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Recently, socially and responsible investments (SRI) have constantly grown becoming a highly discussed issue. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to better understand if environmental social governance (ESG) criteria integration in investment strategies can support the transition of finance toward a more sustainable growth.

An explorative analysis based on a multiple case study has been conducted and addressed by a content analysis on the Key Investors Information Documents (KIIDs) that the sample companies published for 2020.

The achieved results demonstrated that the case companies differently integrated ESG into their SRI; thus, if some of them are quite near to a full integration, the others demonstrated less than a full commitment with ESG. This seems to be mainly due to the different approach that asset management companies (AMCs) and/or managers have adopted for integrating ESG criteria.

Even though the achieved results offered some interesting insights for asset managers, the explorative and qualitative nature of this study and the small sample investigated somewhat limits it.

AMCs, consultants and managers in developing and implementing their SRI strategy could be much more focused on the importance of ESG integration for the transition toward a more responsible and sustainable finance (micro-level) as well as a more sustainable development (macro-level).

The paper provides new insights into the essence of SRI strategies and their potential to contribute to sustainable development. Thus, it tries to shed new lights on the role that ESG can have to stimulate and support investment decisions and, in so doing, contributing to make finance grow more sustainable.

Sustainability is increasingly at the forefront of the public debate in Europe and the world. However, despite this increased interest, research seems to have partially ignored the importance of its social dimension and the issues related to social equity, people care, protection and personal development at all stages of society and, consequently, of business. Accordingly, this paper aims at investigating the “soft” dimensions of sustainability, integrating its mainstream “technical storyline” with a “human/social storyline”.

In this paper a taxonomy of the main key drivers of the soft dimension of sustainability is proposed and tested on a sample of Italian companies. Through interviews with their managers, actions and needs in terms of sustainability soft drivers are identified.

The achieved results demonstrated that the case companies differently integrated the soft dimensions of sustainability within their companies. All the sample companies are aware of the role of social sustainability. According to the proposed taxonomy, the systemic drivers of soft sustainability are the main shared ones.

The paper provides new insights into the essence of the organizational soft dimensions and their centrality in the overall achievement of sustainability for companies. It also offers managerial insights into how to effectively manage these dimensions and policy implications about the need for clearer consideration.

Service organizations operate in an increasingly complex and uncertain context that makes decision-making challenging. Despite well-recognized changes in the operational context of government as service organization, service literature has given surprisingly limited attention to what these changes imply for organizational decision-making. This study aims to face with the lack of fit of decision-making theorizing with the reality, within which most service practitioners operate, in order to foster the relevance of decision-making in service research and properly approach the false assumptions and misguided instructions for action.

To rectify the situation, the purpose of this paper is to advance a more holistic understanding of decision-making in government as service organization. The authors do so by reviewing the sparse, though insightful, prior literature on decision-making in service research and identifying four foundational assumptions of decision-making in the service context, that radically differ from the traditional assumptions of decision-making within the wider management literature.

The authors contribute to service research by further advancing the emerging dynamic understanding of decision-making by developing eight systems thinking-informed research propositions and a connected research agenda. In doing so, the paper offers the essential ground work that can revitalize the field of service management and equip it for facing the challenges that government as service organization is encountering in the 21st century.

The formulated eight research propositions demonstrate that decision-making in a government as service organization occurs within complex adaptive systems composed of multiple subsystems and is characterized by a high degree of unpredictability. It is a process influenced by multiple actors part of the system and subsystems, through multiple feedback loops, where the implications of prior decisions inform the future decisions.

Over the last decades, the importance of entrepreneurial education (EE) for the personal development of young generations has gained momentum among policymakers, practitioners and scholars. This paper offers some insights into the way T-shaped PhD programs can trigger transdisciplinary abilities of STEM students, making them even more ready toward venturing activities.

To achieve the purpose of the study, the effectiveness of a new T-shaped doctoral model was explored, testing it on a sample of STEM PhD students at Polytechnic School of University of Naples Federico II, using a qualitative-quantitative approach.

The results prove the positive influence that the T-shaped PhD program has on students in terms of vertical skills and horizontal capabilities attainment for entrepreneurial readiness.

This study advances interesting managerial and policy implications for activating virtuous collaborations to better respond to the need of current socioeconomic scenarios through academic knowledge.

Despite the growing relevance of EE, research about its influence at PhD level and the effect of different pedagogical methods remains scarce and controversial. Thus, this research explores if EE can support PhD students in science and technology transdisciplinarity terms of innovation management.

In line with the current literature, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of whistleblowing procedures and their influence on overall organisational quality. To this end, institutional, organisational, and cultural barriers to whistleblowing implementation have been investigated.

A qualitative analysis based on three explorative case studies investigates and compares different whistleblowing practices implemented in health care organisations, operating within the Italian National Health Service (INHS).

INHS organisations have implemented whistleblowing procedures in different ways, despite the fact that the procedures are laid down by law. These differences are mainly due to cultural, administrative, organisational, and process barriers, which have a deep impact on whistleblowing integration in managerial practices and their influence on the overall quality of health processes and services.

This research paper was limited by the analysis of three Italian public health care organisations, which did not allow the generalisability of findings. Therefore, the study offers interesting insights on the way effective whistleblowing systems should be implemented in order to support managers to improve organisation’s management and service quality.

The paper represents one of the first attempts to structurally analyse the practice of whistleblowing in an Italian healthcare system. Therefore the study has mainly focussed not only on the analysis of whistleblowing practices, but also on their impacts on the improvement of organisational processes’ quality and, subsequently, on social well-being.

The ecosystem view is a fascinating perspective which provides management scholars with innovative conceptual tools to investigate the functioning of complex service systems. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the “mega” level of the education service ecosystem in an attempt to explain the relationships between education attainments and income disparities across Europe.

Data were collected from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Data trends over the time period (2007-2010) were investigated, involving 27 European countries. Unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity was controlled and dynamics over time were investigated. A random effects model was estimated for each country. The semi-log functional form is informed by Mincer’s (1974) human capital models.

Education levels were found to be a predictor of income inequality in all the countries included in this research, i.e. higher education level leads to higher income and vice versa. However, the effect of education attainments on individual earnings was irregular. Eastern European countries, inter alia, revealed a strong relationship between education attainments and individual earnings, whereas Scandinavian countries showed a weak link between education levels and income.

Education has the potential to affect income inequalities in Europe. Policy makers should develop tailored strategies to deal with the consequences of education levels on individual earnings. Both education services’ quality and the interaction between education and moderating socio-demographic variables may influence income inequality in European countries.

This is one of the first attempts to investigate the relationship between education and income inequalities drawing on the service ecosystem perspective. Further conceptual and practical developments are needed to better explain the effects of education attainments on income inequality.

This paper reports a study that compares two different team-building approaches. The first one is the traditional top-down management approach. The second one is a hybrid bottom-up approach based on the consensus model. The aim of this paper is to determine which of the two approaches is the most effective across a number of performance measurements.

A case study is presented using data collected and analysed from a small family-owned vehicle maintenance firm. A mixed methods approach to data collection is utilized, including participant observation, focus groups, survey questionnaires and organizational performance reports. A convenience sample of eight routine maintenance jobs was selected for team performance comparison purposes. The measures used for comparing the two team approaches were lead time, customer satisfaction ratings and employees’ satisfaction ratings.

The teams assembled using the consensus approach performed better than those selected using the traditional top-down approach across all three performance measures, i.e. the jobs were completed faster and both customers and employees were more satisfied.

This is an exploratory case study limited to one small family-owned business and, as such, findings may not be generalizable.

As an alternative to manager selected work teams, managers should involve and empower employees to select their own teams. This has the potential to offer benefits for both customers and employees of faster delivery times and increase satisfaction, as well as increase productivity for the firm.

This is the first field study to compare the performance of a hybrid, bottom-up approach to team building with the performance of a more traditional management, top-down approach to team building. It paves the way for a wider study to be conducted in the future to test the findings’ generalizability.

Service ecosystems are gaining credence among management scholars. However, there is still little agreement about the distinguishing attributes of service ecosystems in both the public and the private sectors. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the health care service system, suggesting a “recipe” for the implementation of a sustainable and innovative health care service ecosystem.

A mixed methodology was used. First, a critical literature review was conducted to lay the conceptual foundations of this study. Then a theory about the institutional, organizational and managerial requisites for the implementation of a health care service ecosystem was developed.

The health care sector is appropriate for the core tenets of the service ecosystem perspective. Tailored interventions aimed at improving the functioning of the health care service ecosystem should be implemented at the micro, meso, macro and mega levels. Patient empowerment, patient-centered care and integrated care are the fundamental ingredients of the recipe for effective health care service ecosystems.

The ecosystem approach provides health policy makers with interesting insights to help shape the health care service system of the future. The paper also contributes to the innovation of managerial practices emphasizing the role of patient involvement in the design and delivery of health care.

This is one of the first attempts to systematize scientific knowledge about service ecosystems in the health care sector. An agenda for further research is suggested, in order to further advance the establishment of an effective and innovative health care service ecosystem.

Globalization has led worldwide organizations to balance their economic and environmental performances in order to achieve a concrete sustainable development. In an environmental centered world, logistics is called to put into action advanced programs based on technological and organizational improvement, in order to gain or maintain a concrete competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how logistics organizations try to face the recent ecological challenges and the role that the emergent green technologies play in making them finally “green” and competitive.

Green supply chain management (GSCM) practices have been investigated to better understand their influence on economic performance and corporate competitiveness. After providing a background discussion on Green Logistics and GSCM, the authors have also identified specific research questions that are worthy of investigation, also thorough the DHL case study. The case study analysis has been conducted according to a specific conceptual model (Rao and Holt, 2005), which allows a deeper understanding of literature review results.

The present paper offers some insights on innovation influence on supply chain management (SCM) greenness, a process oriented to a sustainable and environmental-friendly approach to management of supply chain. According to DHL case study evidence, in logistics innovation, often based on emerging green technologies, is strictly related to the development of a much more sustainable and environment-friendly approach to SCM, based on reduction of core activities’ ecological impact, cost saving, quality, reliability, performance and energy efficiency. In this context, the respect of environmental regulations is fundamental to achieve not only a reduction of ecological damage, but also to overall economic profit.

There is a concrete need of further research to better understand the potential link between GSCM, green innovation and logistic organizations competitiveness. In fact, this research area still represents a source of interesting challenges for practitioners, academicians and researchers. Concluding, the research findings cannot be generalized to all logistic organizations, even if DHL is on of the most important and globalized logistic companies. Future researches should empirically test the achieved results also through comparative studies based on a large sample.

The suggestion of literature review and the result of case study analysis represent a first attempt to better understand the real and potential influence of GSCM on corporate image and competitiveness. In fact, the present investigation has pointed out that logistic organization can achieve environmental goals and acquire a better positioning than their competitors also cooperating with stakeholders. Therefore, it is necessary that organizations contribute to make them able to participate in corporate activities and develop a concrete environmental-friendly orientation, based on the respect of market’s requests and environmental regulations in order to get their corporate reputation strong than ever.

Research has examined how new ventures strengthen local economic outcomes; however, limited research examines health-oriented ventures and their impact on social outcomes, including health outcomes. Increased VC investment in healthcare service start-ups signals more activity toward this end, and the need for further academic inquiry. We examine the relationship between these start-ups and county-level health outcomes, health factors, and hospital utilization.

Data on start-ups funded via institutional venture capital from PitchBook were merged with US county-level outcomes from the County Health Rankings and Area Health Resources Files for 2010 to 2019. We investigated how the number of VC-funded healthcare service start-ups, as well as a subset defined as innovative, were associated with county-level health measures. We used panel models with two-way fixed effects and Propensity Score Matched (PSM), controlling for demographics and socioeconomic factors.

Each additional VC-funded healthcare service start-up was related to a significant 0.01 percentage point decrease in diabetes prevalence (p < 0.01), a decrease of 1.54 HIV cases per 100,000 population (p < 0.1), a 0.02 percentage point decrease in obesity rates (p < 0.01), and a 0.03 percentage point decrease in binge drinking (p < 0.01). VC-funded healthcare service start-ups were not related to hospital utilization.

This work expands our understanding of how industry-specific start-ups, in this case healthcare start-ups, relate to positive social outcomes. The results underscore the importance of evidence-based evaluation, the need for expanded outcome measures for VC investment, and the possibilities for integration of healthcare services and entrepreneurship ecosystems.