University research projects

Project leader: Manzini Raffaella
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: research evaluation, research assessment, AI – Artificial intelligence, LLM – Large Language Model, peer-review, generative/assisted AI

In a fast-paced evolving context driven by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT, the scientific and academic world is undergoing a paradigm shift. This shift concerns not only knowledge production, but also knowledge evaluation, and the effects of adopting these technologies, including ethical and organisational implications in producing innovation for the benefit of society. The role of the researcher (including reviewers and editors) is revisited through the lenses of the critical realism in unpacking the black-box of peer-review through the support of AI. Finally, considerations on required skills for the profession of researchers will be developed and the repercussion on education programs offered by universities will be explored.

Project leader: Cillo Alessandra
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Memories, Ambiguity, Risk, Investments, Stereotypes, Financial literacy.

This research aims to study specific cognitive errors (related to memory or ambiguity) in investment choices and their impact on gender stereotypes. Similarly, the study seeks to propose specific financial literacy tools to reduce the negative impact of these cognitive errors and gender stereotypes to improve people’s investment decisions. The study will feature a methodological/theoretical component, a series of experiments, data analysis, and a discussion of the results and implications.

Project leader: Mauri Chiara
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: marketing critics, retailing 5.0, ESG sustainability, grand challenges, topic modelling

In the 2022-23 project, of which this is an extension, we identified three dominant marketing stereotypes – Back to the Future, Future Perfect, and Blended – which will be systematised in a dictionary using topic modelling techniques.

Regarding retailing, we study how the retail sector is revising location models to adapt to smaller household sizes and new consumption patterns. Using loyalty card data from a store in Cagliari, we investigate how the retailer has adjusted its product range to fit the context and how customers have responded.

Project leader: Pavesi Filippo
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Experts, Information, Cheap Talk, Biased information,Behavioral Economics, Reputation

We consider how different features that typically characterize markets for experts may affect the quality of decisions. The first feature is the asymmetry in the observability of the consequences, meaning that only some decisions can produce outcomes that can be compared to the recommendation provided by experts.

We analyze how this asymmetry can affect information revelation when experts are concerned about reputation for both ability and integrity. The second feature is the asymmetry in the definitivity of decisions, meaning that some choices involve a more definitive judgement than others. In this second scenario, we aim to investigate whether experts may be biased against more definitive decisions.

Project leader: Venegoni Andrea
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Business Cycle, Credit Markets, Income Inequality, Macroeconomic Shocks, Mixed Frequency Models, Bayesian-FAVAR

The 2008 Financial Crisis reignited macroeconomists’ interest in the role that credit plays in generating, propagating, and amplifying shocks. Credit accumulation during expansion phases of the cycle has been identified as a potential predictor of financial crises, with the severity of crises increasingly linked to high levels of credit in the economy. This research investigates whether a country’s credit market structure influences key statistical moments of the business cycle and how income inequality may lead to credit bubbles.

Project leader: Urbinati Andrea
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: circular economy; ecosystem; circular economy ecosystem; stakeholders; customers

Circular economy ecosystems have absolutely huge potential to contribute to the transition of businesses to circular economy. As a result of the expanding literature on circular economy ecosystems, there has been a significant imbalance between supply and demand orientations regarding the engagement of stakeholders and customers and their respective roles. The project delves into this research gap to deepen our understanding of the role of stakeholders and customers in circular economy ecosystems. By doing so, the project aims to provide an integrated framework for stakeholders’ and customers’ roles in circular economy ecosystems.

Project leader: Belfanti Federica
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Entrepreneurial ecosystems, Competitiveness, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Regional development

In recent years, the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) has gained prominence in both academic literature on entrepreneurship and among policymakers as a strategic driver for competitiveness development. The research project aims to explore effective governance mechanisms among EE actors to stimulate innovation and dynamism. The analysis is based on empirical data and global success stories, with a particular focus on the province of Varese.

Project leader: Puliga Gloria
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Failure, Patents, Innovation, Learning

Studying failures, particularly innovation failure, appears a promising way to improve the management of the innovation process. In addition, studying how to learn and react to failure would increase the awareness of companies on how being able to take advantage also from “bad” results. Focusing on breakthrough innovation, the project aims to deepen the knowledge about learning from failure, analyse the impact of this process on the innovation process and derive main managerial practices.

Project leader: Falletti Elena
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Fairness; AI; Dataset; Health data; health records; AI auditing; Biased decision making; Discrimination

FAIR-ME-DATA builds a new ethical and legal framework for the assessment of medical datasets through a mixed method and interdisciplinary approach, building bridges between data science, law, and ethics. The project will rely on interviews, desk reserch, and a retrospective analisis to build a new asessment tool for dataset auditing in the context of helathcare. The FAIR-ME-DATA project is set to foster significant changes in AI-driven healthcare within the EU: it aims to ensure fairness, equity, and trust in the use of medical data, with a central focus on promoting patient well-being and inclusivity in the healthcare system. The project’s impacts are far-reaching. It promises to drive scientific advancements by shedding light on the sources of bias in healthcare data. This research aims to contribute to the development of more accurate and reliable AI systems, improving the quality of healthcare.

Project leader: Gervasoni Anna
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Private Equity, Patents, Innovation, Sustainability-oriented innovation, Smart cities

The relationship between private equity activity and the level of innovation in invested companies is of great interest to both academia and professionals. This is even more relevant when considering sustainable development goals and the associated ecological and technological revolution. This project uses mixed statistical methods to investigate whether there is a link between the regional presence of PE funds and the degree of innovation in the geographic areas concerned.

Project leader: Ravarini Aurelio
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Generative AI, sociomateriality, socio-technical system, emancipation, job design, organisational design

The aim of this project is to study and potentially model the impact of Generative AI on workers and organisations. The focus is on the human component of digital transformation and its interaction with this rapidly evolving technology, which seems not only to enable but also to force organisational redesigning. The theory of sociomateriality will be used to explain worker interaction with Generative AI applications in various contexts. Given the exploratory nature of the study, empirical investigation will be conducted through a series of case studies.

Project leader: Cortesi Alessandro
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Sustainability Report, SME, Performance, EFRAG, ESRS, Cross-country

The project aims to study sustainability reporting in European SMEs under the new ESRS standards. The study seeks to: i) Measure the prevalence of sustainability reports among SMEs listed on regulated EU markets subject to the Directive;
ii) Develop a bespoke indicator to measure the alignment and quality of the reports according to the new standards; iii) Identify macro and micro factors that encourage or hinder non-financial reporting; iv) Analyse the effects of such reporting on business outcomes; v) Explore the interaction with SMEs’ distinctive characteristics, highlighting potential impacts on business and/or market performance.

Project leader: Foglia Emanuela
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Agent-based modelling, Overcrowding, Emergency Department, NEDOCS (National Emergency Department Overcrowding Score), EDWIN (Emergency Department Work Index), Measurement of social quantities

The project, supported by a national observatory on Emergency Department performance, aims to develop and validate hospital overcrowding measures. Data from 18 hospitals collected in 2020, 2021, 2022, and early 2023 will be analysed. The project has three main objectives: evaluating the reliability and accuracy of existing metrics, identifying new higher-quality metrics, and developing a new validation methodology for these metrics based on simulation.

Project leader: Malatesta Alberto
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Digital single market, Private international law, Access to justice, Protection of European companies in the global marketplace

This research examines the regulations, including private international law, that the EU has adopted or is developing to govern the European digital market. It investigates whether these regulations apply to relations with non-EU companies and thus whether the high standards the EU is adopting can be enforced against the predominantly non-European players that currently dominate global digital markets, thereby ensuring the protection of European businesses and citizens and achieving European digital sovereignty.

Project leader: Tettamanzi Patrizia
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Sport Management, Corporate Governance, Food & Health, ESG Reporting, Corporate Social Responsibility, Intellectual Capital

The research lays the groundwork for a comprehensive study of sustainability impacts on the sport and food industries, focusing on the causal link between sport, health, and the economy. More broadly, the plan aims to revitalise the country by driving ecological and digital transitions, promoting structural economic change, and addressing gender, regional, and generational inequalities. Furthermore, nutrition and sport are among the key themes of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). The plan also aims to pave the way for a resilient and sustainable future for Italy’s food industry, connected to nutritional education and sports practice, and fostering internal corporate initiatives. However, current attention to these themes and ESG best practices remains insufficient and requires increased awareness within businesses, supported by new tools and educational models.

Project leader: Dallari Fabrizio
Duration: 2024 – 2025
Keywords: Production and Logistics System, Materials Handling, Automation, Industry 4.0, Human Factor

The research WHALE (WareHousing Automation for Logistic Excellence) aims to identify optimal adoption areas for automated technologies in different industries, address key factors in technology selection, and create a conceptual map for decision-makers. Through the development of a new classification model and the study of the best available automation technologies for picking processes, this research offers the dual benefit of enhancing the operational efficiency of warehouse processes for logistics managers and granting automation solution providers insights into evolving customer demands.

Project leader: Cillo Alessandra
Duration: 2023 – 2024

This research aims to study the positive effect of financial literacy on individuals’ ability to reason in situations of ambiguity (where the probabilities of potential outcomes are unknown) and how this impacts investment decisions.

To achieve this goal, a series of laboratory and/or online experiments will be conducted.

Project leader: Comerio Niccolò
Duration: 2023 – 2024

While scientific literature has widely confirmed the positive relationship between tourism and economic growth, there is limited analysis on the potential for using the sector to promote economic convergence between regions. Moreover, the few existing studies often reach conflicting conclusions. Hence, this research project explores the relationship between tourism and regional economic inequalities, focusing on countries with a strong tourism orientation, notably Italy.

Project leader: Falletti Elena
Duration: 2023 – 2024

Therapeutic continuity is a critical issue for patients on legal, technical, and managerial levels.

Pharmaceutical needs must always match service demand, but no predictive tools currently provide support for public decision-making processes.

The SPIDER project aims to define a predictive model, analyse the legal and juridical implications of therapeutic continuity, and apply bias correction and auditing systems to enhance predictive accuracy.

Project leader: Gervasoni Anna
Duration: 2023 – 2024

The aim of this research project is twofold:

Firstly, over the last years Private Equity (PE) secondary market has emerged, as a result of a spectacular growth of PE fundraising and investments worldwide and due to high illiquidity and uncertainty regarding the timing of capital flows suffered by investors (Limited Partners, LPs) in this asset class, and should be more extensively studied.

Secondly, Private Debt (PD) is a growing field in the alternative asset industry, which should be deeply explored in terms of its secondary market transactions (private debt secondaries), its role in financing Leveraged Buyouts or its drivers at a loan (firm-specific) level.

Project leader: Gigliarano Chiara
Duration: 2023 – 2024

The project aims to propose new composite indicators of multidimensional poverty and inequality, based on an optimal weighting system for elementary indicators, enabling estimation of these phenomena even in small areas.

The main methodologies to be developed are:

• Constructing composite indicators that consider the association between the dimensions and the diverse nature of variables
• Estimating the risk of poverty at a local level using statistical techniques for small-area estimation

Project leader: Malatesta Alberto
Duration: 2023 – 2024

This research analyses recent legislative developments in precautionary protection for resolving transnational commercial disputes, using a comparative approach. It aims to determine whether the tools currently available in judicial and international arbitration settings can effectively protect the credits and assets of businesses operating in foreign markets.

Project leader: Mari Luca
Duration: 2023 – 2024

For the first time in history, non-human entities capable of communicating in natural languages, such as Italian, with linguistic accuracy, argumentative skills, and access to vast amounts of textual information are widespread in society. This presents both opportunities and risks regarding information and business management models, the awareness and understanding of which are crucial.

Project leader: Mauri Chiara
Duration: 2023

Marketing has significantly broadened its domain and has embraced the challenges that the world is facing.

Applying stewardship theory, the research investigates what think about marketing. 6 CEO’s participated in a semi-structured interview, and their discourse has been analyzed with topic modeling to identify the key issues they are facing. A survey has been administrated to a sample of Italian top managers and of US managers, who were invited to answer a questionnaire. Keywords emerging from open-end questions have been identified and used to fix 3 stereotypes of marketing, named Back to the Future, Future Perfect and Blended.

Project leader: Minelli Eliana Alessandra
Duration: 2023 – 2024

The management and evaluation of knowledge is a challenging current affair. Healthcare is a knowledge driven process, in particular, Italian Institutes for Care and Scientific Research (IRCCS) present a vast diversity of health professionals, and a complex network, and decision-making processes.

In contributing to the discourses on knowledge management and evaluation, the coordination of resources allocated to research could increase in efficiency, hence achieving a higher societal impact through a better ‘translation’ of research into practical clinical routines aimed to improve patient care.

The project investigates and reconceptualizes the relationship between research (i.e., knowledge) production, performance-based systems of evaluation and funding, and the impact research should have on society. Its final scope is to propose an integrative framework of the effects of evaluation on knowledge production, that incorporates the system rigid metric-measurements of activity and practice with the nuanced goals of excellence of medicine and improved patient care.

Project leader: Pavesi Filippo
Duration: 2023 – 2024

Policymakers consider cultural life and social norms as key determinants of environmental awareness, as demonstrated in the 2005 Faro Convention and the European Green Deal. However, there is still a lot that needs to be explored about how cultural activities can impact pro-social awareness such as that involved in environmental concerns.

In this project we aim to explore the channel through which participation in cultural activities may affect pro-social behavior with the scope of developing a more accurate framework for guiding cultural policies that can positively effect socio-economic variables.

Our working hypothesis is that participation in cultural activities that have a collective nature should affect pro-social behavior principally through social capital, and more specifically generalized trust.

If this is the case, governments can for example, increase their citizens’ environmental awareness, a prerequisite for pro-environmental behaviors, by encouraging participation in cultural activities.

Moreover, policies that induce this effect on social capital, may also have a positive spill over on other socio-economic variables that are known to be influenced by social capital, such as the willingness to engage in entrepreneurial ventures. To better address this issue, we plan to use a dataset combining two large cross-national socioeconomic surveys and an instrumental variable mediation approach.

Project leader: Pozzi Rossella
Duration: 2023 – 2024

Lean Production, Industry 4.0, and Circular Economy are among the most debated industrial approaches of the last years. Even if they have been described as three independent fields, there are examples of overlaps between them.

Through this project, we will operationalise these relationships and highlight the research gaps and questions at the intersections between them. The final objective is to provide a model for the evolution of manufacturing companies in the transition towards Circular Economy, exploiting Lean Production and Industry 4.0.

Project leader: Ravarini Aurelio
Duration: 2023 – 2024

This project builds on job crafting research, which has so far only marginally considered the impact of digital technologies. To address this research gap, a socio-technical approach will be used to reformulate the concept of job crafting into a new integrated model.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study, empirical investigation will be conducted through a series of case studies.

Project leader: Strozzi Fernanda
Duration: 2023 – 2024

Sourcing processes can expose supply chains to risk. Covid-19 and the Ukrainian crisis shown what can happen to supply chains when some echelons fail.

The aim of this project is to help organizations to build resilience by managing sourcing risks – through the analysis of the scientific and grey literature.

The Systematic Literature Network Analysis and Sentiment Analysis will be used. The study of the scientific literature will allow finding possible scenarios while the grey literature to understand which one is occurring.

Results will be discussed with focus groups of experts in supply chain risk management and text analysis.

Project leader: Tettamanzi Patrizia
Duration: 2023 – 2024

Integrating performance measurement systems with non-financial disclosure activities allows companies to communicate sustainability objectives and outcomes more effectively and concretely, enhancing stakeholder relationships. This research aims to analyse potential factors that facilitate or hinder this process at the governance level and examine the effects of digitalisation on performance measurement practices in this area.

Project leader: Urbinati Andrea
Duration: 2023

Effective dimensional integration of the ‘triple bottom line’ has received increasing attention over the last decade. The way that theory-based directions are reflected in the implementation and operationalization of Sustainable Business Models (SBM) in a successful way, is an emerging research trend that needs to be addressed more deeply. While SBMs are often compared with sustainability-driven hybrid business models or B-Corp models, few studies have specifically examined the successful implementation of SBMs through a qualitative approach.

Therefore, the present research project aims to shed lights on critical success factors in implementing this type of business model by conducting an exploratory case study analysis.

To gain richer insights on the practices of firms adopting sustainable business models, this research is designed to conduct semi-structured interviews with the executives of an Italian firm that has successfully implemented a sustainable business model.

The final intention of this study is not to generalize the results to a population, but rather is to generate a framework regarding the successful implementation of SBM through the lens of innovation-based practices.

Project leader: Baglio Martina
Duration: 2022 – 2023

The research RESCUED (Redesign the Supply Chain to speed Up Excellence through Digitalization) aims to help firms understand how supply chains evolved in a complex context where transformative drivers such as digital technologies and disruptions (e.g. pandemics and climate change) have changed the competitive scenario – and how they can tackle transformations leveraging digitalization. This research studies and maps future trends and new possible supply chain configurations taking two perspectives: shippers and logistics service providers

Project leader: Foglia Emanuela
Duration: 2022 – 2023

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan provides a precious opportunity to enhance and empower the territorial and primary services, but the Healthcare Service at Regional and National level has to radically review processes, spaces, resources, with new organizational and delivery models: could the creation of Community Homes (i.e. a proximity medical structure of territorial reference, with a multi-professional group of clinicians)represent an answer of this topic?

The PODCAST project aims to develop an agent based model, useful for defining the optimal characteristics of a structure in terms of positioning and sizing in relation with the territorial context and related dimension (being coherent with organizational and citizens’ needs).

Project leader: Puliga Gloria
Duration: 2022 – 2023

Understanding the connection between innovation capacity and sustainability is an area of significant theoretical and practical relevance. On a territorial level, it is necessary to identify the drivers that improve sustainability performance, with waste management playing a particularly crucial role. This project aims to study how specific innovative capacities within a region impact waste management and recycling, using multiple methodologies.

Project leader: Falletti Elena
Duration: 2022 – 2023

In recent years, the theme of disinformation and misinformation has become increasingly important. The fast spreading of fake news on social media, together with the progress of technologies such as deep fake, which can be particularly deceptive, has become a threat for democracy. In this scenario, it is crucial to understand how institutions may act to stem the spreading of fake news or at least to reduce the negative impact on society. This project is aimed at finding empirical evidences to sustain recommendations for a change in legislation.

Project leader: Sciascia Salvatore
Duration: 2022 – 2023

Research Unit 1 (Salvatore Sciascia): “The Rise of B Corps: Determinants of Best Sustainability Practices and Their Impact on Economic-Financial Performance.”
Sustainability serves as a strategic tool for corporate change. The exponential growth of B Corps and benefit corporations globally has garnered significant interest within management and legal disciplines. However, many research questions in business economics remain unexplored. This study uses quantitative analysis to identify the determinants of best sustainability practices and their impact on economic-financial performance.

Research Unit 2 (Patrizia Tettamanzi): “Benefit Corporations and B Corps: Regulatory Innovations and the UN 2030 Agenda.”
The introduction of Benefit Corporations through the 2016 Stability Law is part of a global movement promoting an evolved, integrated business paradigm. While these entities are “for profit,” they aim to achieve sustainable performance for all stakeholders. Given the early adoption stage in Italy and overlaps with other models (e.g., B Corp certification), it is urgent to explore their actual usefulness and impact on businesses.

Project leader: Cortesi Alessandro
Duration: 2022 – 2023

This project aims to study the gap between ESG disclosure offered by SMEs listed on AIM Italia and the demand from institutional investors. Specifically, through a survey, the research will: (i) identify the need for ESG information among institutional investors in the AIM market; (ii) examine their involvement in the ESG disclosure process of companies; (iii) identify factors that encourage or limit the use of ESG information in investment decisions; (iv) identify future trends.

Project leader: Venegoni Andrea
Duration: 2022

Monetary policy and income inequality are key elements in today’s economic landscape and are interconnected. Monetary policy can impact income inequalities, and the intensity of these inequalities can, in turn, affect the effectiveness of central bank actions. Empirical literature on these topics remains underdeveloped due to methodological challenges. This research aims to overcome these challenges by developing an innovative quantitative framework.

Project leader: Alberti Fernando
Duration: 2022 – 2023

In the last few years, within the debate on clusters and innovation-related knowledge exchanges, the topic of “green innovation” has gained great momentum. The aim of this project is to map, explore and visualize, for the first time in Italy, the green innovation specialization trajectories followed by Italian clusters over the last two decades. It will represent a new and strategic project to keep disseminating the “Italia Compete” project of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness as the “go-to-place” for Italian competitiveness.

Project leader: Lazzari Valter
Duration: 2022 – 2023

The effectiveness of stress tests in restoring market confidence and providing relevant information to reduce informational asymmetries is a widely debated topic. This project analyses market reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the publication of the 2021 European stress test results. It evaluates whether market participants can independently identify fragile banks or whether stress tests play a crucial role in reducing the information gap.

Project leader: Minelli Eliana Alessandra
Duration: 2022 – 2023

The current systems of evaluation of research quality aim to satisfy both the need for accountability for the use of resources and the researchers’ requests for a fairer assessment of the quality of their work. The gold standard of peer-review is juxtaposed to numerous bibliometric indicators, including Altmetric, unable to cover the dimensions of quality when used alone. Building on the institutional logics perspective, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms through which research is evaluated in the process of manuscript review. The comprehension of the drivers behind the editorial decisions enables a more profound insight into the intrinsic and extrinsic criteria of evaluation. The project investigates and reconceptualizes the relationship between academic research, quality and its impact on society. Its final scope is to propose an integrative framework of evaluation of research that takes into consideration the differences across disciplines, incorporating the rigid metric-measurements of activity and practice with the nuanced and subjective, framework-embedded notions of performance and excellence. The project is carried out together with Oxford University.

Project leader: Dallari Fabrizio
Duration: 2021 – 2023

This research investigates how Physical Internet, Blockchain and Logistics 4.0 technologies (e.g. IoT and Autonomous Vehicles) can address post-Covid pharma supply chains issues. Through a combination of qualitative, quantitative, architectural design and simulation methodologies, a Physical Internet framework will be developed focusing on the last-mile delivery of pharma supplies pre, during, and post emergencies.

Project leader: Foglia Emanuela
Duration: 2021 – 2022

Research Activity Description

COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruption for the global health and development community, with significant impacts, not only from a healthcare perspective, but also from a social, legal and economic point of view.

Focusing on hospitals, COVID-19 has imposed huge investments for the proper management of hospitalized individuals. On the one hand, healthcare organizations worldwide, are fighting to provide appropriate healthcare services to patients and are requiring substantial resources to continuously improve their delivery processes and outcomes (Gilmartin & D’Aunno, 2007), by revisiting their internal organizations, processes, and procedures. On the other hand, healthcare organizations are facing relevant pressures, to implement effective and efficient management tools and frameworks, since the current decrease of healthcare budgets, generates serious hurdles on their daily operations (Grigoroudis & Siskos, 2002).

According to the above, the complexity occurred in the management of large number of hospitalized patients (both in medical and in intensive care units) is not a temporary factor related to the pandemic era but is becoming a core element to be considered since COVID-19 has modified the overall health needs. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic limited the number of patients that could be promptly and adequately taken in charge, including all those patients requiring clinical procedure, medical examination, or hospital therapies. Thus, the overall slowdown in hospital activities that could lead, over the time, to a continuous delay of healthcare interventions, as well as to a worsening of non-COVID outcomes and disease outbreaks (Barack et al., 2020; Chen & McNamara, 2020).

Moving on from these premises, the SATURDAI project aims at prediction, through the creation of specific predictive and forecasting models, to project the number and the potential impact of healthcare emergencies, considering not only patients affected by COVID-19, but also other severe viral diseases, including untreated chronic and frail patients. In particular a modelling approach supported by swarm intelligence will be designed to forecast the occupancy of ICU beds using COVID-19 time-series and supporting the prompt prediction of litigations and potential lawsuits, so that hospital managements could perform a cost-benefits analysis to decide whether to invest resources to increase critical care surge capacity.

Project leader: Valentina Lazzarotti
Duration: 2021 – 2023

Despite the huge interest in Open Innovation (OI) among both practitioners and researchers in the past decades, a deep understanding of its impact on a firm’s performance has not been achieved yet. Large-scale studies (i.e. surveys) on a comprehensive model, including determinants, OI choices, performance variables, possible moderators and mediators are recommended to provide firms with useful suggestions to get the expected innovative and financial performance. Through a longitudinal study addressed to a sample of Swedish and Italian firms, investigated for the first time in 2012 and then 10 years later, our project aims to achieve such an understanding by identifying a set of causal relationships that clarify the interplay of the variables involved in successful OI implementations. COVID influence has also been considered as additional explanatory factor of performance.

Project leader: Andrea Urbinati
Duration: 2021 – 2023

To support transition to Circular Economy (CE), firms are called to develop and implement effective CE managerial practices, such as Design for Reuse or Remanufacturing, Energy Efficiency interventions, Take-back and Product-Service Systems. To this aim, we need proper performance indicators, supporting the identification, implementation, end evaluation of such practices. Current research still struggles to investigate the fit between CE practices and performance indicators. Accordingly, our aim is to address this research gap by developing a comprehensive set of indicators suggesting firms the most effective CE practices to be acted for putting into practice the principles of CE, and monitoring the progress of the CE implementation process.

Project leader: Giovanni Paolo Crespi
Duration: 2021 – 2023

A robust game is a distribution-free model to handle ambiguity generated by a bounded set of possible realizations of the values of players’ payoff functions. The players are worst-case optimizers and a solution, called robust-optimization equilibrium, is guaranteed by standard regularity conditions. The research aims to investigate the sensitivity to the level of uncertainty of this equilibrium focusing on robust games with no private information. Side results on mathematical methods involved will also be investigated.

Project leader: Fausto Pacicco
Duration: 2021 – 2022

Measures of territorial attractiveness usually have two peculiar features: a national/regional level of analysis and an annual update frequency. However, as demonstrated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, both of these are somewhat inadequate with regard to the demands of entrepreneurs and policy-makers, which need more granular information on both the territorial detail and time frequency for their analyses. By resorting to “state-of-the-art” quantitative tools, we propose a new econometric approach capable of responding to these needs, thus being able to nowcast territorial attractiveness, from the provincial to the continental level of detail.

Project leader: Filippo Pavesi
Duration: 2021 – 2023

We aim to study the impact of individual cultural consumption on pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). The objective is to construct a field experiment in which we incentivize treated subjects to purchase cultural goods or services. Subjects will be treated over an extended period of time. If prolonged incentives succeed in increasing cultural consumption, we then analyze the impact that these newly induced behaviors have on PEBs, with the goal of implementing AI algorithms to nudge cultural consumption in the desired direction.

Project leader: Antonio Sebastiano
Duration: 2021 – 2022

This research investigates the prevalence and formalisation of key HR practices (e.g., recruitment and selection, training, evaluation) in SMEs in the Italian provinces of the Insubria Region. By combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, the study links HR practices to various business performance indicators to assess their impact on profitability, financial results, and organisational outcomes.

Project leader: Patrizia Tettamanzi
Duration: 2021 – 2023

The current emergency context has made it essential to anticipate changes affecting the accounting field, including in academia. New and diverse skills, particularly digital ones, will be required by the job market for future accountants. Moreover, the escalating environmental challenges facing our planet may drive a shift from measuring profit to measuring “sustainable success.” Accounting educators must adapt their teaching methods to equip students with the skills needed to effectively address the challenges of the new millennium.

Project leader: Luigi Vena
Duration: 2021 – 2023

ESG risk factors have become increasingly significant in recent years, influencing financial instrument prices and returns. This study examines how the asset management industry responds to these themes. Using a variable-parameter model, the research analyses fund management styles concerning ESG risk factors, their evolution over time, and the impact on fund managers’ ability to create value.

Project leader: Vittorio D’Amato
Duration: 2021 – 2023

Over the past decade, every company has faced a revolution driven by technological innovations and the arrival of new generations in the workplace. These factors define the VUCAD world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and digital). This new socio-economic context significantly impacts the HR function, requiring it to update or reinvent its mission, competencies, and systems. This research aims to contribute to the ongoing academic and managerial debate, offering practical guidance on how HR should adapt to the new “new normal”.

Project leader: Chiara Mauri
Duration: 2021 – 2022

This project involves two experiments to investigate consumer confusion. This confusion stems from a) the large number of products on supermarket shelves, causing information overload, and b) the presence of copycat products that imitate leading brands. The first experiment uses a tachistoscope to display images/videos at varying time intervals. By showing a video of a product and its copycats for different durations, the study measures recognition errors regarding the product type (e.g., ice cream) and the brand name (e.g., Algida). The second experiment sets up a shop with varying numbers of product assortments and of copycats that resemble more or less the products they are imitating. It assesses purchasing errors as the number of products and of copycat presences increases.