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This paper aims to show that the business group – i.e. the set of firms under common ownership and control – is the most appropriate unit to study the behavior and organization of firms and define their boundaries. Particular emphasis is given to notions such as unitary direction – i.e. the influence over strategic decisions – and administrative co‐ordination which allow owners to exercise supervision and authority over the controlled companies.

Given these aims the paper adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that relies on economics, management and law. This multidisciplinary approach is necessary for analyzing the different aspects characterizing business groups in terms of ownership, control, economic synergies between firms and internal organizational mechanisms. To support the propositions, data and information from various sources are used, ranging from official statistics on the firm's population, to sample surveys, case studies and juridical evidence. The use of different sources is justified not only by the interdisciplinary nature of the problem but also by the lack of systematic statistical evidence on the phenomenon of business groups.

The authors suggest that when a company is part of a group, the business group rather than the individual company is the most appropriate “unit” for analyzing the organization and behavior of firms. This does not deny that in some cases it can be worthwhile using the legal boundary as the appropriate unit; however, most of the empirical analyses about firms consider the legal boundary without considering whether companies are independent or part of a business group.

The authors show that forms of unitary direction and administrative co‐ordination are common in business groups; these forms can be assimilated to the internal organization of firms. For this reason they propose that the group rather than the individual company is the appropriate unit to delimit the boundary of the firm. In this sense, their main conclusion is that not considering the business group underestimates the actual firm boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the present situation and recent evolution of entrepreneurship education in Italian universities and to discuss whether these courses and curricula match the demand for entrepreneurial competences.

The empirical analysis is based on a census of entrepreneurship courses and curricula run by universities. The information collected through the internet refers to the academic years 2003‐2004 and 2009‐2010.

Compared with the situation observed in the USA and in other European countries, entrepreneurship education in Italy is rather “underdeveloped”. Only a few universities have courses or specific curricula dedicated to entrepreneurship. The courses are concentrated within business faculties while very few exist in science and engineering faculties. The slow pace with which Italian universities are keeping up with the global trend in entrepreneurship education at university level seems in vivid contrast with the need for the Italian economy to change its industry structure from the so‐called “traditional” to “high‐tech” sectors. The paper discusses the reasons for this situation.

The paper does not evaluate the impact of entrepreneurship education. A suggestion for future research could be to analyze the role of these courses in encouraging entrepreneurial activity of students.

Entrepreneurship education at university level can play an important role in the Italian economic system, fostering the creation of new business in knowledge‐intensive sectors.

The exploratory analysis of the state of entrepreneurship education in Italy suggests the need to develop these courses and spread the presence, especially in the science and engineering universities.

The paper covers a lack of research on the attitude of higher education institutions towards entrepreneurship education in Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss academic spinoffs (ASO) as an expression of the value creation of university technology transfer (TT) investments. More recently, scholars have emphasised intellectual capital’s (IC) importance, also for universities in obtaining competitive advantages and by creating value. Such spinoffs are key to regional development, as a primary aspect of universities’ IC.

The authors tested the aim through a sample of the University of Pisa’s spinoffs. The authors measured the value the university’s third mission investment generates on the area by means of entrepreneurship through two different approaches. First, the authors defined a multiplier of the TT investment (university TT multiplier) and then explored the IC components’ contributions to the ASOs’ enterprise value (EV).

The results show that the University of Pisa’s TT investments positively impact the local community through the spinoff system, both in economic terms and in IC. In the long term, these investments can enrich scientific humus and entrepreneurial mindsets.

This is an exploratory study of the University of Pisa’s impacts on the local economy. The results are limited to the context of Pisa and to the TT policy. Another limitation is the subjectivity of the EV estimation.

The results can have some practical implications. The large portfolio of university stakeholders (policymakers, families, students, companies, financiers, etc.) ask for information, especially on long-term results: in a simple way, the multiplier is able to communicate important feedbacks to support their decision-making process.

With the multiplier, the authors give a tool to measure the social enrichment.

In the study, the authors propose a new tool to measure the impact of the investment in TT on the local community.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the cyclical relationship between the demand for crude oil and real output for the OECD.

The paper employs Harvey's structural time series model to analyse the contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous cyclical co-movement of the demand for crude oil with real output, using quarterly observations for the period 1984:1-2010:4.

The empirical evidence suggests that a strong and positive cyclical relationship between the two variables exists, with the demand for crude oil being procyclically contemporaneous.

The implication of this finding suggests that consuming countries cannot stockpile oil reserves to guard against the cyclical nature of demand, while producing countries face weak and bearish oil markets during economic recessions, because oil consuming countries cannot smooth out their demand for oil on an intertemporal basis.

The paper provides further evidence supporting the procyclically contemporaneous relationship between the demand for crude oil and real output for the OECD.

This paper aims to understand the lived experience of a person living with dementia in a care home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It responds to the absence in research of the voices of people with dementia living in care homes during the pandemic.

The paper adopts a single case study design applied thematic analysis to semi-structured interview data to discover the experiences of one person living with dementia in a care home during a period of lockdown.

Five themes reveal how the participant responded to the practical and emotional challenges of the pandemic: autonomy; fears; keeping connected; keeping safe and other people living with dementia. These themes highlight the participant’s ability to adapt, accept and dispute lockdown restrictions, revealing considerable insight into their situation.

The pandemic has restricted access to care homes, which informed the single case study design. This approach to the research may restrict the generalisability of the findings. Other researchers are encouraged to include the voices of people with dementia living in care homes in further studies.

Implications for practice, presented in this paper, promote quality psychosocial approaches when health-care workers engage with people living with dementia during periods of restricted activity.

Unlike other studies about the impact of the pandemic on care homes, this paper explores the experience of the pandemic in care homes from the perspective of a person living with dementia.

The primary purposes of this research are to empirically examine four distinctive technological traits (social comparisons, self-disclosure, information acquisition and entertainment acquisition) as significant determinants of problematic WeChat use among university students and to illuminate their connections with students’ awareness of inattention and declined academic achievement.

The study utilizes two established theoretical frameworks (the stressor-strain-outcome model and the transactional model of stress) to formulate a comprehensive conceptual study model. Data were collected from 770 WeChat users at mainland Chinese universities using a cross-sectional methodology. Primitive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were employed to test the corresponding hypotheses.

The study demonstrates that all four technological traits significantly influence problematic WeChat use, which can disrupt students’ attention and contribute to declined academic achievement. Moreover, the detrimental impact of awareness of inattention on academic achievement is also demonstrated by the research.

The findings deepen the comprehension of the detrimental influence of problematic WeChat use from the perspective of stress, offering valuable insights for both practitioners and scholars engaged in devising strategies to mitigate psychological problems encountered by social media users.

The underlying mechanism of problematic WeChat use in higher education has received limited attention. This study fills that gap and clarifies the adverse effects of social media use in mainland China.

Brands have started investing heavily in their social media pages. Especially for banks having credence nature, the importance of engaging customers with the brand-related content on their social media pages has become a challenge. The present study explores the role of various characteristics of a brand's social media marketing efforts (SMME) and individual customer's general online social interaction propensity (GOSIP) on the customers' engagement/online brand-related activities (COBRAs). The subsequent effect of COBRAs on key banking outcomes such as satisfaction, trust and loyalty has also been evaluated. The moderating role of the customer–brand relationship length has also been evaluated.

A two-stage mixed-method approach was used for the data collection. Two focus group discussions were conducted for the preliminary stage, which resulted in identifying five Indian banking brands as stimuli for further study. For the main study, an online survey link was shared with the members of the stimuli banking brands' social media pages. A total of 552 useable responses were collected. After performing the exploratory factor analysis and common method bias tests, the collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The results of the present study have added all five characteristics (namely, entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization and electronic word of mouth) of SMME and GOSIP as the key antecedents of the customers' engagement with brand content on social media pages or COBRAs. COBRAs have been found influencing the customers' satisfaction, but evidence of influence on the trust and loyalty has not been found. The length of the relationship between customers and the banking brand has been observed as an important moderator for the satisfaction–trust–loyalty relationship.

The present study has three unique contributions to the literature. Firstly, the study evaluates the role of customer-brand engagement on the banking brand's favorable outcomes such as satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Secondly, the exploration of the role of various social media marketing activities that can enhance customer–brand engagement. And finally, the study tests the moderating role of the customer–brand length of the relationship on the complete set of marketing activities–engagement–loyalty relationships.