RISULTATI RICERCA

The present contribution interprets current digital transformations of work and related power dynamics through the lens of Alquati’s concept of hyper-industrial society. The paper starts from a re-elaboration of Alquati’s thought, mainly on the basis of the re-reading of some unpublished writings dating back to the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, it takes up the categories of (a) hyper-industrialisation, (b) enhancement versus impoverishment of human capacity, and (c) machinic subjectivity, and reconsiders them in light of current technological developments. These categories are then used as tools for analyzing three work contexts in which processes of digitization appear to be particularly intense: manufacturing, banking, and work in digital distribution platforms. This empirical exploration shows how current transformations of work can be interpreted as effects of a hyper-industrial mode, understood as an abstract organizational logic capable of dividing, standardizing and reassembling objects and knowledge.

In the era of connectivity, companies find fundamentally new ways of accessing workforce: On the internet a standby labor force is at their disposal allowing to source labor on demand - just like electricity from the socket. It seems as if the masses of people willingly offering their skills, time and energy to crowdsourcing platforms can be considered a state-of-the-art manifestation of standing-reserve as Martin Heidegger described with regard to nature. His concept of standing-reserve denotes the fact that something exists just to be ready for use and functions merely as a source of profit. The fact that companies today have labor available on tap also results in new forms of working, which are determined by peculiarities and specific ways of how the platforms organize working processes and deal with the crowd. To ensure performance and to deliver a consistent service the platforms must incessantly exert force in order to turn a scattered pool of individuals into a purposeful whole. The standby labor force can be seen as an extreme instance of how algorithmically infused processes shape the contours of labor today.

The so-called ‘platform economy’ or ‘gig economy’ and its ambivalent effects on the working environment is a focal point of social science research. The contribution analyses, based on a case study, algorithmic work in the platform economy, its working conditions, and the way gig workers organised and articulated their protest. The algorithmic management of Lieferando (formerly Foodora) governs its employees through algorithmic-driven and standardized work coordination. Therefore, different conflicts between the company and its workers arose, concerning working conditions, working relations, and co-determination. Organising, protest, and established co-determination mechanisms play a crucial role for the employees. As a result, there exists currently a few institutionalized relationships between the platform and its workforce in Germany.

The concept of community remains crucial in social sciences and organizational analysis. In recent years, the concept of community has become a sort of buzzword, in particular, with the rise of the so-called sharing and platform economy. This contribution asks what kinds of communities are enabled by collaborative platforms and how power is practiced within these peculiar organizations, considering them as evaluative infrastructures. The article explores these issues through the empirical analysis of one of the best-known sharing platforms (BlaBlaCar) adopting a mixed method approach. The research concludes that the analyzed case presents the main characteristics of a brand community, although it has some specific and original features. Compared to other evaluation infrastructures, in BlaBlaCar the control is more centralized and the power more legitimated, as it is considered a guarantee of security and reliability of the service which increases the loyalty to company’s brand.

This article is aimed to disentangle how the emergency transition to online education was coped by Italian school during the first lockdown (March-May 2020) related to the Covid-19 outbreak. In particular, combining two bodies of literature - Sociological New Institutionalism and Science and Technology Studies - we focus on the organizational solutions schools adopted in emergency, and on the consequences of a sudden introduction of technology-mediated education. We maintain that organizational choices, school climate, coordination, conflict and work-related stress were influenced by pre-existing individual (digital skills and professional attitudes) and organizational (school governance and leadership) factors. To explore these issues, we used an original study - a web survey of over 2,000 Italian teachers in every stage of the Italian education system, that was administered between April and May 2020. Our findings show that individual level features (digital skills, age, education, career) count as much as some structural dimensions (e.g. the type of school). Nevertheless, such features are mediated by relevant organizational dimensions. In particular, stress and conflicts were limited where roles for digital transformation were already in place, and where school leaders were perceived to adopted less hierarchical and more coordinated leadership styles.

The world of working is changing and the technological transformations are playing a relevant role in this change. In particular, new technologies are making the physical boundaries of traditional offices increasingly permeable, allowing the diffusion of New Ways of Working (Demerouti et al., 2014; Koops and Helms, 2014), such as smart working. This paper, based on a qualitative research and discursive interviews, intends to reflect on the introduction and top-down management of smart working within a banking institution. At the same time, it aims to grasp the role attributed to and played by technology in its implementation. Starting from the two reconstructed stories, I shall show if and how the innovations introduced whereby technologies enable us to work remotely, are changing existing power relations and what control dynamics emerge from the field.

The relationship between power, technology and organizing is a longstanding theme in organization studies, typically articulated along two polarized positions: a pessimistic and an optimistic one. Both positions assume a deterministic view in which technology "impacts" society and organizations, thus missing the intricate and often ambiguous dynamics that surround power and technology. Accordingly, this Special Issue focuses on the intricacies of power, digital technologies and organizational processes. Presenting the rationale of the papers that compose the Special Issue, we suggest five themes arising when empirically and theoretically approaching these intricacies: 1) digital technologies and power relationships in organizational structure and processes; 2) relationships between technology, power and workers’ participation; 3) digital technologies, algorithmic control and power renegotiation; 4) digital technologies, practices of human resources management and the joint design of technology, work, and organization; 5) hyper-industrialization as a critical lens to approach technology, work, and organizing. Taken all together, the papers help overcoming simplifications as well as polarized representations of the relationship between power, digital technologies and organizing.

M&A are complex corporate events involving two or more companies and often requiring relevant efforts in order to be successful. For these reasons, both scholars and practitioners are interested in assessing the success rate of M&A and measuring their influence on the corporate performance. Despite the complexity of the M&A phenomenon, previous studies that empirically examine this issue according to an accounting-based perspective, largely adopt single performance measures. Therefore, our study aims to explore whether the use of a multi-dimensional approach in the development of accounting-based performance measures could provide a comprehensive examination of the change in corporate performance due to complex events, such as M&A. In particular, this study assesses the performance of M&A concluded in the European context through the development of multiple accounting-based performance indicators that examine: (i) profitability, (ii) growth, and (iii) financial situation. In addition, we analyse a crucial performance dimension, the cost of employment, which has received limited attention from previous empirical research. Consistently with the multifaceted nature of M&A, results indicate that they provide a mixed impact on different performance measures. Therefore, main findings suggest that the measurement of M&A performance should take into consideration different contextual features

Although other comprehensive income did not exist in the conceptual framework until 2018, it has been a part of IFRS for many years, and it has not been defined based on accounting theory. This paper considers arguments for the current use of other comprehensive income under IFRS and finds that matching and prudence are at the core of other comprehensive income in IFRS despite not being elements of the conceptual framework. This suggests that the concept of other comprehensive income exists because the IFRS standards are founded on a mix of balance sheet-based and income statement-based accounting principles. Based on the characteristics of other comprehensive income and the IASB’s arguments for the recognition of gains and losses in other comprehensive income, this paper proposes a definition of other comprehensive income that can be used to ensure a uniform application of the concept across accounting standards and to reduce risks of inconsistency.

This study represents a theoretical analysis with the purpose to continue the discussion on the relationship between management accounting (MA) and financial accounting (FA), by concentrating on the role of risk reporting as a possible manifestation of their convergence. Moreover, the analysis focuses on the private-firm sector as private firms represent the backbone of the economic system of several countries and little is known about financial and non-financial reporting. Drawing on the neo- Durkheimian institutional theory, this paper develops a conceptual framing that considers risk as an embedded element of the business domain and risk reporting as a direct outcome of the convergence between MA and FA in private firms. Furthermore, the neo-Durkheimian institutional theory emphasizes that the owners and managers’ risk attitude is a crucial element affecting risk disclosure, especially in private firms.

This paper investigates whether family ownership affects decisions to take a writeoff of the goodwill and the amount written off. This study is based on a panel of public United States firms. Consistent with predictions based on agency theory and socioemotional wealth (SEW) theory, the findings demonstrate accounting discretion in goodwill impairment is lower in family firms than non-family firms. The results also show that first-generation family firms are more likely to exploit accounting discretion in goodwill impairment decisions than second or later generation family firms, due to greater concerns associated with the negative consequences of the write-off. This paper contributes to previous research on accounting in the context of family firms. Family firms cannot be considered a homogeneous group with the same propensity to exploit the discretion allowed by accounting rules in highly subjective fair value measurements. Generational change significantly influences firms’ accounting choices, leading to more credible earnings and asset values for second or later generation family firms. This study also suggests the earnings management literature would benefit from additional in-depth investigation into how the generational stage of family businesses affects accounting discretion.