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This paper aims to investigate the role of design as a knowledge translation mechanism in R&D-oriented open innovation. In particular, the paper intends to look at how design can be used as a means of knowledge transfer among various stakeholders who speak different languages and have divergent needs and interests in a process where knowledge openly flew across the boundaries of a high number of organizations.

The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidences gathered by adopting an extreme case study approach: the detailed analysis of a case study related to an R&D project funded by the European Commission and aimed to investigate and produce innovative serious games in the area of healthcare. The project gathered a large number of stakeholders and deliberately adopted design to support an open innovation approach.

The paper provides insights into the use of design outputs such as artifacts, sketches, visual representations or prototypes to translate ideas, theoretical and technical requirements, documents and outputs into formats that can be more easily understood and appreciated by various stakeholders. This supports and favors coordination in open innovation projects where many different stakeholders are engaged in.

Although the adoption of an extreme case study approach offers important implications to understand the role of design in R&D-oriented open innovation, the use of a single case study represents the basis both to explore hypothesis and to provide first evidences that need to be further tested with other qualitative and quantitative analysis.

The paper offers practical implications about how design can help individuals and organizations involved in R&D activities to better communicate and share knowledge among various stakeholders by aligning their different needs, interests and languages along the various phases of their project development.

The originality of the paper lays at the intersection of three different fields: open innovation, knowledge management and design for innovation, thus integrating mature, but so far isolated, research streams. It provides insights for theory building by explaining the use of design as knowledge translational mechanism as well as it informs the practice by highlighting the power of design as a mean to support knowledge flows into open innovation-based R&D projects.

This paper explores the stereotype of the accountant in Florentine medieval popular culture based on literary works and from a historical perspective. It aims to highlight how stereotypes change with time and represent the cultural and historical evolution of a society. This research challenges Miley and Read (2012), who stated that the foundation of the stereotype was in Commedia dell'arte, an Italian form of improvisational theatre commenced in the 15th century.

The authors applied a qualitative research method to examine the accountant from a medieval popular culture perspective. The analysis consists of two phases: (1) categorisation of the accountant stereotype based on accounting history literature and (2) thematic analysis of The Divine Comedy (1307–1313) and The Decameron (1348–1351). The authors explored a synchronic perspective of historical investigation through a “cross-author” comparison, identifying Dante Alighieri as the first key author of medieval popular culture. During his imaginary journey through The Divine Comedy, Dante describes the social, political and economic context of the Florentine people of the 14th century. Then, with its various folkloristic elements, The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio becomes the “manifesto” of the popular culture in the Florentine medieval times.

This study shows the change of the accountant stereotype from the medieval age to the Renaissance. The Divine Comedy mainly connotes a negative accountant stereotype. The 14th century's Florentine gentlemen (“i galantuomini”) are apparently positive characters, with an ordered and clean aspect, but they are accused of being usurers. Dante Alighieri pictures the accountant as a “servant of capitalism”, “dishonest person, excessively fixated with money”, “villain and evil” and “excessively rational”. Giovanni Boccaccio mainly portrays a positive accountant stereotype. The accountant is increasingly more reliable, and this “commercial man” takes a more prestigious role in the society. In The Decameron, the accountant is depicted as a “hero”, “gentleman”, “family-oriented person with a high level of work commitment” and “colourful persona, warm, and emotional”. Overall, the authors provided new evidence on the existence of the accountant stereotype in the Florentine medieval popular.

This study engages with accounting history literature accountants' stereotypes in an unexplored context and time period, providing a base for comparative international research on accounting stereotypes and popular culture. Additionally, it addresses the need for further research on the accountant stereotype based on literary works and from a historical perspective. Therefore, this research also expands the New Accounting History (NAH) literature, focussing on the investigation of the accountant stereotype connotations in the 14th century.

Halving food waste has been included within the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Food wasted out-of-home is the second source of food waste. However, the majority of the studies have focused on home generated food waste, and still little is known about out-of-home food waste and how it is managed by food service companies. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a double perspective in analyzing food waste generated at a food service level, by focusing on both the client and business perspective.

First, from the client perspective, the authors aim at analyzing consumer out-of-home habits, self-reported waste quantification, and doggy bag usage by reporting the results of an exploratory survey which involved 411 individuals living in central Italy. Second, from a business perspective, the authors analyzed an award-winning practice that manages out-of-home food waste in Italy by combining food surplus management and digital solutions with a profitable business model innovation.

Results obtained from the two perspectives of analysis support the need of business investments in innovations and digital solutions, in order to meet client needs and behavior, thus contributing to better manage and reduce food surplus and waste.

This study will raise practitioners’ knowledge on the advantages of digital solution in food surplus management, along with a better comprehension on food waste behavior from the client perspective.

This is the first study that analyses out-of-home waste from both the client and business perspective, emphasizing how digital solutions can help in reducing the phenomenon.

The purpose of this research is to identify the sustainable practices of luxury fashion brands through their communications via official reporting documents to classify practices used for communicating sustainability performance.

This research uses the qualitative content analysis of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-oriented sustainability reports to examine the sustainable practices of 31 companies within the top 100 global luxury brands.

The authors classify the sample into four clusters: sustainability driven, sustainability newcomers, sustainability potential and sustainability passive. Results indicate that companies in this sector are focused on the issue of sustainability even though there is a remarkable fragmentation in terms of practices.

The study contributes to a better understanding of sustainability reporting activities and approaches in the fashion luxury industry by describing best practices and the effect of sustainability in corporate communications.

The paper offers a survey of major Italian accounting scholars and their work for the period from 1900 to 1950. Apart from the late works of Rossi and Besta, the main focus is on the contributions by Zappa, who undoubtedly dominated the scene. In this period, as well as later, most Italian accountants and “aziendalisti” adopted the so‐called “income system”. Although its premises originated with Fabio Besta, master of the so‐called “patrimonial or proprietorship system”, the Italian School under Zappa gave this system a new theoretical basis that differed fundamentally from that of Besta. Zappa also developed the dynamic aspect of accounting and business economics that still prevails in Italy. The paper also devotes attention to other Italian scholars, less well‐known abroad. In the area of cost accounting it concentrates on the views of De Minico and his disciple Amodeo, but also mentions other contributors. The final Section deals with Italian contributions to accounting history during this period

This paper aims to study the effects of knowledge acquisition on innovation performance and the moderating effects of human resource management (HRM), in terms of employee retention and HRM practices, on the above-mentioned relationship.

A sample of 129 firms operating in a wide array of sectors has been used to gather data through a standardized questionnaire for testing the hypotheses through ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models.

The results indicate that knowledge acquisition positively affects innovation performance and that HRM moderates the relationship between knowledge acquisition and innovation performance.

With the increasing proclivity towards engaging in open innovation, firms are likely to face some tensions and opportunities leading to a shift in the management of human resources. This starts from the assumption that the knowledge base of the firm resides in the people who work for the firm and that some HRM factors can influence innovation within firms. Despite this, there is a lack of research investigating the link between knowledge acquisition, HRM and innovation performance under the open innovation lens. This paper intends to fill this gap and nurture future research by assessing whether knowledge acquisition influences innovation performance and whether HRM moderates such a relationship.

This paper aims to investigate the link between accounting, religion and art to understand the managerial approach of the Confraternity of Corpus Domini of Urbino and the phenomenon of art commissioning between 1465 and 1513.

This study is based on the interpretive historical method used to understand, through accounting, the managerial role of confraternities within the economic activity of art commissioning. To this purpose, the present analysis is based on a primary source, represented by the book of revenues and expenses, named B1 (1465–1513).

The analysis has provided evidence of the role of Urbino’s Confraternity in supporting art commissioning and its capacity to invest significant resources in favor of the social, religious and institutional environment of the time. Results show the connection between Urbino’s Confraternity and painters based on their commissioning agreements, the relation between painters and the Ducal Court and, finally, the role of the Duke of Urbino in funding the Confraternity’s initiatives for painters. Thus, this study highlights the major role played by Urbino’s Confraternity in art commissioning, an instrumental part of the Confraternity’s mission.

This paper presents a unique case study that brings out the managerial approach in art commissioning through accounting documents which make activities and links visible.

This paper explores how learning processes supported by intensive use of design can favour absorptive capacity in open innovation contexts characterised by the interaction of a high number of diverse stakeholders.

The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidence gathered by adopting a case study approach.

Findings provide evidence about the role of design-based learning to facilitate intra- and inter-organisational knowledge flows and to sustain absorptive capacity through processes of recognition, internalisation and adoption.

The study integrates currently distinct research streams focussing on (1) design research, particularly on how design can support knowledge processes and specific learning processes and (2) open innovation, particularly regarding how to enhance absorptive capacity in those contexts in which a high number of diverse stakeholders interact.

This study can help companies, research institutions and other organisations leveraging open innovation to reflect on the potential of design-based learning processes and on how to deliberately facilitate such processes in their projects.

The original contribution provided by this study is to explore open innovation through some analytical categories elaborated in design research concerning materially grounded forms of design-based learning. In particular, the study investigates how design supports knowledge transfer, sharing, translation and creation.