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Since the 1980s, globalization has profoundly changed the social life of nations & has marked the decline of schools of management in the progress of managerial sciences. In the following decades, due to the serious European publishing crisis, major international publishers have developed M&A processes, offering growing paid subscriptions to universities and research centres. The publishing industry is now global with a growing number of editorial products, less and less differentiated & commercially oriented, that marginalize the scientific production of management schools. And now? today a new global perspective in management research is needed. A new global perspective in management research must be focused in schools of management, universities, academies and most authoritative global journals.

This Issue of Symphonya.Emerging Issue in Management arises from the needs and concerns expressed by a growing number of researchers, especially young people in the early stages of their academic careers, of not being able to publish their scientific works due to the high costs required by the largest international publishers. In the eighties, with the massive help of electronic publishing, large commercial publishing houses have increased their control of the science system. The proportion of the scientific output published in journals under their ownership has risen steadily over the past 40 years. Where is the business research system going to? So, how to proceed now? Journals taking large fees without providing robust editorial or publishing services has created what some have called an age of academic racketeering. How can we return to the centrality of the science of management, without the commercial and profit conditioning created by the biggest publishers? First of all, it is now essential that the American and European Antitrust Authorities activate antimonopoly measures on an international scale. However, anti-cartel measures are not sufficient. Without any doubt, in order to ensure a robust progress of the science of management, and more generally of the sciences and of humanity as a whole, scientific research must return to a centrality of universities and research centers, with the predominance of researchers affiliated to international schools of thought and with autonomous and authoritative journals.

The decline of international competitiveness of European companies began in the early 1970s and since then there has been no reversal of the trend. In recent years, also due to the growing concentration of investments caused by the 'Oversize Economy' (Brondoni, 2019), the degree of technological advancement of Europe, the United States and China has lost all relationship with the size of their respective Gross National Product. In fact, investments in technology grow when the resources of a large developed or developing market are coordinated by a system of large corporations and finalized by a policy of applied research put at the service of a design capable of mobilizing the resources of an entire country.

Cost analysis is a method to enhance the costs efficiency by evaluating the corporate profitability. In today business environment of global competition, war pressures, new markets and demographics, firms are changing their approach to cost control. In fact, the strategic cost analysis provides useful information for the short and long-term decision-making in order to achieve the growth corporate goals. In the current phase of global competition (Global Shortage Management) corporations must adapt their strategic cost analysis (Value Analysis, Value Engineering or Value Management) to specific competitive policies adopted in certain markets, which may concern 'Planned Obsolescence', 'Total Quality Management (TQM)' or 'Zero Defects Productions' objectives

We study the Galam’s majority-rule model in the presence of an independent behavior that can be driven intrinsically or can be mediated by information regarding the collective opinion of the whole population. We first apply the mean-field approach where we obtained an explicit time-dependent solution for the order parameter of the model. We complement our results with Monte Carlo simulations where our findings indicate that independent opinion leads to order–disorder continuous nonequilibrium phase transitions. Finite-size scaling analysis show that the model belongs to the mean-field Ising model universality class. Moreover, results from an approach with the Kramers–Moyal coefficients provide insights about the social volatility.

Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland, it can be associated with circadian rhythms, aging and neuroprotection. Melatonin levels are decreased in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (sAD) patients, which suggests a relationship between the melatonergic system and sAD. Melatonin may reduce inflammation, oxidative stress, TAU protein hyperphosphorylation, and the formation of β-amyloid (Aβ) aggregates. Therefore, the objective of this work was to investigate the impact of treatment with 10 mg/kg of melatonin (i.p) in the animal model of sAD induced by the intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusion of 3 mg/kg of streptozotocin (STZ). ICV-STZ causes changes in the brain of rats similar to those found in patients with sAD. These changes include; progressive memory decline, the formation of neurofibrillary tangles, senile plaques, disturbances in glucose metabolism, insulin resistance and even reactive astrogliosis characterized by the upregulation of glucose levels and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). The results show that ICV-STZ caused short-term spatial memory impairment in rats after 30 days of STZ infusion without locomotor impairment which was evaluated on day 27 post-injury. Furthermore, we observed that a prolonged 30-day treatment with melatonin can improve the cognitive impairment of animals in the Y-maze test, but not in the object location test. Finally, we demonstrated that animals receiving ICV-STZ have high levels of Aβ and GFAP in the hippocampus and that treatment with melatonin reduces Aβ levels but does not reduce GFAP levels, concluding that melatonin may be useful to control the progression of amyloid pathology in the brain.

The continuation of the war in Ukraine and the appearance of the BRICS+ have consolidated some critical issues that appeared at the beginning of the war, including the rise in the prices of energy and food raw materials. In global markets, companies are nowadays exposed to a fierce competition and new socio-environmental forces on a vast scale. For global companies, the ongoing geopolitical changes increase corporate and network profit risks, but also represent new, great opportunities for corporate management on long-term trends.

The Russian-Ukrainian war introduced new elements into the strategic management of large global corporations. Recently, the marketplace of international companies has found a specific growth element, defined in the so-called BRICS+, that is changing competitive horizons and developing new models of management. In global markets, the managerial economics imposes an adaptive policy of corporate social responsibility, dominated by economic sustainability and eco-responsibility, with corporate conduct that is not always truthful and effective. From the beginning of 2010s and up to these 2020 years, a fifth phase of globalization (Competitive Landscapes Globalization) produced a structural change of competitive horizons, with policies of innovation and imitation focused on oversize management, the obsessive task of cost reductions, the worldwide localization of productions based on alliances, joint ventures and accords, that have developed multi-polar network organizations.

The Russian-Ukrainian War introduced new elements into the strategic assessments of large global corporations, changing competitive horizons and developing new models of competition. The impact of the recent BRICS expansion on the global corporations management and on the growth of sustainability goals reflects a growing global new competitive landscape that places global corporations in a delicate position as a possible counterweight to the EU, to the U.S and to the Asian World.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a complex, disruptive event with many impacts beyond those related to health, national economies and global competition. While many worldwide companies were challenged to survive, the pandemic also presented many development opportunities for the long-term. The digital transformation, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, require new skills (OECD, 2020) informed by greater attention to the applied ethics of responsibility. Moreover, the development of the pandemic has generated an acceleration in a process of change in consumer behavior. Many businesses around the world have become aware of having to reconsider their market relationships starting from marketing channels, the use of marketing channels, from multichannelling, to omnichanneling, to metachannelling.

With COVID-19, many businesses have failed, while other industries and corporations have seen profits increase, and are likely to continue to do so post-pandemic, in line with the trend of the oversize economy. Coronavirus 2019 has caused a major economic shock, in addition to its tremendous impact on global health, pushing the biggest corporations towards an outburst of the new, basic drivers of global capitalism (Health; Energy; Food; Communication). That is, the pillars of global competition that start from an oversize management in order to fix the competitive landscapes of large corporations.

The attitude of large companies towards the issue of sustainability has evolved considerably over time. In a first phase sustainability was seen as a necessary evil. Today, in global markets, the financial world seeks and rewards sustainable companies. In global competition, the companies’ results cannot be evaluated just in terms of value generated for the shareholders profit: the shared value generated has become the key factor for success. Globalization is not a policy managed by human forces, but it’s a condition of life for humans on this planet. In line with this assumption the aim of this series of articles, dedicated to sustainable management, is to analyse the recent global findings related to the sustainability issues, in topics like communication, human capital, intangible factors, small and large enterprises, retail and fashion, as well as in well-being orientation.

Traditionally, competitiveness is mainly described in terms of costs. In effect, costs are a strategic issue for businesses to survive and stand out. The deployment of profit costs is becoming strategically important to be sustainable and competitive in the global markets. In today’s scenario of global ‘hypercompetition’, one of the most important changes in industrial organisation is the transition from multinational corporations (MNCs) to global networks. In a global market-space, the corporate responsibility is thus as a sense of the corporation’s consciousness towards hypothetical consequences of its planned actions (in domestic/international markets) in view on organisation’s long-term vitality.

The economies of many developed countries are increasingly marked by businesses focused on a hard-liberal spiral. In global markets, companies are nowadays exposed to socio-environmental forces on a vast scale. This calls for a modern code of corporate social responsibility that clearly demonstrates the company’s global corporate responsibility in the overall framework of sustainable growth. On the demand side, moreover, consumption styles will progressively change increasing the degree of satisfaction and fulfilment of people in any place of the world. The result is represented by a ‘Transformative Development’, which will compel a “win-win” situation with an overall better life quality, labour conditions and a healthy economy, which can ensure lasting wellbeing and respect for life in an entirely sustainable environment.

The Russian-Ukrainian war shows a rapidly (and a long-term, probably) worsen­ing outlook for the world economy, that will change specifically the European sus­tainable development. In addition to COVID-19’s tremendous impact on global economies, the Rus­sian-Ukrainian war is producing a new major economic shock, pushing the biggest global corporations towards an outburst of the basic drivers of global capitalism: Health; Energy; Food; Communication. In the current state of play of market globalisation (Network Globalisation), a com­pany’s profit and development objectives are induced to target R&D spending on innovation policies in which the boundaries between imitation and innovation are fluid, and anyway dominated by shortage management policies.

Background: Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder triggered by an abnormal immunological response to gluten ingestion and is associated with deregulated expression of cellular microRNAs (miRNAs) of the gut mucosa. It is frequently misdiagnosed as lactose intolerance (LI) due to symptom resemblance. Microvilli loss may be counteracted by a rigorous gluten-free diet (GFD). Aims: To identify altered extracellular vesicle miRNAs from plasma among CD patients on GFD (n=34), lactose intolerant individuals on restrictive diet (n=14) and controls (n=23), and to predict biological pathways in which these altered miRNAs may play a part. Methods: Five different small RNA samples of each group were pooled twice and then screened by new-generation sequencing. Four miRNAs were selected to be quantified by RT-qPCR in the entire sample. Results: The levels of four miRNAs – miR-99b-3p, miR-197-3p, miR-223-3p, and miR-374b-5p – differed between CD patients and controls (P

The 4th Industrial Revolution (4.0 IR), fundamentally disrupts the technologies characterizing the first three industrial revolutions. In the nowadays global management phase (competitive globalisation), the business model based on excess supply (i.e., over-supply model, in which competitors face volatile production and progressively falling prices) is now inadequate for aggressive global corporate policies. Producing more and wasting less require today a new global business model based on the progressive disappearance of marginal global companies (oversize economy, characterized by lower production and sales costs, and by large company size). Standardized production has now fallen into a crisis that drives companies towards 4.0 technologies i.e., in the pursuit of new conditions of efficiency that are more open to innovation, towards productive flexibility, and even towards competitive imitation.

Global corporations operate today in conditions of highly competitive tension in a context subject to political, social and technological instability. In recent years, the Greek economic crisis of 2009 showed the new basic drivers of global capitalism (Health; Energy; Food; Communication). In global network organisation, the importance of ‘corporate network value’ emerges, and intangible corporate assets (identity, culture, information system) acquire huge importance. The advent of new technologies and the growth of AI offer significant opportunities for creating value not only at business scale but also at societal level. For the future growth of global corporations, the challenge is to conciliate the profitability imperative with a business model compatible with the objective of a sustainable development and in a logic of stakeholders’ engagement.

For a long time, boardroom decision-making focused almost exclusively on economic expectations of major shareholders. During the last thirty years, this approach to corporate governance progressively changed and now responsible companies strive to meet all relevant stakeholders’ expectations, and this requires acknowledging the close links among economic, social and environmental performance for the creation of shared value and lasting prosperity. More and more, in the ‘oversize economy’, robust corporate governance is based on the awareness that long-term value creation for shareholders cannot exist without a multi-stakeholder management approach. On the contrary, multistakeholder satisfaction generates positive effects on the relationships with employees, customers, suppliers and financiers.

Since 2010, globalisation has imposed a new view of the competitive environment in which competitors are not always direct rivals. On the contrary, as a result of alliances and agreements, certain firms can become mega-organisations that have the potential to change the long-term competitive structure of sectors (oversize economy). In the emerging oversize economy, mega corporations (The Coca-Cola Company, McDonald’s, Apple, for instance) manage competition adopting firm policies focused on shareownership, co-ownership and stock splits. The Coca-Cola Company accountability for sustainability creates a range of outcomes including diverse beverage products; economic benefits such as jobs, taxes paid and community investment; ecosystem impacts and initiatives; and customer and shareowner value.

Since the financial and economic global crisis of 2007-2008, western industrialized countries experienced a return to stronger state interventions in the business, which are considered as the most important answer to the new rules of global competition and oversize economy. After forty years of tendencies towards the second way of seeing the function of the State in the economy, both the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the pandemic of 2020 have rediscovered the thaumaturgical value of the Keynesian approach, which is adopted in all Western countries, with impressive support plans for the real economy. The transition period towards a great structural change through the new European strategy based on developmental industrial policies needs a complex and multilevel European governance, based on the construction of a coherent inter-institutional governance of the public governmental filière. In particular, regions and cities can compete in global markets for attracting investments, tourists or residents through appropriate place marketing policies.

The lack of a strong global industrial policy, intended to develop European industries, is at the root of many unsolved problems such as the ‘traceability’ of products, manufacturing abroad, label transparency, etc. These problems essentially highlight the conflicts between those who ask for actions aimed at promoting greater local employment and those who instead want interventions for greater sales support, without having understood the growing role of Asian countries in the world economy. These will see a new, exceptional acceleration of the global integration processes and an additional growth in the ‘global network’ dimensions in the next three/five years. Global networking emphasizes the importance of highly competitive corporate policies with tight synergies that have a robust national development policy based on the industrial system’s identity, i.e. on specific ‘immaterial macro-system factors’.

Europe needs an investment, employment and innovation strategy for new productions driven by the new needs of European citizens. The economic recession of Covid 19 is determined by a collapse in aggregate demand and requires the relaunch of public but also private investments that increase production capacity and diversification towards the new productions required by the needs of European citizens. The increase or the fall of the final demand for private consumption and investments tightly interact with the innovation and investments plans of the companies, with employment changes and with the impact on the natural and physical environment and on the citizen’s quality of life. The international decline of Europe, especially of the Southern Eurozone, relate to a high loss of competiveness, which results from the absence of a common industrial policy, and, on the other side, from the growth of global firms. To address the new problems arising from the structural growth crisis that has characterized European countries in recent years, aggravated by the advent of the recent pandemic, however, a radical change in perspective is needed, giving the territory a new role.

Circular economy business models essentially fall into two main groups: (1) models focused on reorienting traditional business, and (2) models that involve creating a new business specifically aimed at recovering resources. The timing and ways of transforming an old business into a circular one could find useful drivers in a systemic approach that involves policy makers and legislators to implement effective regulations and incentives, the financial sector, public authorities and civil society. By converse, big global corporations often develop circular economy within a company’s network. From this perspective, some companies are specifically oriented towards recycling, while other companies belonging to the same group use raw materials obtained from recycling, thus gaining an extensive competitive advantage for all the network’s companies (competitive circular economy).

In today’s scenario of ‘hyper competition’, global corporations face many other MNCs (more and more frequently based in the US, China, South Korea, Taiwan and Europe). In oversize economy, global companies move to adopt closed innovation policies. In particular, the circular economy suggests that sustainable outputs can be achieved without loss of revenue or extra costs for global manufacturers. The transformation from MNCs to global networks has led towards vertical specialization and highly diversified patterns of collaboration through inter-firm and intra-firm transactions coordinated by global corporations. As we can see from the experience of the greatest global corporations (e.g., Mitsubishi Corporation), the biggest global companies see the circular economy as a specific tool to compete, in the context of a network vision (competitive circular economy management).

The 4th Industrial Revolution is expected to lead to a paradigm shift in business, with strong effects on manufacturing and service processes, and consequent competitive advantages for firms, industries, and regional/national systems. Such effects will manifest in the disruption of traditional incumbents and the re-organization of production processes where information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence, and operational technologies enable smart, self-organizing distribution systems in factories

A global firm's success is conditioned by its ability to manage the system of intangible corporate assets (corporate culture, corporate identity, and information system) and intangible product assets (product design, brand equity and pre/after-sales services). Corporate imitation and innovation processes are a primary condition to compete in global markets and entail identifying and proposing design management products with 'new' features that change over time and space. Product design defines the functions that qualify a product or service to identify and organise the distinctive specifications of the firm’s offer, and develop goods and services based on the analysis of competition and demand needs (customer satisfaction). Competitive design management can be oriented towards different forms of flexible production (The Fourth Industrial Revolution), specifically related to products based on planned obsolescence, total quality, or a rigid competitive philosophy of zero defects.

Globalisation has drastically changed the competitive dynamics worldwide. Companies have continuously expanded their size, also through merger agreements. However, companies should maintain a positive interaction with all their stakeholders, which is favoured by the integration of financial, social and environmental concerns in business strategies and operations. Transparency on corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays a key role in a company’s long-term success.

Purpose. Anastomotic leaks (AL) present a significant source of clinical and economic burden on patients undergoing colorectal surgeries. This study was aimed at evaluating the clinical and economic consequences of AL and its risk factors. Methods. A retrospective cohort study was conducted between 2012 and 2013 based on the billing information of 337 patients who underwent low anterior resection (LAR). The outcomes evaluated were the development of AL, use of antibiotics, 30-day readmission and mortality, and total hospital costs, including readmissions and length of stay (LOS). The risk factors for AL, as well as the relationship between AL and clinical outcomes, were analyzed using multivariable Poisson regression. Generalized linear models (GLM) were employed to evaluate the association between AL and continuous outcomes (LOS and costs). Results. AL was detected in 6.8% of the patients. Emergency surgery (aRR 2.56; 95% CI: 1.15–5.71, p=0.021), blood transfusion (aRR 4.44; 95% CI: 1.86–10.64, p=0.001), and cancer diagnosis (aRR 2.51; 95% CI: 1.27–4.98, p=0.008) were found to be independent predictors of AL. Patients with AL showed higher antibiotic usage (aRR 1.69; 95% CI: 1.37–2.09, p

Over-supply and global markets favour ‘standardised selectivity’ in consumption and impose new competition rules for retailers. In particular, market-driven competition emphasizes global economies of scale related to the ‘intensity of sharing’ key resources in a networking system marked by sophisticated competitive collaborations. Over-supply and market-driven competition therefore presuppose a business network and are a challenge to closed organizations hindered by their small size and scope of operations.

In 2014, the luxury fashion market closed with a value of 224 billion euros marking a growth at constant exchange rates of 3 percent and driven primarily by the online channel, and the outlet one. This Special Issue on ‘Fashion and Luxury Management’ aims to highlight some features of the High-End Italian Companies pertaining to the fashion and luxury industry of Made in Italy, and their key drivers of growth such as innovation, craftsmanship, creativity, and sustainability.

The globalisation phenomenon entangles issues of different kinds affecting attitudes and actions of individuals, corporations, smaller enterprises, communities and governments of both developed and emerging markets. In particular, lower boundaries and higher freedom of sourcing have enabled companies to opt, in many cases, for a wild and often unregulated growth by exploiting resources all over the world. This has become one of the most relevant causes of the proliferation of energy and environmental crises, for instance, and an increased consciousness toward fair treatment of resources and people spread by key local and international stakeholders.

The principle of transparency has gained increasing importance in laws and regulations, particularly in recent years with the evolution of the public administration model towards open government. The principle of transparency is configured as a guarantee of access to those who have the right, but in the evolution of the most recent laws, also constitutes access independent of the legal sphere of certain subjects, aimed at ensuring widespread and general knowledge of information.

Tourism is showing how the globalisation is changing the industry’s competition dynamics, with a growing complexity of rules and companies structures. Actually, the traditional tourism system based on the hotels is increasingly threatened by modern and innovative forms of hospitality, which cause a continuous growth of the quantity and a variety of tourist flows. Tourism has shifted from a phenomenon addressed to a limited elite and focused on natural environment to a global and mass phenomenon such as we are now experiencing the Era of Tourism. So the Destination Management becomes the strategic process in which private e public actors manage attractiveness factors and tourist services to affect the global and national market demand.

In the last two years, some Mediterranean regions have obtained significant benefits from the contraction of large tourist investments marking contrasting trends, as in the case of Sardinia and other Italian and Spanish sub-regions (conceivably due to their perception as safer locations). In global tourism, security and safety have become complex issues with a wide range of components including consumer protection, legal protection of tourists, environmental security, disaster protection, data safety, personal safety in communication, quality assurance of services. The vulnerability of tourism to external negative events, such as tourism terrorism, has defined the increasing importance of tourism safety and security management in a global approach as an integral part of the tourism industry’s operations.

In most mammalian brains, the subventricular zone (SVZ) is a germinative layer that maintains neurogenic activity throughout adulthood. Neuronal precursors arising from this region migrate through the rostral migratory stream (RMS) and reach the olfactory bulbs where they differentiate and integrate into the local circuitry. Recently, studies have shown that heat shock proteins have an important role in cancer cell migration and blocking Hsp90 function was shown to hinder cell migration in the developing cerebellum. In this work, we hypothesize that chaperone complexes may have an important function regulating migration of neuronal precursors from the subventricular zone. Proteins from the Hsp90 complex are present in the postnatal SVZ as well as in the RMS. Using an in vitro SVZ explant model, we have demonstrated the expression of Hsp90 and Hop/STI1 by migrating neuroblasts. Treatment with antibodies against Hsp90 and co-chaperone Hop/STI1, as well as Hsp90 and Hsp70 inhibitors hinder neuroblast chain migration. Time-lapse videomicroscopy analysis revealed that cell motility and average migratory speed was decreased after exposure to both antibodies and inhibitors. Antibodies recognizing Hsp90, Hsp70, and Hop/STI1 were found bound to the membranes of cells from primary SVZ cultures and biotinylation assays demonstrated that Hsp70 and Hop/STI1 could be found on the external leaflet of neuroblast membranes. The latter could also be detected in conditioned medium samples obtained from cultivated SVZ cells. Our results suggest that chaperones Hsp90, Hsp70, and co-chaperone Hop/STI1, components of the Hsp90 complex, regulate SVZ neuroblast migration in a concerted manner through an extracellular mechanism.

Tourism and other related industries are an inseparable part of globalization in the world economy. Global markets have encouraged the removal of many trade barriers while fostering the free movement of people and know-how across borders that have benefitted the tourism industry. Globalisation, hard competition and market-driven management are the fundamental characteristics of today’s tourism business and the need to co-build global connectivity for innovation is crucial to the survival of tourism enterprises and all parties involved in the development of global tourism.

MicroRNAs derived from extracellular vesicles (EV-miRNAs) are circulating miRNAs considered as potential new diagnostic markers for cancer that can be easily detected in liquid biopsies. In this study, we performed RNA sequencing analysis as a screening strategy to identify EV-miRNAs derived from serum of clinically well-annotated breast cancer (BC) patients from the south of Brazil. EVs from three groups of samples (healthy controls (CT), luminal A (LA), and triple-negative (TNBC)) were isolated from serum using a precipitation method and analyzed by RNA-seq (screening phase). Subsequently, four EV-miRNAs (miR-142-5p, miR-150-5p, miR-320a, and miR-4433b-5p) were selected to be quantified by quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) in individual samples (test phase). A panel composed of miR-142-5p, miR-320a, and miR-4433b-5p distinguished BC patients from CT with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.8387 (93.33% sensitivity, 68.75% specificity). The combination of miR-142-5p and miR-320a distinguished LA patients from CT with an AUC of 0.9410 (100% sensitivity, 93.80% specificity). Interestingly, decreased expression of miR-142-5p and miR-150-5p were significantly associated with more advanced tumor grades (grade III), while the decreased expression of miR-142-5p and miR-320a was associated with a larger tumor size. These results provide insights into the potential application of EVs-miRNAs from serum as novel specific markers for early diagnosis of BC.

We present color image processing methods for the char\-ac\-te\-ri\-za\-tion of images of dermatological lesions for the purpose of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) and computer-aided di\-ag\-no\-sis. The intended application is to segment the images and perform classification and analysis of the tissue composition of skin lesions or ulcers, in terms of granulation (red), fibrin (yel\-low), necrotic (black), callous (white), and mixed tissue composition. The images were analyzed and classified by an expert dermatologist following the red-yellow-black-white model. Automatic segmentation was performed by means of clustering using Gauss\-ian mixture modeling, and its performance was evaluated by deriving the Jaccard coefficient between the automatically and manually segmented images. Statistical texture features were derived from cooccurrence matrices of RGB, HSI, L$^*$a$^*$b$^*$, and L$^*$u$^*$v$^*$ color components. A retrieval engine was implemented using the k-nearest-neighbor classifier and the Euclidean, Man\-hat\-tan, and Chebyshev distance metrics. Classification was performed by means of a metaclassifier using logistic regression. The average Jaccard coefficient after the segmentation step between the automatically and manually segmented images was 0.560, with a standard deviation of 0.220. The performance in CBIR was mea\-sured in terms of precision of retrieval, with average values of up to 0.617 obtained with the Chebyshev distance. The metaclassifier yielded an average area under the receiver operating char\-ac\-ter\-is\-tic curve of 0.772.

The global competitive landscapes of innovation and imitation have significantly changed the relative position of many Nation-States and the business relations between global networks and local firms. The US large corporations have lost their historical leadership in innovation. As a matter of fact US in the past had ruled the diffusion of innovations and the 'block' of imitations, but now they are looking for a new role in the control of the innovation and creative imitation processes, without any engagement in the local development. In addition, the main European countries (such as Germany, UK and the Russia) lost their leadership in innovation, although they played a leading role in the social and economic development of last century closed markets. At the same time, global markets have expanded the market power of corporations based in countries with high investments in innovation (e.g. the Japanese firms) or focused on creative imitation (e.g. the South Korea and Taiwan corporations).

Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management launches a new editorial line called 'Special Issue on' aimed at promoting Symphonya's specific vocation to maintaining a close link between the academic world and the business world through in-depth analyses of 'emerging issues' that managers are facing in global markets. This Special Issue is dedicated to the theme of the creation of new businesses. In today's competitive environment characterised by globalised markets, oversupply and a trend towards concentration in most sectors, innovation is a requisite factor for the survival of enterprises and the territories in which they operate. The Italian Start-up Act, introduced in late 2012 and incrementally enriched in subsequent years, is indeed a remarkable policy in a comparative context. Italian start-ups have been endowed with real, diverse and potentially high-impact instruments to find their own way to market and to success.

For a long time, tourism has been to many scholars of management a less than optimal choice in their academic and research strategies. Some of them would have probably even denied to tourism the status of “industry”. Even economists, including scholars of development, looked at tourism with skepticism. Low-tech, seasonal, knowledge-unintensive tourism was the worst of the possible post-industrial outcomes and no serious economic policy could be based on it. This scenario has changed very rapidly in recent years. Both internationally and in Italy, the number of scholars, institutes, journals, publications and teaching programs dealing with tourism has increased, involving several disciplines. Globalisation has also established new horizons in terms of tourism variety and development, encouraging the emergence of new tourist profiles. The traditional mass tourism model. has greatly changed, generating tourism supply and demand systems characterized by flexible production, organization and consumption models (dominated by the internet, the sharing economy, low-cost travel, B&Bs, etc.).

The globalisation of tourism is the result of a more general trend of growing economic globalisation and technological advancements in communications and transportation. Over the years, travel and tourism have transformed into the world’s largest economic sector, with enormous ramifications. Globalisation has determined new landscapes of tourism growth with the emergence of a new tourist profile. This new panorama imposes tourism management with a global approach and corporations structured on networks where management faces two specific supply and demand drivers. Global demand drivers require developing different segments of global mass tourism while the offer drivers relate to corporate transfer pricing and sustainability policies, often-opposing forces, but always correlated with short- and long-term profit.

Since the 80s, given the markets globalisation springing up (product globalisation), the ‘core activity’ of R&D was focused on corporate internal structures. In the 90s and 2000s the new globalisation phase (firm globalisation), the R&D has faced a remarkable transformation. In fact the R&D was no longer centralized in the headquarters, but localized according to the network logic, with a competitive advantage optimization in reference to specific local companies. Finally, since the early 2000s, a third globalisation phase (finance globalisation), has determined a new and important shift in research and development activities. The globalisation of markets pushed the firms to face not only increasing competitive dynamics but also to handle and to manage the limits deriving from the global economies of scale, recessive markets and, frequently, from the over-supply condition. In the nowadays globalisation phase (competitive globalisation), characterized by a widespread recession, and by many over-supplied markets, the R&D structures assume a new key-role for the firms development and represent a continuous stimulus for the competitive dynamics.

OBJECTIVES: The Mikania laevigata extract (MLE) (popularly known in Brazil as "guaco") possesses anti-inflammatory properties. In the present study we tested the effects of MLE in a periodontitis experimental model in rats. We also investigated possible mechanisms underlying such effects. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Periodontal disease was induced by a ligature placed around the mandibular first molars of each animal. Male Wistar rats were divided into 4 groups: non-ligated animals treated with vehicle; non-ligated animals treated with MLE (10 mg/kg, daily); ligature-induced animals treated with vehicle and ligature-induced animals treated with MLE (10 mg/kg, daily). Thirty days after the induction of periodontal disease, the animals were euthanized and mandibles and gingival tissues removed for further analysis. RESULTS: Morphometric analysis of alveolar bone loss demonstrated that MLE-treated animals presented a decreased alveolar bone loss and a lower expression of the activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand (RANKL) measured by immunohistochemistry. Moreover, gingival tissues from the MLE-treated group showed decreased neutrophil migration myeloperoxidase (MPO) assay. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that MLE may be useful to control bone resorption during progression of experimental periodontitis in rats.

In open markets where competition is strong, innovation loses its role of ‘ideological hierarchy’ over imitation; both have the common goal of maximising company profitability, with the constraint of optimising performance results in the very short term. With these objectives and result constraints, the success of research and development activities is measured by the real improvement in the competitive supply potential, expressed by indicators such as time-to-market or patent use rate. The capacity to exploit the competition acquires prime importance, while the capacity to accumulate know-how becomes less important (for example with the traditional indicators of the number of patents per year).

World cities are boosted by Nation-States to encourage and control the innovation processes, developing specific attractiveness factors for companies focused on knowledge production. The role of world cities as a knowledge hub is linked to the one of knowledge production-city, since in global cities there are high-knowledge producers, consumers and workers. It is possible to identify three models of global urban development, each one differing from the other for the degree of knowledge production and intangible consumption attracted and promoted within the city: the model of no-knowledge production; the model of low-knowledge production and the model of high-knowledge production.

Global markets impose an important transformation of the firms’ growth policies where innovation and imitation (of products and processes) play a primary role to meet a volatile demand. Many countries now have strong links with global corporations and within these countries most activity is concentrated in a few metropolitan areas (world cities). World cities configure aggregation-sites for knowledge-intensive businesses and for populations requiring sophisticated immaterial consumption. Large metropolitan areas of the de-materialized economy are thus assuming the dual role of knowledge creation pole (knowledge hub) and of intangible consumption pole (consumer hub).

Global markets are revolutionising the basic concepts of research, manufacturing and marketing, and developing corporate networks based on competitive alliances. In global managerial economics, knowledge management thus becomes the crucial competitive factor, creating knowledge production hubs, particularly in cities with a high level of intangible consumption, where people, capital and ideas are concentrated (consumer hubs). The level of aggregation of knowledge production and intangible consumption classifies large conurbations with unconventional metrics, establishing new types of scales for ‘world cities’.