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The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology to create a localised participatory research agenda (LPRA) for social enterprises (SEs) to bridge the gap between the information needs of stakeholders in SE ecosystems (SEEs) and academics.

The methodology incorporates a literature review, semi-structured key informant interviews and a questionnaire. A participatory approach was used engaging stakeholders of the SE sector in Palestine to elaborate the research agenda.

The proposed LPRA methodology, centred on localised and participatory engagement, has shown effectiveness in bridging the gap between stakeholders and academics in SEs research. Piloted in Palestine, it provided relevant insights and enabled the grassroots identification of policy directions to improve the local SEE. Being tested in the specific context of Palestine, the methodology demonstrates considerable adaptability to different maturity levels of SEEs and varied socio-economic environments. Nonetheless, further research is necessary to refine the LPRA methodology and determine its suitability in diverse SE contexts.

The present methodology offers the advantage of involving local stakeholders, enabling their participation in the construction of knowledge and serving as a possible tool for researchers to fulfil the Third Mission of the university. The methodology could be particularly useful in contexts that have uncommon political, economic or social features and need a tailored approach when building research questions and answers for local stakeholders; in contexts where non-local researchers could use the methodology to mitigate biases stemming from the application of non-local perspectives; and when the research is aimed at the creation of useful knowledge for the development of the ecosystem.

Conventional research agendas are typically developed by academics based on literature reviews. Such agendas, even if valuable for furthering research, often do not have a geographical focus and neglect the needs of diverse stakeholders in the SEE. The LPRA for SEs addresses this gap by providing a methodology able to include local SE stakeholders in building a research agenda tailored to address their specific information needs.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of social return on investment (SROI) as a measure of the social impact produced by non-profit organisations and social enterprises that support family-centred care, an approach that focuses on the pivotal role of families in paediatric health care.

The study offers an analytical evaluation of the SROI created by the Italian branch of the Ronald McDonald House Charities and highlights (a) the participatory analysis of stakeholders and outcomes; (b) the measurement of inputs; (c) the definition of outputs and proxies for the measurement of outcomes; (d) the calculation of the SROI ratio; and (e) the results of a sensitivity analysis.

This study discusses the advantages and shortcomings of SROI analyses, the practical implications of this research on governance and management and the role of engagement in managing the expectations of stakeholders. The value of SROI measurements in shaping strategic and management decisions – with special emphasis on stakeholder relations – is also discussed.

Non-profit organisations and social enterprises often require tools that assess the outcomes of their activities. The present research can provide new guidance to SROI analysts, while drawing attention to the most suitable proxies and indicators for evaluating the SROI of organisations operating in the health care sector.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in well-being in the Italian reality, in particular, through the study of major cities. The study is based on a set of data provided by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) with the aim to highlight the Italian urban situation and the comparison between the well-being situation assessed in a pre-crisis context and the one observed after it, in order to understand how events have influenced levels of well-being in the main Italian cities.

The paper aims to examine the quality of life (QoL) levels in the metropolitan cities, using data from the URBES report (a report that provides data and information concerning the Italian urban situation), published in 2013, which investigates QoL and well-being in major Italian cities. It is based on the framework of the “Benessere Equo e Sostenibile” report that appraises well-being in Italian regions by a great deal of variables belonging to 12 different dimensions. Using this data source, the authors will proceed to the construction of a composite well-being index.

The paper intends to show how the well-being level in Italian cities has changed in recent years, taking into consideration ten different dimensions of well-being. The need to consider different dimensions of well-being for its comprehensive evaluation is widely discussed in the literature, and the framework provided by ISTAT is innovative in this sense.

The paper presents an aggregate measure of well-being in Italian cities on the basis of new theoretical concepts and complete and detailed data.

The COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to causing a very serious economic crisis, has slowed the path taken toward achieving gender equality. For example, the closure of third sector activities by governments has meant the loss of many jobs in this female-dominated sector (ILO, 2020; UN, 2020) slowing and hindering the professional careers of many women (Carli, 2020).

The objective of this work is to identify gender differences by analyzing the levels of sustainable development achieved by Italian regions. The Italian case in fact is very peculiar due to its historical territorial gap between the regions of the North (among the most developed) and those of the Center-South, which still show high gender inequalities. A Gender Sustainable Development Index (GSDI) will be constructed through the use of 50 indicators from the Benessere Equo e Sostenibile survey of Istat. The technique used is the stacking method (Landi, Ivaldi, & Testi, 2017; Norman, 2010), which was chosen for its high replicability of results. The results show that only 40% of Italian regions have higher levels of female sustainable development than male sustainable development. Moreover, the regions with the worst levels of both female and male sustainable development are located in the Center-South of the country, confirming the strong territorial gap present within the Italian Peninsula.

The real estate market shows a number of distinctive features that are yet to be clearly understood at the theoretical level, because of the extreme complexity of its nature of both financial instrument and mere commodity. Moreover, as we know, a long lasting speculative bubble in the housing market was one of the main causes of the great recession. The aim of this chapter is to generate an index to explain how inclusive contextual factors influence the price level of real estate in Genoa, Italy. The authors use the non-parametric methodologies of factor analysis and cluster analysis. The results of the analysis suggest that most of the variability in the fluctuation of the average price of properties is strictly connected to the features of the reference context (such as neighbourhood prestige, type and level of education of residents, access to services, etc.). However, the percentage of unjustified price variability is assumed to refer to the incidence of the intrinsic variables of the estate assets.

Sustainable development calls for concerted efforts towards building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future for people and planet. The approach that considers sustainable development as the fight against poverty, through the promotion of a sustainable and equitable economy, as the attempt to reduce polluting emissions to promote environmental protection and as the satisfaction of social goals to increase the well-being of populations is adopted. Sustainability development is therefore a complex and subjective concept, considering the three dimensions that define the phenomenon: economic, environmental and social.

The authors have chosen subjective variables, which provide information on the perception of the ‘sustainable development’ in the European countries. Data come from the database of ‘Eurofound’, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. The authors applied a formative measurement model, according to which indicators are considered as the cause of the phenomenon analysed, unlike with the reflective model. To conduct the quantitative analysis, the authors have adopted a non-compensatory approach: Mazziotta and Pareto index which summarising a set of individual indicators that are assumed to be not fully substitutable. The authors place at the centre of the analysis, variables deriving from the perceptive state of the different European populations, offering new hints to measure sustainable development on the basis of subjective assumptions.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following research questions: Is the knowledge of a city environment a stimulus for entrepreneurship? Which knowledge profiles of cities are more propulsive in order to stimulate entrepreneurship?

In order to answer the aforementioned research questions, two multidimensional indexes have been created: Knowledge-Based City Developing Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship (ENT). The sample includes all capital cities in the EU28. The presence of cities from EU28 countries is important to foster the entrepreneurial attitude in each European Country. The authors have also included 32 non-capital cities in the EU that are important hubs, contributing to a sample formed of 60 cities.

The empirical results show that the social and cultural environment may significantly improve the entrepreneurship in EU cities, more than others factors that are usually connected to economic development.

The work tries to contribute to the debate on urban economic development and entrepreneurship, providing implication for academics and urban policy makers.

This study aims to explore the intelligibility of communication with stakeholders as a result of accrual accounting adoption. It focuses on changes in the use of visual forms and the readability of text that occurred immediately after the adoption of accrual accounting in performance reports of Italian public universities.

The authors collect the stakeholder section of performance reports published before and after accrual accounting adoption. Then, the authors use manual and computer-assisted textual analysis. Finally, the authors explore the data using principal component analysis and qualitative comparative analysis.

This study demonstrates that switching from cash to accrual accounting provokes immediate changes in communication patterns. It confirms the significant reduction of readability and increase in visual forms after accruals accounting adoption. The results indicate that smaller universities especially put effort into increasing intelligibility while implementing a more complex accounting system. This study also finds a relation between the change in readability and the change in visual forms that are complementary, with the exception of several very large universities.

The findings underline the possibility of neutralising the adverse effects of accounting reform associated with its complexity and difficulties in understanding by the use of visual forms and attention to the document’s readability.

This paper adds a new dimension to the study of public sector accounting from the external stakeholder perspective. It provides further insight into the link between accrual accounting adoption and readability, together with the use of visual forms by universities.

The study focusses on the complex interaction between ideological beliefs, culture and accounting by identifying during Benito Mussolini's time in power the contributions of accounting to the Italian Fascist repertoire of power in the cultural domain. It emphasises the importance of accounting in making the Alla Scala Opera House in Milan a vital institution in the creation of a Fascist national culture and identity which was meant to define the Fascist “Ethical State”.

The study adopts the Foucauldian concept of discourse in analysing the accounting practices of the Alla Scala Opera House.

Financial statements and related commentaries prepared by the Alla Scala Opera House were not primarily for ensuring good management and the minimisation of public funding in contrast to the practices and expectations of accounting in liberal States. Instead, the dominant Fascist discourse shaped the content and use of accounting and ensured that accounting practices could be a means to construct the Opera House as a “moral individual” that was to serve wider national interests consistent with the priorities of the Fascist Ethical State.

The study identifies how accounting can be mobilised for ideological purposes in different ways which are not limited to supporting discourses inspired by logics of efficiency and profit. The paper also draws attention to the contributions of accounting discourses in shaping the identity of an organisation consistent with the priorities of those who hold the supreme authority in a society.

The analysis of how the Fascist State sought to reinforce its power by making cultural institutions a critical part of this process provides the means to understand and unmask the taken-for-granted way in which discourses are created to promote power relations and related interests such as in the rise of far-right movements, most especially in weaker and more vulnerable countries at present.

Unlike most of the work on the relationship between culture and accounting which has emphasised liberal States, this study considers a non-liberal State and documents a use of accounting in the cultural domain which was not limited to promoting efficiency consistent with the priorities now recognised more recently of the New Public Management. It presents a micro-perspective on accounting as an ideological discourse by investigating the role of accounting in the exploitation of a cultural institution for political purposes.

In light of the new way of interpreting work spearheaded by Generation Z, the objectives of this study are to investigate (1) whether young entrepreneurs identify their start-ups with “zebras” – that is, as a concrete response to the evanescence and fantasy of “unicorns” based on the simultaneous pursuit of profit and social value, mutualism and resilience – and (2) whether they adopt a “teal” organizational configuration – that is, one characterized by evolutionary purpose, self-management and wholeness.

Through a qualitative approach with 41 interviews, this study focuses on start-uppers and companies that are particularly innovative and promising in the Italian context, as selected by Forbes magazine in its ranking of the brightest entrepreneurs, leaders and stars under 30.

The results suggest that young entrepreneurs recognize the importance of the common themes of the zebra movement and therefore identify their startups with zebras. More specifically, Generation Z entrepreneurs: (1) pursue a dual (economic and social) purpose, (2) are mutualistic and (3) build their organizations with resilience and capital efficiency. In addition, the interviews show that the organizational approach taken follows the paradigm of teal organizations, particularly in terms of evolutionary purpose, distributed leadership and decision-making power, and employee wholeness and empowerment.

This is the first study to analyze the evolutionary trends of animal entrepreneurial “species” led by Generation Z entrepreneurs and organized on the basis of the teal paradigm.