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The concept of a sustainable business model has increasingly been used to depict business cases that, by incorporating a triple bottom line approach, seek to realize economic success through environmental and social initiatives. Nevertheless, there is a call for more empirical research on design and innovation with respect to sustainable business models, as well as on the relationship they have with firm performance. This paper focuses on the social side of sustainability and aims to explore the extent to which integrating social sustainability objectives into the business model has a positive influence on a firm's financial performance, promotes sustainable innovation and enhances the firm's ability to withstand discontinuities such as the recent financial crisis. Following a review of the existing literature, four propositions are formulated and subsequently tested through a multiple case study of four international low-cost carriers. The results have implications for theory and practice as they reveal that integrating social sustainability in the business model i) does not automatically influence financial performance, although it may have a role in the long-term financial outcomes of the firm; ii) influences the characteristics and effectiveness of sustainable innovation; iii) must be accompanied by intelligent managerial activity to be effective; and iv) does not necessarily lead to faster financial recovery in the aftermath of a discontinuity, but it does make a firm more resilient over a long-term basis.

Although the leadership role of higher education in creating a sustainable development has been widely recognized, there is a paucity of studies following a strategic perspective to explain how universities integrate sustainability in the different areas of their activity to gain a competitive advantage and contribute to the sustainable development of a broad range of stakeholders. More empirical research on the design and implementation of strategies and operations developed by universities to re-orient themselves towards sustainability has also been required, as well as systemic frameworks for evaluating sustainability performance in higher education. This paper addresses these gaps by proposing a conceptual framework for diagnosis of the integration of sustainability in universities from a strategic perspective. In particular, the concept of a sustainable business model is first contextualized to higher education and then used for interpreting the core logic through which universities create value for themselves, society and the environment. In order to assess the applicability and usefulness of this framework, a cluster analysis of all the 61 Italian state universities is used to identify business models with different degrees of strategic orientation towards sustainability and to start discussing the relationships between sustainable business models and university size, geographic location and performance.

Regulation of companies with market power in the provision of the essential services has been intended to provide incentives aimed at improving efficiency and service quality. Few studies have investigated the accountability of regulated industries and answered the question of the most appropriate accounting model for protecting consumers, promoting competition and ensuring investors' profitability. With the transition from an ex-ante to an ex-post model – based on free negotiation between stakeholders on price setting and monitoring activity by an independent authority – in many settings, the effectiveness of the accounting model seems to be strictly related to the quantity and quality of the information that regulated companies provide on a mandatory basis in anticipation of consultations with service users, and the quantity and quality of information that they voluntarily offer to stakeholders via their financial reporting. This paper aims to explore accountability relationships that emerge in regulated airport industries moving from ex-ante to ex-post models in order to propose a conceptual framework capable of remedying the shortcomings of the extant ones and, in particular, the conceptual framework established by Vass (1992) . The new framework is also used to identify which accounting model is required to improve the effectiveness of regulation.

This paper aims to shed light on the quality of the independent members of governance bodies charged with the oversight of organisations' audit and control functions. A biographical investigation is carried out into the 118 independent members of the bodies with control functions of the Italian banks that underwent comprehensive assessment by the European Central Bank (ECB). An identikit comes to light of a man almost 60 years of age, coming from the banking regions, who graduated in the field of economics and is highly experienced. A sufficient degree of diversity among members is found in relation to age and provenance, while serious concerns are raised about their time availability and true independence. This paper advances the understanding of the importance of personal qualities in corporate governance studies and provides support for theories stating that the quality of people matters more than requirements and guidelines for reducing agency costs.