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Despite the advent of New Public Management theories over three decades ago, doubts persist regarding the practical implementation of these principles in the public health-care context. Challenges arise particularly from the type of system where this phenomenon is analyzed. In the Italian context, for instance, it can be arduous to define universally applicable organizational behaviors, given the interregional disparity that characterizes such a system. Furthermore, the professional identity of clinician-managers influences the perception of what “being a manager” means. This paper, thus, using the Italian context as a reference, aims to delineate what is the perception of Italian public hospitals clinician-middle-managers in terms of their responsibilities and tasks.

A survey-questionnaire was distributed to 6,011 Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) in Italian public hospitals, representing 100% of such role holders in the country. With a response rate of 16.7%, 1,005 responses were obtained. The questionnaire assessed CMOs' attitudes toward specific activities relevant to clinician-management, ranked from most to least important. Activities were derived from literature and categorized to discern management styles. Subgroups based on geographical location and professional orientation were also identified to isolate regional effects and professional identity influences.

Results suggested that activities associated with a collaborative approach are perceived as most important. Furthermore, it clearly emerges the difference based on professional orientation of CMOs. However, it could not be appreciated the same level of difference basing the analysis on regional disparities.

The interest in the role of middle management in healthcare organizations has increased over the years. Nevertheless, currently the authors believe that not many studies are focused on defining what “being a manager” means for clinician-managers themselves, rather than explaining what clinician-managers shall do.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how academic staff cope with the new culture of performance measurement and assessment in universities. In particular, the study aims to shed light on how external pressures related to measurement of research performance are translated into organisational and individual academic responses within the university and the extent to which these responses are related specifically to the operational features of performance measurement systems (PMS).

The study is based on a case study conducted in an Italian public university and based on interviews with a cross-disciplinary sample of faculty members.

The study provides insights into how linking financial incentives and career progression to research performance metrics at the system and organisational levels may have important reorientation effects on individual behaviours and epistemic consequences for the academic work.

The study is based on interviews, so one limitation is related to the risk of researcher and interviewee personal bias. Moreover, this study is focused on one single case of a specific university setting, which cannot be fully representative of the experiences of others.

The study contributes to the literature on management accounting by exploring the factors that might explain why the unintended effects of PMS on academics’ behaviour reported by several studies might occur. From a practitioner’s point of view, it shows features of PMS that may produce unintended effects on academic activities. It also highlights the need to rethink PMS for the evaluation of university performance through the involvement of different stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight and compare insights from research conducted in different disciplines on the effects of the use of calculative practices in academia. It also acts as an introduction to the special issue on “governing by numbers: audit culture and contemporary tales of universities’ accountability”.

This paper reviews the findings and reflections provided in academic literature on the various types of consequences stemming from the diffusion of the “audit culture” in academia. In so doing, it draws upon insights from previous literature in education, management and accounting, and other papers included in this special issue of Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management.

The literature review shows that a growing number of studies are focussing on the hybridization of universities, not only in terms of calculative practices (e.g. performance indicators) but also in relation to individual actors (e.g. academics and managers) who may have divergent values, and thus, act according to multiple logics (business and academic logics). It highlights many areas in which further robust academic research is needed to guide policy and practice developments in universities.

This paper provides academics, regulators and decision-makers with relevant insights into the critical issues of using calculative practices in academia. Despite the negative effects have been observed in various disciplines, there is an evident perpetuation in the use of those practices.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates on the disillusion of calculative practices in academia. Yet, positive changes can be achieved within the complex settings of “hybrid” universities when the apparent class division between academics and managers is bridged.

The purpose of this study is to focus on movie tourism, specifically on the “Montalbano effect”, which has seen increments in tourist visits to Sicilian sites featuring in the episodes of the popular TV series. It explores the concepts of genre and evaluative language in websites offering Montalbano tours in Sicily in an interdisciplinary perspective, aiming to combine insights from Tourism and Linguistics to analyse the phenomenon.

The language of two corpora, one consisting of sites offering traditional Sicilian tours and another of sites devoted to Montalbano, is analysed in terms of genre and evaluative language.

The study shows an emerging genre and genre hybridity that, it is suggested, are in response to market trends and may represent beginnings of a re-branding of Sicily as a tourist destination, away from past negative stereotypes associating the island with organised crime.

The interdisciplinary aspect of the study represents a significant step towards a wider involvement of different disciplines in understanding an important social phenomenon.

Coffee producers typically sell raw coffee beans as the first step in a global value chain. Recently, groups of producers have formed coffee cooperatives that attempt to regain market power by integrating the other steps of the value chain. This study uses matching to estimate the effect of membership in one such cooperative on the household economy of indigenous coffee producers in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. It contributes to the literature by considering new determinants of participation and outcomes of interest. First, social capital at the individual and village level is correlated with cooperative membership more than other demographic factors. Second, cooperative members report an increase in the share of coffee sold and income from coffee sales but not in per-kilo price or total income. These two results reflect particular features of the Chiapas reality and the desires of the indigenous people the cooperative serves. Thus, they reiterate the importance for economic development projects to consider the context of their interventions.

The recession the US economy entered in December of 2007 is considered to be the most severe downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate reached as high as 10.1% in October 2009 – the highest we have seen since the 1982 recession. In this chapter, we examine the severity of this recession compared to those in the past by examining worker flows into and out of unemployment taking into account changes in the demographic structure of the population. We identify the most vulnerable groups of this recession by dissagregating the workforce by age, gender, and race. We find that adjusting for the aging of the US labor force increases the severity of this recession. Our results indicate that the increase in the unemployment rate is driven to a larger extent by the lack of hiring (low outflows), but flows into unemployment are still important for understanding unemployment rate dynamics (they are not as acyclical as some literature suggests) and differences in unemployment rates across demographic groups. We find that this is indeed a “mancession,” as men face higher job separation probabilities, lower job finding probabilities, and, as a result, higher unemployment rates than women. Lastly, there is some evidence that blacks suffered more than whites (again, this difference is particularly pronounced for men).

The purpose of this paper is to establish to what extent temporary contract and participation in decision making impact on employees job satisfaction and to propose a model whereby participation in decision making mitigates against the negative impact that temporary work has on job satisfaction.

The authors use data for a representative sample of 14,778 employees in 23 European countries. In order to test the hypotheses, the authors use regression models and the Chow test.

The results show that while temporary contracts decreases job satisfaction, participation in decision making increases it. However, autonomous teams, job autonomy, and job involvement buffer against the negative effect that temporary contract has on job satisfaction.

The use of secondary data and the non-longitudinal nature of the data set.

The effect of participation in decision making in job satisfaction is greater for temporary workers than for permanents. Participation in decision making should not be restricted to permanent workers.

Participation in decision making and temporary contracts has been considered incompatible practices. The paper contributes to enrich the understanding of the relationship between these practices and job satisfaction. Sample representatives support the results obtained.

This study aims to analyze the effects of the type of agency contract on the relationship between agency workers' organizational commitment and perceived organizational support.

The authors extend a previously developed model considering organizational support and affective commitment by including also continuance commitment in the Italian employment agency industry. The authors use a probabilistic stratified sampling method on a sample of 8,283 agency workers. Data were analyzed with structural equation modelling (SEM) and multiple group analyses.

The findings confirm the positive relationship between perceived organizational support from both the agency and the client organization and agency workers' affective commitment to them. The authors also find that agency workers develop a mutually related dual commitment in response to the support they receive from both organizations.

The paper contributes to the literature on agency workers and suggests useful managerial and policy makers interventions for both temporary work agencies and client organizations for the development of the agency industry as well as the well-being of workers.