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The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of mandatory inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in small Italian municipalities. Data from 280 small Italian municipalities on the effects of IMC in terms of higher efficiency, better effectiveness of local public services, and greater institutional legitimacy of the small municipalities participating in IMC have been investigated against four variables: size, geographical area, type of inter-municipal integration, and IMC membership (the presence in the IMC of a bigger municipality, the so-called big brother).

Data were gathered from a mail survey that was sent to a random sample of 1,360 chief financial officers acting in municipalities of under 5,000 inhabitants, stratified by size (0-1,000 and 1,001-5,000) and geographic area (North, Center, and South) criteria. To analyze the dependency relationships between the three potential effects of participating in IMC and possible explanatory variables, the authors used a logistic regression model as the benefits were binarily categorized (presence or absence of benefits).

The findings show that in more than two-thirds of the municipalities participating in IMC, there were benefits in terms of costs reduction and better public services, whereas greater institutional legitimacy was detected in about half of the cases. The statistical analysis with logistic regression highlighted that IMC type is particularly critical for explaining successful IMC. In particular, the positive effects of IMC were mainly detected in those small municipalities that promoted a service delivery organization rather than participating in service delivery agreements or opting for mixed arrangements of joint public services delivery.

The paper focuses on small municipalities where studies are usually scant. The analysis highlighted that the organizational setting is particularly critical for explaining a successful IMC.

Design science research (DSR) is a structured approach for solving complex ill-structured problems in organizations through the development of an artefact followed by its validation. This paper aims to evaluate existing DSR methodology and propose specific accents to promote DSR for environmental, social and governance (ESG)-oriented operational excellence (OPEX) initiatives within organizations.

This commentary paper is based on an abductive reasoning approach to evaluate and understand DSR and assess its effectiveness for developing solutions to typical ESG-oriented OPEX-based problems within organizations.

Existing literature on DSR is reviewed, after which it is evaluated on its ability to contribute to the implementation of sustainable solutions for ESG-oriented OPEX-based problems. Based on the review, specific DSR methodological accents are proposed for the development of ESG-oriented OPEX-based solutions in organizations.

This conceptual paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of the applicability, limitations and contextual preconditions for applying DSR. This paper proposes an explicit and, in some ways, alternative view on DSR research for OPEX researchers to apply and further the body of knowledge on matters of sustainability (ESG) in operations management.

Currently, there is limited understanding and application of the DSR methodology for OPEX-based problem-solving initiatives, as appears in the scant literature on DSR applied for the implementation of OPEX based initiatives for ESG purposes. This paper aims to challenge and provide accents for DSR applied to OPEX-related problems by means of a DSR framework and thereby promotes intervention-based studies among researchers.

The proposed step-by-step methodology contains novel elements and is expected to be of help for OPEX-oriented academicians and practitioners in implementing DSR methodology for practical related problems which need research interventions from academics from Higher Education Institutions.