102,895 research outputs found
From Work Contracts to Collaborative Contracts: The Challenges of Building Information Modeling (BIM)in public procurements
No full textSupporting sustainability: the role of Management Control Systems in family SMEs, cap. 1, in AA.VV. (a cura di Cantino V., De Vincentiis P., Racca G.), Risk management: perspectives and open issues- A multi-disciplinary approach
No full textEuropean countries share a concern about business investment: because of the financial
crisis, wealth creation is decreasing and business confidence is weak. At the same time,
social problems like unemployment, underemployment, and poverty are increasing.
In this context, the need to promote economic development consistent with social and environmental
concerns has drastically emerged.
There is an increasing opportunity to assess value creation from a sustainability standpoint
and with a social responsibility approach.
This is what we can define as a “social responsible business model”, based on value creation
for stakeholders. In the new context, also the concept of value creation has to be
changed from value creation for shareholders to value creation for all stakeholders. Value
creation also embed sustainable value (based on a triple bottom line approach), and social
responsibility. Since FFs pursue both economic and social objectives, we can say that there
is a lot of social responsibility in FFs. Family firms (FFs) seems to be likely to adopt the
triple-bottom line paradigm (economic, social, ecological performance) according to their
characteristics: literature affirms that additional feature that distinguishes FFs from NFBs
is their desire to preserve the family’s socioemotional wealth and the pursuit of nonfinancial
outcomes.
In the EU environment, SMEs (especially family SMEs) not only contribute significantly to
the European GDP and employment, but they are also recognized to adopt business models
more sensible to social issues and stakeholder needs.
Although sustainability has been discussed in management control literature to highlight
the need of sustainability control systems (SCSs), little is known about the mode of integration
between SCSs and traditional management control systems in family SMEs.
In order to support SMEs in developing more responsible, innovative and competitive
business models, this paper proposes to study the role of sustainability control systems
(SCSs). In this article we examine the management control literature and family business
literature with the purpose of proposing a sustainable business model. We summarize literature’s orientation, in order to identify the drivers of adoption of SCSs and their role in
the business model. Starting from a summary of the main FFs features, we will discuss the
following research questions:
-What are the interactions between different forms of social responsibility in FFs?
-How can we transfer the family firms’ attitude to social responsibility in a sustainable
business model?
-What are main elements of a sustainable business model that can leverage on family
firms business model?
-What are different tools, mechanisms, solutions needed to adopt and implement a sustainable
business model?
In summation, sustainability and social responsibility challenges are huge and fast growing:
family SMEs can reply to these challenges, supporting positive sustainable development
outcomes, with more responsible, innovative and competitive business model
Organizzazione, funzioni e governance delle società di sperimentazione gestionale
No full textIl saggio analizza l'istituto delle sperimentazioni gestionali nel quadro del fenomeno dell'aziendalizzazione del servizio sanitario nazional
Building Bridges Between Diversities: the Case Study of "MondoQui", Mondovì
No full text“Philosophy and Community Practices” is a project of the University of Turin (Italy) developed in collaboration with the MondoQui association. Its aim was to test the validity of Philosophy for Communities – inspired by M. Lipman and A.M. Sharp – in terms of community empowerment. In this chapter, we will analyse the design phase, describe the p4c sessions and present the results achieved
The potential benefits of an ecomuseum for cycle tourism: Social, economic and environmental effects
No full textCycle tourism is a sustainable type of tourism from a social, economic and environmental point of view. The ecomuseum is an ‘instrument’ to share interests and to protect the cultural, historical and natural heritage of a region. The purpose of this research is to determine how an ecomuseum can improve the potential of cycle tourism as a type of tourism that maintains conservation of natural areas and common property. First, we review the literature with regard to cycle tourism and the ecomuseum phenomenon and then pay specific attention to the literature focusing on the social, economic and environmental effects. Considering that the research topic has been under-investigated until now, we selected a case-study approach. The selected case study includes all the study aspects: protection of the common property and natural areas; development of sustainable tourism; and organisation of a complex management system. It will be shown that an ecomuseum can be beneficial by attracting more cycle tourists and by having significant and favourable effects on sustainability. The research describes how many and what businesses can be developed thanks to an ecomuseum that combines the provision of cycle tourism in a natural setting with protection of the cultural heritage of a region. In addition, this research identifies the other stakeholders that may be connected with the project and may affect the environment and society, particularly the citizens. Finally, the results may be used in strategic planning by the involved municipalities
ESG (CSR) criteria and risk indicators in credit assessment and probability of default evaluation
No full textThe study investigates the relationship between responsible business conduct and financial performances. Within the risk management, the analysis takes into account the responsible actions (according to environmental, social and governance, “ESG”) affecting the riskiness of the enterprises from a creditworthiness improvement and probability of default reduction perspective. Specifically the study regards the small, medium and large enterprises of the Italian manufacturing sector. The enterprises considered took part in European funding which envisaged rewards schemes for the stakeholders adopting responsible business conduct according to the definition OECD and COM/681/2011/CE. Cluster analysis and regression analysis, carried out using empirical database, point out that for small enterprises there are positive correlation between ESG and debt ratio, number of local unit and employees; for medium enterprises there is a robust correlation between ESG and ROI as well as code of ethics, risk assessment and improved company structure. In the large enterprises the ESG behaviors are connected to the increase of the internationalization, the relocation of production, the use of the business welfare and the risk assessment in order to reduce the institutions’ administrative responsibility. Economically and financially speaking, the large enterprises ESG-oriented have improved performances according to ROA, ROI, ROS, ROE indicators, long-term debt and debt ratio
Matching techniques for resource discovery in distributed systems using heterogeneous ontology descriptions
No full textIn distributed environments like peer-to-peer networks and Grids, where the resources to be shared are provided by many different nodes generally spanned across multiple organizations, dynamic resource discovery is a central problem. In this paper, we propose a semantic approach for the dynamic resource discovery based on ontologies for a semantically rich description of the metadata characterizing the resources to be shared, and on semantic matching techniques for dynamically and flexibly comparing ontological resource descriptions against a target resource request
I servizi sanitari: organizzazione, riforme e sostenibilità. Una prospettiva comparata
No full textIl volume analizza i processi di riforma che negli ultimi decenni hanno interessato la grande maggioranza dei sistemi sanitari europei.
L'opera, articolata in tre parti, si sofferma in particolare sull'organizzazione dei servizi sanitari, sulle forme contrattuali per gli acquisti in sanità nei principali modelli europei e sugli strumenti di cooperazione tra pubblico e privato nei paesi dell'Europa orientale
Lipid-coated zinc oxide nanocrystals as innovative ROS-generators for photodynamic therapy
No full textPhotodynamic Therapy (PDT) is a medical treatment that combines the administration of a nontoxic drug, called photosensitizer (PS), with light irradiation of the targeted region. It has been proposed as a new cancer therapy, promising better selectivity and fewer side-effects compared to traditional chemo- and radio-therapies. PSs indeed can accumulate specifically within the region of interest so that when the light is directly focused only in that region the therapeutic effect is highly localized. Traditional PSs, like chlorins and porphyrins, suffer from several drawbacks such as aggregation in biological media and poor biocompatibility. Thus, the development of innovative photosensitizers able to overcome these issues is crucial to the therapeutic action of PDT. Among the others, nanostructured Zinc Oxide (ZnO) has been recently proposed as new therapeutic agent and PS thanks to its semiconducting properties, biocompatible features, and ease of functionalization [1]. Nevertheless, further efforts are needed in order to improve its colloidal stability in biological media and to unravel the effective therapeutic mechanism. Here, we propose the synthesis and characterization of lipid-coated ZnO nanoparticles as new photosensitizer for cancer PDT [2]. First, by Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) experiments, we show that the lipid-coating increases the colloidal stability of the ZnO NPs in Phosphate buffered saline (PBS). Then, using Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) coupled with the spin-trapping technique, we demonstrate and characterize the ability of bare and lipid-coated ZnO NPs to generate Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in water only when remotely actuated via light irradiation. Interestingly, our results aware that the surface chemistry of the NPs greatly influence the type of photo-generated ROS. Finally, we show that our NPs are effectively internalized inside human epithelial carcinoma cells (HeLa) via a lysosomal pathway and that they are able to generate ROS inside cancer cells. [1] B. Dumontel, M. Canta, H. Engelke, A. Chiodoni, L. Racca, A. Ancona, T. Limongi, G. Canavese and V. Cauda, J. Mater. Chem. B. under revision. [2] A. Ancona, H. Engelke, N. Garino, B. Dumontel, W.Fazzini and V. Cauda, to be submitted. The support from ERC Starting Grant - Project N. 678151 "Trojananohorse" is gratefully acknowledged
- …
