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The purpose of this paper is to investigate preferences for wine made from hand-harvested grapes, and the interactive effect between this attribute and organic certification.

Data were collected via an online choice experiment involving a sample of 408 Italian wine consumers. A random parameter logit was performed to estimate consumer preferences for wine attributes: harvest type, organic and the interaction between these. The experiment also includes geographical indications and price. Furthermore, a latent class model (LCM) is performed to investigate taste heterogeneity for the included wine attributes.

On average, consumers prefer the wine produced with hand-harvested grapes. The hypothesis of an interaction between organic and hand-harvested attributes is rejected. Using the LCM, the authors identify three segments with significant taste heterogeneity in terms of the magnitude and the sign of the parameters. Moreover, consumer attitudes towards food naturalness differ according to their belonging to the segments.

The novelty of this article is twofold. First, this study investigates, for the first time, the impact of the hand-harvested method on consumer wine preferences. Second, hand-harvesting and organic have independent values.

The purpose of this study is to investigate non-pecuniary motivations and benefits of involvement in the wine business. Combining these motives with winery owners’ characteristics, attitudes and implemented strategies, the aim is to identify different winery owners’ styles in small-medium family-run firms.

The applied method is a qualitative explorative study involving in-depth interviews with Tuscan winery owners. They have hands-on involvement in the winemaking process, own a family business and supervise all of the production phases, from grape growing to bottling.

The study highlights the key role of non-economic motivations for winery owners. Passion, independence and a desire to live close to nature are predominant compared to pecuniary motivations, such as profit maximization. Therefore, the “lifestyle-oriented” style, characterized especially by the achievement of non-pecuniary benefits, represents the prevailing style amongst the interviewed winery owners, in contrast to the “business-oriented” style, which features typical producers described by mainstream economic theory.

The findings of this study are pivotal because they can facilitate a better understanding of how family-run wineries make decisions related to, e.g. firm size, staff management, product quality, exports and sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of digital transformation processes for food and beverage companies by investigating how the sustainability-related communication focus (low vs. high) in food waste fighting mobile applications' advertising campaigns influence consumers' intention to use such mobile app, via their environmentalism.

An experimental study has been conducted by using a fictitious mobile app named “Boxy Food!” among a sample of 408 randomly recruited international participants.

Findings reveal that the sustainability-related communication focus in such food waste-fighting mobile apps advertising campaigns (low vs. high) positively affects consumers' intentions to use such mobile apps through the effect of environmentalism. More interestingly, this effect increases in magnitude, becoming higher among those consumers who exhibit a high level of status consumption orientation explaining their behavior as an attempt to “be green, to be recognized from the others.”

This study suggests marketers and managers operating in the food and beverage sector how to design effective strategies to incentivize sustainable behavior through the use of new technologies, by leveraging consumers' individual differences, and specifically on their desire to be recognized as sustainable consumers.

This is the first study demonstrating how the combined effects of the sustainability-related communication focus (low vs. high) may incentivize the use of mobile applications for food waste fighting, by leveraging on consumers' looking to be recognized as green.

Paper aim is to analyse and consider the business network contract (BNC) as a model of voluntary holarchy in which the holons are isomorphically linked between them by means managerial chooses and laws to reach a communal and individual survival condition.

The Italian SME manufacturing firms signing a BNC are seen as holonic elements in an adaptive system. Data drawn from the Italian business register are analyzed to understand the driving factors of the firms’ adaptation and survival, by using descriptive, causality and analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical techniques.

The main findings of the paper support the holonic approach by demonstrating that BNC are alliances based on strategic relations able to create synergies and increase performance. Empirical results suggest that “internal and external efficiency,” given by knowledge sharing practices and firms’ geographical proximity will positively influence BN firms’ productivity, although without resorting to investments (tangible or intangible).

BNC is an instrument able to introduce common rules and finalized isomorphic behaviors making firms acting as a holon with positive effects on performance.

This work enriches the existing literature by joining the systemic approach with the network theories and providing evidence of the suitability of the “holon” construct as the basis for a multi-level framework for the study of organizational networking.

This paper aims to introduce a new framework that helps to get an overview of contextual factors that influence the ability of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to survive the economic crisis in a business cluster, as parts of a system.

The spatial autologistic model and the logit regression tree (RT) were applied to SME manufacturing companies localized in the business clusters of the Italian Marche region to explain interconnection among the actors of the network and their heterogeneous behavior with the environment.

The main findings of the application confirm that contextual influences are decisive in the definition of firm’s survival, explained through the presence of spatial dependence in bankruptcy analysis, validating the transmission effects of corporate bankruptcy within the business clusters in the Marche region.

The estimation of the logistic RT allowed to identify sub-systems, homogeneous with respect to crucial context variables, with different firms’ behaviors in terms of probability to survive in the system and relation to their environment. Therefore, a systemic approach is required to provide a better understanding of such kind of phenomena.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze research works on air pollution published in 2005-2014 and indexed in Web of Science Core Collection.

The data of research publications on “air pollution” from the Web of Science Core Collection database were collected with following search strategy: publications with terms “Air contaminat*”, “Air pollut*”, “pollut* air” or “contaminat* air” in their titles for the period of 2005-2014 were collected. A total of 4,424 articles were published on air pollution during the period of 2005-2014, and the data were used for creation of database in Microsoft Excel for the analysis purpose. Bibliometric analysis techniques were applied wherever necessary.

Out of 4,424 articles published on air pollution in different languages, 4,276 articles were in English. The years 2013 and 2014 showed rapid increase in number of articles published, 563 and 638, respectively. The increased number of articles resulted in an increase in number of pages published and references cited in the articles. The articles published in the year 2006 had received more number of citations (12,318), and the average citation per article for the period was 17.59. Environmental Science was the major Web of Science subject category under which a greater number of articles were published. Article entitled as “Health effects of fine particulate air pollution: Lines that connect”, published in Journal of The Air & Waste Management Association by Pope and Dockery (2006), was the highest cited article (1,743) for the period, and the top most active journals that published huge number of articles were Atmospheric Environment and Environmental Health Perspective, with 11.79 per cent of the total articles (4,424) published.

The findings of the study are limited to the journals covered under Web of Science Core Collection database and articles having the following keywords in their titles: “Air contaminat*”, “Air pollut*”, “pollut* air” or “contaminat* air”.

This study would be useful to researchers and policy makers to get an insight into the research trends of air pollution for effective decision-making and formulation of new research proposals.

This paper aims to retrace the genesis of private share company in Ancient Rome as one of the greatest innovation in the history of management.

Relying on a thorough and systematic analysis of the available historical material, and modern research, the author reconstructs the first known form of private share company and the way it came into being under late Republic and early Empire.

The scope of commercial partnerships and bounds preventing them from concentration of capitals are shown. The popular myth of private corporations allegedly existing in Ancient Rome is debunked. The author reveals how existing business elements (union of co-owners, the module “slave – peculium – free administration” from individual enterprise, and the principle of inseparability of joint ownership) had been combined to form private share company. Are demonstrated its chief differences from corporation, and the untenability of attempts to deny the real existence of private share companies in Ancient Rome. By way of summing up, the pattern of innovations is brought into relief.

The material opens new vistas for historians and allows them to draw an exacter and more comprehensive picture of Roman private entrepreneurship. Experts in management get an opportunity to retrace the background of modern forms of business organizing. A broader circle of researchers may see what the real path of radical novelties – from the need for them to their implementation – is. And altogether, the author’s conclusions provide scholars with a key to understanding breakthrough phenomena of history.

The results obtained may be used in many courses related to the history of economics, business, management, innovations, etc. Besides, they allow practitioners to discern plainly the origins of new business forms and learn how to make for them or facilitate their growth.

The author's conception of viable novelties sheds light on the processes of social development and modernization. It may serve as an effective instrument in planning reforms and managing them.

The framework of Roman private share company and many allied issues are investigated for the first time. This type of enterprise is presented as a response to the functional request from private entrepreneurs. That is why the new organizational form, despite its radical nature, proved to be quite efficient, and caught on in business. The author infers from his findings a generalized pattern of innovations able to get integrated into reality.