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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of more stringent Employment Protection Legislation on employment outflows and wages of women compared to those of men.

The authors exploit the Italian labor market reform of 1990 that raised firing costs for firms with less than 15 employees leaving unchanged existing rules for larger firms. The authors setup a natural experiment using this firm size threshold to examine if an increase of severance pay in small relative to large firms has a different impact on labor flows and earnings by gender. Using administrative linked employer–employee data, the authors find a significant reduced flow out of employment of women with respect to men in small relative to large firms after 1990.

The results also indicate a reduction of the gender wage gap after the reform of about 1.5 percent. These findings are statistically significant for women in fertility age and disappear if we consider older women.

The findings are consistent with the idea that employment protection may help in reducing gender disparities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate educational mismatch and its interrelationships with unemployment duration.

The authors study unemployment histories of Italian workers using dependent competing risk models. The authors evaluate the impact of overeducation on wage using propensity score and treatment models.

The authors show that overeducated have longer unemployment spells than their well-matched peers. This evidence implies that when assessing the impact of overeducation on wages, the duration of joblessness should be taken into account to evaluate possible additional unemployment scarring effects. The authors show that when controlling for unemployment spell duration the wage effect of overeducation significantly increases of about 7 percent. This result is supported by improvements in the sensitivity analysis.

The findings are consistent with an interpretation of educational mismatch as a penalizing phenomenon in the individuals’ working life associated with long-term unemployment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of performance measurement systems as technologies of government in the operationalisation of smart city programmes. It answers the research question: how do the development and use of performance measurement systems support smart cities in the achievement of their goals?

This paper presents a longitudinal case study that uses an interventionist approach to investigate the possibilities and limitations of the use of performance measurement systems as technologies of government in a smart city. Interpretations are theoretically informed by the Foucauldian governmentality framework (Foucault, 2009) and by public sector performance measurement literature.

The findings address the benefits and criticalities confronting a smart city that introduces new performance measurement systems as a technology of government. Such technologies become problematic tools when the city network is characterised by a fragmentation of inter-departmental processes, and when forms of resistance emerge due to a lack of process owners, horizontal accountability and cooperation among involved parties.

This paper is based on a case study of a single smart city, and outlines the need for both comparative and multidisciplinary analyses in order to analyse the causes and effects of smart city challenges.

This paper offers a critical understanding of the role of accounting in the smart city. The ineffectiveness of performance measurement systems is related to the multiple roles of such technologies of government, which may lead to a temporary paralysis in the achievement of smart city goals and programmes.

Corruption is a major social problem, and scholars have devoted considerable attention to this phenomenon. However, less attention has been paid to how corruption spreads among organizations and what factors can make its spread more likely. This study aims to fill the gap by modelling corruption as an interorganizational contagion.

The authors used social contagion theory to model corruption as an interorganizational contagion, influenced by the susceptibility of organizations and the strength of contagion sources. The study analysed 736 medium and large Italian municipalities over a five-year period, with 3,146 observations (excluding missing data). The authors conducted a longitudinal analysis using panel logistic regression techniques and performed robustness and endogeneity checks through a dynamic panel data model.

The authors found that municipalities with a higher percentage of corrupt neighbouring municipalities were more likely to experience corruption. The probability of experiencing corruption was also significantly higher for municipalities with weaker organizational resistance to corruption contagion.

Previous studies have not clearly explained the organizational mechanisms behind the spread of corruption at the interorganizational level. The study suggests that corruption contagion at the municipal level occurs via reduced uncertainty in decision-makers and is influenced by the prevalence of corruption locally. The spread can be driven by conscious or unconscious mechanisms. This study challenges the idea that corruption contagion is immediate and inevitable. Organizational resistance to corruption can affect the risk of contagion, highlighting the importance of anti-corruption controls and ethical systems in preventing it.

Building on the existing literature and on a series of interviews conducted in very diverse coworking spaces, this article attempts at analyzing coworking by focusing on the historical evolution and heterogeneity of its interpretations, as well as the plurality of its realization in practice and prospective developments.

The theoretical framework adopted is Cultural Historical Activity Theory – a dialectical approach which allows the study of human activities as historically evolving and complex systems which change under the impulse of their inner contradictions. The analysis presented here starts with an overview of the history of the theoretical elaborations and discussions of coworking. The authors then focus on the experiences and interpretations of this phenomenon as conveyed by coworkers and coworking managers in the north of Italy – one of the most active coworking areas in Europe.

Coworking first emerged as a way of promoting forms of work and organization that require simultaneous, multidirectional, and reciprocal work, as understood in contrast to forms that incorporate an established division of labor, demarcated communities, and formal and informal sets of rules. However, with time, coworking has evolved toward novel directions, giving rise to heterogeneous interpretations of it. Inquiry constitutes a deeper investigation of the heterogeneity of coworking. The take-away message here is that the prefix co- in coworking can be interpreted, through a play of words, to evoke multiple positions and views conveying internal contradictions.

The historical overview of coworking shows a strong differentiation and multisided interpretation of this phenomenon along two dimensions of historical development, namely, social and business, and outward and inward. The qualitative analysis of the interviews traces the different lived interpretations and conceptions of coworking. The analysis confirms, on the one hand, the complexity and heterogeneity described in the literature, and on the other hand, it enriches the literature by depicting the contradictory nature of the phenomenon, including how the historical and inner tensions of coworking are dynamically evolving in the concrete experiences reported by the managers and users in the coworking spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize insights from previous accounting, performance measurement (PM) and accountability research into the rapidly emerging field of knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs). In so doing, it draws upon insights from previous literature and other papers included in this special issue of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.

The paper reviews academic analysis and insights provided in the academic literature on accounting, PM and accountability changes in KIPOs, such as universities and healthcare organizations, and paves the way for future research in this area.

The literature review shows that a growing number of studies are focusing on the hybridization of different KIPOs, not only in terms of accounting tools (e.g. performance indicators, budgeting and reporting) but also in relation to individual actors (e.g. professionals and managers) that may have divergent values and thus act according to multiple logics. It highlights many areas in which further robust academic research is needed to guide developments of hybrid organizations in policy and practice.

This paper provides academics, regulators and decision makers with relevant insights into issues and aspects of accounting, PM and accountability in hybrid organizations that need further theoretical development and empirical evidence to help inform improvements in policy and practice.

The paper provides the growing number of academic researchers in this emerging area with a literature review and agenda upon which they can build their research.

This article explores the heterogenous social mechanisms that drive responsible environmental behaviours by investigating differences in the mean effect of the psychosocial determinants of the intention to buy organic foods.

Using data for a representative sample of the Spanish population, we estimated the mean effect of the constructs represented in the responsible environmental behaviour (REB) theory that affect sustainable food consumption, and examined the social mechanisms that may explain heterogeneity in the mean effect of those constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis, linear regression, and latent class regression were used in the analysis.

We found that the effect of REB’s psychosocial constructs varied significantly, demonstrating social heterogeneity in the estimated average effect. We identified different social mechanisms that explain variations in organic food purchase intentions: environmental attitudes and social norms shape these intentions among socioeconomically privileged consumers, whereas personal norms shape these intentions among less socially advantaged consumers.

Our research contributes to the literature by highlighting the existence of differing social mechanisms explaining organic food purchase intentions. The uncovering of three social mechanisms explaining differences in the mean effect of factors driving those intentions provides valuable insights with regard to both further developing a holistic framework for responsible environmental behaviours and developing new public policies and marketing strategies aimed at improving sustainable food consumption.

The rising focus on effective pathways to sustainable development has led to the conceptualization of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as an institutionalization of public value. However, further exploration of public value creation processes, particularly through the lens of public (dis)value, is now advocated by scholars and policymakers. This study aims to understand the role of local ecosystems in enabling sustainable development within local communities through a public value regeneration process.

This research uses a case study methodology to examine Fattoria dei Primi, a social agriculture and urban regeneration initiative led by the Italian social cooperative Semi di Vita, with the mission to transform confiscated assets into new public goods.

A framework is developed to facilitate practices of public value regeneration and sustainable development. This framework offers a structured approach to understanding the actors, roles and stages involved in the regeneration process, identifying enablers and triggers across the stages of (1) value destruction, (2) value regeneration and (3) new value creation.

The findings offer valuable guidelines for public administration managers, institutions and policymakers to support public regeneration initiatives and progress toward the sustainable development in alignment with the UN Agenda 2030.

This study provides an initial examination of the mechanisms driving public value regeneration, demonstrating how collaboration among various stakeholders, including public, private and hybrid organizations, can facilitate regenerative processes and advance the SDGs.

Looks at the first 100 years of Italian cinema examining its role in Italy’s recent history. Provides a bibliography of major film directors, Italian cinema sources, reference works, histories, themes, theory and criticism and articles in journals.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.