropolitane verso la diffusione insediativa degli impianti su suoli agricoli. A partire da una ricerca sul campo, l’articolo indaga le ricadute spaziali e le esternalità su ambiente, società e qualità della vita della logistica in provincia di Piacenza, dove dal 1980 si assiste al riflesso locale di tendenze globali e alla trasformazione delle norme urbanistiche, del governo della mano pubblica e del paesaggio.

The growing popularity of far-right groups in the global political landscape has led to a substantial rise in the number of studies on neo-fascism in recent years. However, these studies contain several flaws, partly because the very category of neo-fascism is problematic and has been used excessively in public debates to describe a wide range of personalities and parties. Nonetheless this literature review argues that the quality of research on neo-fascism has improved through the adoption of certain good practices in recent scholarship, including the tendency to reinterpret the turning point of 1945, to move beyond an event-driven analysis and to adopt a transnational approach.

This article provides an evaluation of studies on maritime security in the Italian Republic, as well as an initial interpretative framework. Specifically, it highlights the shift from a national maritime security model to an international/supranational model, which is typical of postmodern states. This shift is the result of the Italian maritime sector’s transformation during the Cold War. This transition was driven by globalisation and the sector’s integration into economic and military systems such as the EEC/EU and NATO.

The publication of Alessandro Stanziani’s Tensions of Social History provides a useful opportunity to reconsider the global field of ‘social history’, a topic that continues to be a fertile area of research. As the author suggests, adopting a ‘social history’ perspective on historiographical practices by focusing on the dialogical construction (in terms of social actors and geographical locations) of crucial junctions in historical research (archives, data, categories and models) could reinvigorate the debate in Italy as well.

The historiographical legitimacy of oral history has yet to be recognised in Italian academia. Scholars of contemporary history rarely use this methodology, and existing oral archives are overlooked by the very researchers who should be consulting them. Recent histories of the Italian Republic written by Italian authors neither draw on oral sources nor cite the historiography that has employed them. There are also no Italian books that systematically use oral sources to analyse the country’s long-term social history, and even when ego-documents are used in Italian historiography, ‘autobiographical writings’ (e.g. letters, diaries, memoirs) are considered much more legitimate than oral sources. There are at least three possible explanations for this situation. Firstly, sound studies have barely developed in Italian historiography, and many contemporary historians tend to prioritise institutional political history over social history and the history of collective subjects (women, workers, suburbs). Secondly, there is a problem relating to the preservation of oral history archives, which are difficult to access and do not have the tools to facilitate their use, such as catalogues, indexes, files and transcripts. Thirdly, there is a lack of proven and shared experience in the historiographical reuse of archival oral sources, that is, interviews conducted in the past with individuals and social groups who are no longer available.