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The purpose of the this paper is to understand what is the approach adopted by accountants when they provide advisory services to family businesses (FBs) involved in a succession process.

Data for this study were collected through a questionnaire survey involving 175 Italian certified accountants. They answered questions about their experience, attitudes, behaviors and opinions toward FB succession.

Accountants are mostly concerned with technical elements and solutions (hard issues) and are less careful about relations and communication between family members (soft issues). They also underestimate the relevance of the ability to empathize with the FB owner and other family members. Despite the literature recommendations to collaborate with other advisors from a variety of backgrounds, most of the accountants work on their own or with other experts on hard issues (notaries, lawyers and bank operators). All these aspects may cause a discrepancy between FBs’ expectations and accountant’s professional practice.

Results are mainly descriptive and are limited to the perceptions and experiences of accountants interviewed.

This study offers some guidance for the accountant’s professional practice. Even if accountant’s technical skills are undoubtedly essential when addressing the main hard issues posed by succession, soft issues often represent the real problem to be managed or the most complicated one. Accountants should help less aware entrepreneurs to acquire a better knowledge of succession and to adopt a holistic approach, integrating every dimension and perspective involved. This means that succession should be tackled through an interdisciplinary approach.

The research on the role of external subjects in family succession examines, above all, the perspective of the FB. This study offers an alternative approach, adopting the accountant’s perspective to analyze his/her role and experience in the management of succession.

This paper aims to further the understanding of women entrepreneurs' multiple identities by exploring how they interact throughout women's life cycles.

This article combines a case study and a narrative analysis to investigate the experience of a woman who founded a business and retired after passing it on to her son. Data were collected by combining two different methods: biographical interview and follow-up interviews or conversations.

Findings show that interactions between a woman entrepreneur's multiple identities may evolve through two main processes of change: transformation and fading. In the transformation process, adverse interactions between identities turn into synergistic and fruitful relationships. In the fading process, conflicts between identities gradually disappear, giving way to peaceful coexistence. Women's agency proves paramount in making these processes possible and helping her achieve personal and professional fulfillment.

In prior studies, women entrepreneurs have mostly been observed at a specific time or stage in their life and entrepreneurial experience. This paper responds to the call for the adoption of a dynamic perspective in the analysis of interactions among a woman entrepreneur's multiple identities so as to show how they may evolve during her entrepreneurial experience.

The importance of relational capital for the university has grown enormously in recent years. In fact, relational capital allows universities to promote and emphasize the effectiveness of the third mission. The purpose of this paper is to propose a case study involving an Italian university that recently set up a new research observatory, and, thanks to its success, succeeded in enhancing its relational capital.

The authors adopted an action research approach to analyze the case study. Consistently, the authors followed the analysis, diagnosis, and intervention phases. First, the authors focused on the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the process through which the university created relational capital, and finally, the authors proposed solutions to improve the process.

This case study shows that the creation of relation capital for the host university was the result of a process of transfer and transformation of the individual relationships of the observatory’s promoters.

This paper contributes to filling a significant gap in the literature on relational capital and universities and provides useful insights into how these organizations can encourage its creation. It also allows scholars, managers, and politicians involved in higher education to gain a greater understanding of this relevant topic.

This paper aims to analyse the role of business plan development as a knowledge translation tool, especially for the creation of start-ups. In a complex knowledge ecosystem populated by multiple diverse and autonomous actors (such as potential entrepreneurs, local companies, local public entities and business consultants) bonded together by a joint search for valuable knowledge, business plan development can work as a powerful enabler for the translation of knowledge.

The study uses a qualitative multi-case study approach by examining the results of a public programme devoted to the creation of new entrepreneurial ventures. The authors analysed 418 complete business plans and followed up with all the participants with an interview. In total, 40 cases were investigated more in detail.

Results show how business plan development can function as a bridge between academic, theoretical and general knowledge on start-up creation on the one hand and practical contextualised activities of potential entrepreneurs on the other.

The process of knowledge translation is crucial to ensure that relevant knowledge coming from both the inside (the entrepreneur) and outside (the stakeholders) of the organisation is effectively applied. To facilitate the translation process, key knowledge users should be supported in contextualising and making sense of the research knowledge. Initiatives carried out by local entities and other actors, gathering several stakeholders to develop business plans, can become valuable opportunities to facilitate the translation process for start-up development.

The paper contributes to knowledge management and knowledge translation literature by demonstrating the role of business plan development as an effective knowledge translation enabler. It also adds to the understanding of innovation management and entrepreneurial education by proving the relevance of the translation of knowledge for the creation of new business ventures.