Drawing on a EU-funded research project on urbanisation in China and Europe (URBACHINA), the purpose of this inquiry is to explore the potential of foresight – through visionary…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on a EU-funded research project on urbanisation in China and Europe (URBACHINA), the purpose of this inquiry is to explore the potential of foresight – through visionary scenarios and related participatory processes – in promoting learning and sustainable futures in China’s centrally planned context. Our research explores the use of backcasting, of Donella Meadows’ “levers” and Paul Raskin’s “proximate-ultimate drivers” and of archetypal worldviews to further our understanding of how we think about the future, and of the tension between transition scenarios and transformative, paradigmatic or deep change.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of recent foresight studies and literature provides an overview of the latest approaches: in particular the methods, scope, process, level of participation, themes discussed and wild cards considered. Building on this, the inquiry designs and implements a participatory, normative and qualitative scenario building to explore sustainable urban futures for China, adapting the elements of Joseph Voros’ basic foresight process to include a total of nine steps, with five workshops, two international surveys, an adapted backcasting step and internal consistency mechanisms.
Findings
The combination of a participatory iterative process with normative approaches to envisioning, helped question assumptions and deeply ingrained development models, as well as the narrow space for “alternatives” resulting from China’s centralised, top-down planning and decision-making. The experience confirms the power of scenario/storyline building in helping reflect and question strategic policy choices and enrich urban policy debates. The process successfully proposed a number of steps that ensured triangulation of the envisioning outcomes and additional learning also through backcasting. Finally, the research shows a clear link between the development of scenarios space, the debate on transition and transformative futures and archetypal worldviews, which were shown to be stable even after decades.
Originality/value
The URBACHINA approach to the specific challenge of sustainable urbanisation in China applies a strong normative component combined to more locally accepted exploratory methods and introduces a participatory approach to all key stages of scenario building. This represents an innovative contribution to the country’s foresight practice and the results help Chinese decision makers to reflect on the wider sustainability implications of their urban strategy. The inquiry deepens our understanding of the use of proximate and ultimate drivers of change and of the tension between transition and transformation pathways to our future.
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Irene Brunetti, Enrica Maria Martino and Andrea Ricci
This paper analyses the effect of a particular Active Labour Market Policy, the hiring incentives, on firms hiring policies. The effects of a programme on firms' behaviour have in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analyses the effect of a particular Active Labour Market Policy, the hiring incentives, on firms hiring policies. The effects of a programme on firms' behaviour have in fact rarely been evaluated.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on micro-data drawn from Rilevazione su Imprese Lavoro (RIL), conducted by Inapp in 2010, 2015 and 2018 on a representative sample of limited liability and partnership firms. The authors apply a policy evaluation framework to investigate the impact of the use of incentives in the short run. The authors infer the counterfactual policy scenario thanks to a survey question that asks about firms' behaviour in the absence of the incentives. The authors also control for firms' unobserved heterogeneity, including firm's fixed effects, and endogeneity issues, estimating a differences-in-differences model that exploit the longitudinal component of the RIL survey.
Findings
The authors find that the use of at least one incentive scheme in 2017 is associated with an increase in the share of newly hired of about 0.07 percentage point in the short run. Moreover, hiring incentives have a small positive relationship with the share of both young workers and temporary contracts. Finally, these results are robust to endogeneity issues.
Originality/value
The analysis provides an updated evaluation of the effectiveness of hiring incentives in Italy by focusing on firms' behaviour rather than on the evolution of individual employment. It identifies the impact by using a rich set of econometric methods as well as counterfactual analysis.
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Federico Ricci, Andrea Chiesi, Carlo Bisio, Chiara Panari and Annalisa Pelosi
This meta-analysis aims to verify the efficacy of occupational health and safety (OHS) training in terms of knowledge, attitude and beliefs, behavior and health.
Abstract
Purpose
This meta-analysis aims to verify the efficacy of occupational health and safety (OHS) training in terms of knowledge, attitude and beliefs, behavior and health.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors included studies published in English (2007–2014) selected from ten databases. Eligibility criteria were studies concerned with the effectiveness of OHS training for primary prevention of workplace injury; and studies focused on examined outcome related to OHS.
Findings
The selected studies (n = 28) highlighted a strong support for the effectiveness of training on worker OHS attitudes and beliefs and, to a lesser extent, on worker’s knowledge but only medium for behavior and small evidences for its effectiveness on health.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should more deeply investigate the efficacy on knowledge increase of trainings delivered by experts and researchers, applying different methods, in a small group; training delivered by peer and by researcher, applying different methods; and trained workers less than 29 years and more than 49 years old, considering that workers in these age groups are particularly vulnerable to fatalities.
Practical implications
Our study is a contribution for those they intend to grant effective training, in response to specific needs of OHS. The evidences presented could be considered a first step to identify the factors related to the efficacy of OHS training to plan adequate interventions.
Social implications
The OHS training is effective on the basis of the extent interventions are carried out for each specific learning outcome.
Originality/value
This meta-analysis suggested that classroom training, although the most used and studied, does not ever revealed itself very effective: it was not significant for outcomes in terms of knowledge and showed a decreasing efficacy for attitudes and beliefs, behaviors and health. It seemed that there was a distinction between interventions on knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, as opposed to behavioral interventions and health.
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Mirella Damiani, Fabrizio Pompei and Andrea Ricci
– The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of performance-related pay (PRP) on productivity and wages of Italian firms.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of performance-related pay (PRP) on productivity and wages of Italian firms.
Design/methodology/approach
A unique data set for the Italian economy, obtained from the ISFOL Employer and Employee Surveys (2005, 2007, 2010), is used to estimate the relationship between PRP, labour productivity and wages, also controlling for an ample set of covariates. The authors performed standard quantile regressions (QRs) to investigate heterogeneity in associations of PRP with labour productivity and wages. In a second stage, the endogeneity of PRP was taken into account by using instrumental variable QR techniques.
Findings
The econometric estimates suggests that PRP are incentive schemes that substantially lead to efficiency enhancements and wage gains. These findings are confirmed for firms under union governance and suggest that well-designed policies, that circumvent the limited implementation of PRP practices, would guarantee productivity improvement and wage premiums for employees.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of the findings concerns PRP data, that do not offer statistical information on different types of schemes, at group or individual level.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to investigate, on a national scale for the Italian economy, the role of PRP on both productivity and wages, in order to shed light on the efficiency and distributive implications, whereas most of the studies of related literature are restricted to one of those aspects.
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Mirella Damiani and Andrea Ricci
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which performance-related pay (PRP) has been negotiated through decentralised bargaining in Italy.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which performance-related pay (PRP) has been negotiated through decentralised bargaining in Italy.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides estimates aimed at identifying the main factors that have favoured agreements on PRP, on the basis of a nationally representative sample of Italian manufacturing and service companies.
Findings
The paper shows that collective bargaining on PRP in Italy is positively associated with the presence of unions. The estimates also suggest that in unionised firms, workers have more access to returns from training in the form of PRP schemes. Finally, the paper finds that firm performance is positively associated with the adoption of PRP.
Research limitations/implications
Further research based on additional data should enable the authors to identify causal effects.
Practical implications
Partial fiscal exemptions for the wage component linked to enterprise results might increase the number of firms adopting PRP. In addition, the presence of unions may discourage the diffusion of “cosmetic” schemes that are adopted merely to secure benefits for the firm. Unions may also increase the returns of training and diffusion of PRP.
Originality/value
This paper utilises a unique database containing recent information from a nationwide sample of Italian firms. It includes a whole set of information, including unionisation at the firm level, which allows the authors to address a critical issue, i.e., the strategic role of unions in adopting (or impeding) the adoption of PRP.
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Massimo Corcione, Emanuele Habib, Alessandro Quintino, Elisa Ricci and Vincenzo Andrea Spena
This paper aims to investigate numerically buoyancy-induced convection from a pair of differentially heated horizontal circular cylinders set side by side in a nanofluid-filled…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate numerically buoyancy-induced convection from a pair of differentially heated horizontal circular cylinders set side by side in a nanofluid-filled adiabatic square enclosure, inclined with respect to gravity so that the heated cylinder is located below the cooled one, using a two-phase model based on the double-diffusive approach assuming that the Brownian diffusion and thermophoresis are the only slip mechanisms by which the solid phase can develop a significant relative velocity with respect to the liquid phase.
Design/methodology/approach
The system of the governing equations of continuity, momentum and energy for the nanofluid, and continuity for the nanoparticles, is solved by a computational code based on the SIMPLE-C algorithm. Numerical simulations are performed for Al2O3 + H2O nanofluids using the average volume fraction of the suspended solid phase, the tilting angle of the enclosure, the nanoparticle size, the average nanofluid temperature and the inter-cylinder spacing, as independent variables.
Findings
The main results obtained may be summarized as follows: at high temperatures, the nanofluid heat transfer performance relative to that of the pure base liquid increases with increasing the average volume fraction of the suspended solid phase, whereas at low temperatures it has a peak at an optimal particle loading; the relative heat transfer performance of the nanofluid has a peak at an optimal tilting angle of the enclosure; the relative heat transfer performance of the nanofluid increases notably as the average temperature is increased, and just moderately as inter-cylinder spacing is increased and the nanoparticle size is decreased.
Originality/value
The two-phase computational code used in the present study incorporates three empirical correlations for the evaluation of the effective thermal conductivity, the effective dynamic viscosity and the coefficient of thermophoretic diffusion, all based on a high number of literature experimental data.
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Celebrity‐spotters actively pursue celebrities in order to take photographs of them. This often involves extensive travelling, sometimes to remote destinations. The purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
Celebrity‐spotters actively pursue celebrities in order to take photographs of them. This often involves extensive travelling, sometimes to remote destinations. The purpose of this paper is to analyse this new type of tourism.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to understand this new type of tourism, the authors used a textual analysis of Italian celebrity‐spotting web sites and 31 in‐depth interviews with celebrity‐spotters.
Findings
The main characteristics of the celebrity‐spotters can be outlined: they practise a sort of “precision tourism”, characterised by close attention to the news in order to know where to go, flexibility for changing locations at the last moment, and a natural predisposition for new technologies. Celebrity‐spotting is not just an observational tourism, but rather a performing one; they must take photographs, gain access to the right places and ambush their targets.
Practical implications
Knowing the characteristics of celebrity‐spotters can help to better understand this new type of tourism, which has yet to be exploited by the tourism industry.
Originality/value
The paper presents an in‐depth analysis of a rather unknown and unexplored type of tourist.
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Stefania Chiappini, Alessio Mosca, Andrea Miuli, Francesco Di Carlo, Giacomo d'Andrea, Alessandra Napolitano, Monica Santangelo, Corradina Esposito, Anna Rosazza, Elena Haefele, Gilberto Di Petta, Mauro Pettorruso, Stefano L. Sensi and Giovanni Martinotti
This paper aims to investigate the role of aripiprazole once monthly as a maintenance treatment in a sample of patients with schizophrenia comorbid with alcohol and substance use…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the role of aripiprazole once monthly as a maintenance treatment in a sample of patients with schizophrenia comorbid with alcohol and substance use disorder (AUD/SUD).
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 24 Italian adult patients has been recruited and treated with aripiprazole once monthly after clinical stabilization with oral aripiprazole during May 2021 and June 2022. Clinical evaluations have been performed at the baseline (T0) and after 12 (T1) and 24 (T2) weeks.
Findings
During the study period, an improvement of both the clinical condition and general health from baseline was observed, as well as a reduction of craving for alcohol/substances. However, from T0, the number of patients who continued with this study decreased at T1 (n = 8) and then at T2 (n = 4). No serious adverse events were reported, including changes in weight, lipid/glucose metabolism, electrocardiogram and extra-pyramidal side effects.
Originality/value
Although limited by the high number of drop outs, this observational real-world study provided insights into the use of aripiprazole once monthly among a sample of patients with schizophrenia and comorbid SUD/AUD. Further studies of longer duration and on a larger sample are needed.
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Alexandra Waluszewski, Alessandro Cinti and Andrea Perna
Limiting the use of antibiotics in food animals is a cornerstone of contemporary EU policy. Despite that marketing of antibiotics for growth promotion and nutrition has been…
Abstract
Purpose
Limiting the use of antibiotics in food animals is a cornerstone of contemporary EU policy. Despite that marketing of antibiotics for growth promotion and nutrition has been banned since 2006, the use is still high and varied. This paper aims to investigate the forces behind the different usage patterns in Italy, with one of the EU’s most extensive use of antibiotics in animals, versus Sweden, with the union’s most restricted use, including how these usage patterns are related to EU and national policies.
Design/methodology/approach
The industrial network approach/the 4R resources interaction model is adopted to investigate the major forces behind the different antibiotic usage patterns. Furthermore, the study relies on the notion of three main characteristics related to the use of a resource activated in several user settings (Håkansson and Waluszewski, 2008, pp. 20–22). The paper investigates the Swedish and the Italian using settings, with a minimised, respectively, extensive usage of antibiotics. The study is exploratory in nature and based on qualitative data collected through a combination of primary and secondary sources.
Findings
The paper underlines the importance of integrating forces for policy to succeed in attempts to reduce the use of a particular resource. It reveals that Sweden’s radically reduced use was based on great awareness, close interactions between animal-based food producers and policy – and that integrating forces were supported by an era of state-protected food production, with promising ability to distribute the cost of change. The Italian characteristics hindering the integration of forces mounting for reduced use were restricted awareness, top-down business and policy interactions – and a great awareness about the difficulties of distributing the cost of change.
Originality/value
The study deals with the analysis of forces affecting the different usage of antibiotics within two EU settings. The investigation, based on the industrial network approach’s notion of connectivity of economic resources, that is, of exchange having a content and substance beyond discrete transactions, reveals how indirect related contextual forces, neglected by policy, have an important influence on the ability to achieve change, in this case of antibiotics usage patterns.