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The purpose of this paper is to create a strong connection among the gender diversity literature in the stream of gender quotas in the international context and the main legislation on gender diversity – the Law 120/2011 “Golfo-Mosca” – in Italy requiring listed companies and companies under the public control to implement policies for increasing board diversity.

This paper adopts a structured literature review method to propose relevant issues on this topic applying an innovative analytical framework based on the “article focus.” Additionally, an interview to a CEO of an Italian Bank has been done.

In this step, results seem to underline the prominence of literature analyzing “woman in board of directors” promoting board diversity in the light of good governance. Additionally, this analysis is functional to the proposition of interesting insights from the Golfo-Mosca Law’s analysis in Italy emphasizing primary effects of its application during past seven years.

Findings of this paper are original, as it is the first time that a research connects results from the structured literature review on gender issues and the related Italian law to draft emerging and thrilling issues in the light of transparent and responsible corporate governance system.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated social risks around the world, highlighting inequalities and eroding social cohesion in and between nations. The challenges posed by this global crisis to world governments can be overcome with cooperation between the public and private sectors. Several studies support the importance of external corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in sharing knowledge with citizens and external stakeholders, with benefits for the company and for society. Few studies have investigated the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and sustainability. This work aims to investigate the influence of the gender variable in the sharing of CSR knowledge, focusing on the area of human rights.

The panel regression analysis was performed on a sample of 660 European companies listed over the years 2017–2020. The hypotheses tested in panel regression were then corroborated by a further test.

The results show a positive influence of women directors in the external disclosure of human rights. Evidence would assign a positive role to gender in sharing knowledge.

The findings offer new insights into the role of gender on KM and sharing. The results show that gender can be a factor that stimulates CSR knowledge. The presence of women directors can be a useful tool to increase the relational capital of the companies and to share knowledge outside the company.

The study contributes to the poor literature between knowledge sharing and sustainability. Evidence would assign a positive role to gender in sharing knowledge.

This paper aims to study the role of smart technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, blockchain and analytics, among others) in the accounting environment (AE). In this context, the nuances of innovation generated by such technologies allow for tracing the merging trends in accounting research.

This paper uses an integrated qualitative methodology composed of structured literature analysis and systematic literature analysis to study scientific papers published and stored in prominent databases from 2000 to 2020. This paper collected a data set sharing topics related to smart technologies and innovation in the AE.

The primary findings reveal four research paths of innovation, impact, implication and intelligence in accounting research as follows: smart technologies as innovations to be managed; smart technologies as impacting tools affecting the AE in certain circumstances; smart technologies as a source generating relevant implications; and smart technologies as factors requiring new and updated knowledge, skills and abilities of actors.

The joint investigation of the AE and smart technologies poses a milestone for future academic and professional accounting research. This paper proposes a new framework (SMATECHacc Framework) consisting of four pathways research that can be used by future researchers to consider and construct their own research designs.

This paper aims to examine the European Union (EU) 95/2014 Directive’s impact on large public companies. It chose Italy as a pivotal country that made non-financial information assurance mandatory, going beyond the EU Directive’s original requirements. Specifically, it investigates how the UE Directive fosters institutionalisation of the non-financial reporting (NFR) process in organisations.

Two large public companies in Italy are used as case studies. Data are gathered from annual and integrated reports, institutional websites and semi-structured interviews with the managers and employees involved in different organisational positions. The authors adopted the neo-institutional theory as a theoretical lens to identify the organisations’ response to the (external) institutional pressures influencing corporate reporting practices.

The findings demonstrate how the EU Directive fostered changes to large public companies’ reporting practices and external pressures contributed to influencing changes to internal organisational practices in terms of new internal processes, procedures and structures. These changes are motivated by the companies’ need to guarantee reliable information to be produced in their non-financial reports.

This paper helps academics and policymakers to advance NFR practices by understanding regulatory factors that can foster changes in the internal reporting process and responsibility within organisations.

The findings provide some empirical insights to foster reflections on the EU Directive’s effectiveness in changing reporting practices. This paper contributes to enriching the literature on institutional theory in shaping mandatory non-financial disclosure by identifying the institutional pressures influencing the effectiveness of regulations to change NFR practices.

This paper aims to pinpoint the technological transformation impact on food as the cultural phenomenon for destination brand identity and management as the novel approach for the stakeholder causal scope (SCS) analysis in culinary tourism. Thus, this paper attempts to answer the following research question: What is the role of technological transformation in addressing stakeholder engagement of culinary tourism?

The research is based on the systematic two-decade literature review of technological transformation for SCS analysis in culinary tourism. This paper adopted a longitudinal study of ABS2018 list – 2-, 3-, 4- and 4*-star journal articles, collecting literature within the field “sector” and Scopus databases as relevant source to collect articles.

Following the current severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 emergency to move certain industries to digital space, including culinary tourism, the main findings are directed to advance technological transformation knowledge in culinary tourism to extend the existing framework on SCS.

The novelty of this research is confirmed with the contemporary call for technological transformation in culinary tourism assuming that SCS analysis allows examining the status quo and explores future research agenda and practical implications in post-Covid era.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the characteristics and personal values of a successful entrepreneur in order to understand the quality of such characteristics. Thus, this paper aims to investigate how these characteristics and personal values impact strategic decision-making and outcomes driving the success and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The research question is answered through a single case study approach based on the case of the charismatic and flourishing entrepreneur and owner of Gemar Balloons, a balloon-manufacturing company established in the centre of Italy a century ago.

The paper shows how the success of SMEs in a dynamic environment is influenced by the central resource, “the entrepreneur”, whose entrepreneurial mindset, culture and leadership are essential and partially replicable. They allow strategic management to seek opportunities and develop innovation, achieving competitive advantages and creating wealth.

This paper contributes to an understanding of how values and specific personal characteristics establish an entrepreneurial mindset, culture and leadership, and whether and how these factors are exportable and repeatable. In this way, it allows a better understanding of how possible it is to establish an entrepreneurial mindset and culture by working on a younger generation's values and characteristics. Moreover, it explains why and how entrepreneurial SME leaders are best able to make decisions and manage resources strategically to create competitive advantages.

The paper is new because it shows the distinctive values and characteristics influencing the emerging strategic decision-making model and corporate outcomes.

Over recent decades, knowledge transfer processes and knowledge-intensive organizations have been increasingly investigated from several perspectives. Knowledge translation activated by knowledge-intensive organizations is supported by several factors, among which intangible assets play a significant role. Our research mainly investigates the relationship between the knowledge owned by knowledge workers in source organizations and the process of its translation to recipient organizations. Specifically, this paper aims at analyzing knowledge translation and organizational performance in the football industry, uncovering both the role of professional football players' skills transfer and the determinants of achieving positive performance at the organizational level.

A quantitative method is adopted, using both bivariate linear regression analysis and network analysis. Using key aspects of Nakauchi et al.'s (2007) knowledge transfer framework, intra-organizational dynamics are analyzed based on measurements of the performance of professional football players before and after transferring from one club (the source organization) to another (the recipient organization).

Our research results are mainly intended to show the factors that influence knowledge translation in the light of team performance improvement. Our empirical analysis shows the need for the coexistence of a combination of factors, especially the quality of the source and recipient organizations and of the relationship between them, to achieve the transferability of professional football players' capabilities and performance.

The academic community, practitioners and policymakers can draw on the theoretical and practical advances made by the findings to address knowledge translation issues with an improved understanding of its factors and determinants.

Despite some limitations to the study, we identify the factors, determinants and contexts that facilitate the transfer of knowledge and specialist knowledge and thus contribute to the successful operation of contemporary organizations. Moreover, the results of our analysis are applicable to all economic sectors.

This paper aims to define a hierarchical and multi-criteria framework based on pillars of the Modernization of Higher Education to evaluate European Accounting Doctoral Programmes (EADE-Model).

The authors applied a quali-quantitative methodology based on the analytic hierarchy process and the survey approach. The authors conducted an extensive literature and regulation review to identify the dimensions affecting the quality of Doctoral Programmes, choosing accounting as the relevant and pivotal field. The authors also used the survey to select the most critical quality dimensions and derive their weight to build EADE Model. The validity of the proposed model has been tested through the application to the Italian scenario.

The findings provide a critical extension of accounting ranking studies constructing a multi-criteria, hierarchical and updated evaluation model recognizing the role of doctoral training in the knowledge-based society. The results shed new light on weak areas apt to be improved and propose potential amendments to enhance the quality standard of ADE.

Theoretical and practical implications of this paper are directed to academics, policymakers and PhD programmes administrators.

The research is original in drafting a hierarchical multi-criteria framework for evaluating ADE in the Higher Education System. This model may be extended to other fields.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of boundary management when firms should implement open innovation.

The relevant literature on strategic management, firm boundaries and open innovation fields is revised and critically assessed. An interpretive-qualitative methodology is applied to analyse empirical data obtained from a questionnaire and subsequent interviews of a sample of Italian listed firms. By critically integrating literature review and empirical analysis, a framework is provided with the objective of supporting open innovation implementation.

The study shows that on the one hand, open innovation and many modern paths of growth are connected to a firm's boundaries and that on the other hand, boundary management plays a key role in the implementation of open innovation.

The paper has implications for practitioners by driving them to shift the focus of open innovation implementation towards the management of boundaries, in which boundary capabilities and activities play a key role.

This paper sheds light on the advantages and risks that can jeopardize a successful opening up innovation processes without the effective management of boundary studies. Thus, the authors identify and propose causes for reflection and tools maximizing potentiality and reducing risks in the implementation of such processes.