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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented social and economic crisis, not least for hybrid organisations, as they must manage the tension arising from their dual mission to create social and economic value. Building on a theoretical framework for hybrid tension, our work contextualises how tensions emerge and are managed in hybrid organisations when they are exposed to exogenous shocks. We address the following research question. How have hybrid organisations managed the tensions arising from their dual purpose during the COVID-19 crisis? Our focus is on Italian benefit corporations, which are organisations combining social and economic objectives. We conduct two focus groups with 12 Italian benefit corporations. Our findings show the emergence of four constructs that capture the responses to the COVID-19 crisis: social and/or commercial orientation; technological characterisation; internal and external stakeholder relationship; openness to changes. We explain the relationship of these constructs via a framework of performing, organising, learning, and belonging tensions.

Universities are rethinking their teaching and research programs and their whole third mission in response to the framework provided by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But how do universities walk the talk? What are the main strategies and activities undertaken by universities to implement the 2030 Agenda? While the higher education literature has documented the growing number of practices and strategies around SDGs, there have been few attempts to synthesize these scholarly resources. Moreover, the knowledge base revolves around an array of activities, which makes the literature seem fragmented. To fill this gap, the present paper conducts a systematic literature review and derives a method of categorizing activities that can support further knowledge growth. We classified 130 selected papers based on the type of university activities considered (research, teaching, third mission, and managing operations) and the level of the implemented action (macro, meso, and micro). Subsequently, we identified the main gaps in the literature and discussed future research avenues for addressing higher education's role in accomplishing SDGs.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41307-022-00277-x.

Benefit corporations (BCs) are profit-with-purpose organizations regulated by a legal framework for establishing explicit commitments in terms of multi-stakeholder governance and accountability structures. We comprehensively analyze the theoretical alignment of four concepts (ownership, mission, governance, and accountability) to explain the legal rationale for BCs’ unique corporate form. However, the boundaries of BC legislation are blurry, leaving them open to top-down governance arrangements and weak accountability. To explore this ambiguity, this paper investigates whether BCs implement a de facto (i.e., beyond the letter of the law) multi-stakeholder structure with governance models and downward accountability mechanisms that balance different stakeholders’ interests, instead of focusing only on shareholder profits. This further highlight the soft boundaries imposed by the BC regulatory framework and suggests that more work is needed to explore the relationship between governance models that differently balance stakeholders’ claims and the firm’s social performance.

Several classes of inequalities have emerged as a consequence of the territorial polarization generated by the knowledge-based economy. Place-based policies implemented so far have demonstrated scarce effects in leveraging the underlying potential of left-behind places. In this paper, we explore whether social enterprises can be the actors of a rejuvenated innovation policy able to convey the value of knowledge and innovation to society. Despite their weak technological endowments, social enterprises, through their territorial distributive patterns and organizational characteristics, represent an installed entrepreneurial base that can be targeted by a new generation of inclusive innovation policies."

Le Società Benefit rientrano tra le imprese che la letteratura definisce come organizzazioni ibride – ovvero le organizzazioni che presentano obiettivi di profitto e sociali. Tale letteratura presenta principalmente studi teorici (Battilana et al.2012; Battilana e Lee 2014; Lee e Jay 2015; Battilana, Besharov e Mitzinneck 2017), e casi studio (Battilana e Dorado 2010; Pache e Santos 2013; Battilana et al.2015).Tuttavia, le organizzazioni ibride non sono omogenee nel modo in cui enfatizzano obiettivi finanziari e non finanziari, dunque i possibili contesti di studio di questo tipo di organizzazioni possono essere molto eterogenei, ponendo dubbi sulla generalizzazione dei risultati della ricerca esistenti. Ciò che vogliamo analizzare in questo scritto è la nuova forma giuridica della S.B. e le sue caratteristiche principali. Per farlo adotteremo il framework Mission-Governance-Accountability (di seguito, MGA) sviluppato da Matacena (Matacena, 2017). Questo framework appare particolarmente interessante poiché offre una concettualizzazione utile ad analizzare in maniera critica le caratteristiche di questa nuova forma d’impresa e delineare le traiettorie di ricerca future. Più nel dettaglio, nel secondo paragrafo illustreremo la nascita del fenomeno negli Stati Uniti e in Italia, nel terzo paragrafo analizzeremo le caratteristiche delle S.B. Alla luce del modello MGA, nel quarto paragrafo concluderemo con una discussione critica e delineeremo le future traiettorie di ricerca.

New public management (NPM) has dominated the reforms in the higher education sector and the academic discussion on how universities should be governed since the 1980s. Besides, the introduction of accountability and efficiency measures in the form of performance measurement and pay-for-performance scheme, a key debated aspect of NPM is the strengthening of the role of boards and the introduction of a more firm-like governance structure. Much work is still needed to evaluate the implementation of NPM reforms in the university domain, particularly with respect to the internal governance changes. Besides formal rules, perceptions of key actors on their institutional environment play a major role in investigating university governance. This article uses a unique dataset on Italian universities to illustrate the internal governance patterns that emerged after the 2010 reform and critically analyses the differences in the perceptions of rectors and department chairs providing insights for both academic and policymakers.

New institutional economics (NIE) studies institutions and how they emerge, operate, and evolve. They also include organizational arrangements, intended as modes of governing economic transactions. Universities offer an exciting ground for testing the role of different institutional arrangements (governance forms) in coordinating (academic) transactions. In a context of contractual incompleteness where production is characterized by a highly specialized nature and requires the cooperation among co-essential figures, we argue that shared governance models (versus models with more concentrated authority) foster idiosyncratic investments in human capital and promotes performance. From the evolutionary viewpoint, we explain why institutions based on shared governance have developed within universities. The normative question of how universities should be governed is a debated issue in the literature. Since the 1980s, the new public management paradigm provides a theoretical framework that suggests analyzing university like firms. It is based on the firm's archetypical conception as top-down hierarchical organizations and as a descending sequence of principal–agent problems. We advance a different interpretation of the university–firm analogy leveraging on the NIE and its developments. To empirically analyze our hypothesis, we collected original data from Italian universities in 2015. We find that more shared decision-making processes are correlated with better research performance.

National governments are increasingly being scrutinized for how they develop priorities and specialize decisions regarding public investments in research and innovation (R&I). Pressure stems from the need to ensure that publicly funded science and technology projects have a positive impact and increases in times of fiscal tightening and from specific policies such as the European Smart Specialization Strategy. One of the most important trade-offs governments face in the generation of specialized investments’ trajectories is overcoming information asymmetries by aggregating relevant knowledge while mediating the conflicting interests of various actors. We build on the literature on public-private partnerships (PPPs) developed for R&I by analyzing how a stable and effective priority-setting (PS) process can be implemented. We argue that a particular type of PPP, a "non-financial PPP", when characterized by participatory governance, represents an effective and legitimized structure that can transform broad goals for specific fields into prioritized technological trajectories. We then analyze the case of the Italian National Technological Clusters, which were instituted by a policy launched in 2012 by the Italian government aimed at providing a governance tool for producing legitimate and informed priorities. This analysis increases the current knowledge of the unique role that specific PPPs may have as a governance tool for R&I policy.

The hierarchical nature of the firm affects stakeholders’ well-being. This is our main motivation in analysing the firm through the perspective of Sen’s capability approach—a social justice theory ...

In the debate surrounding various reforms in higher education systems, performance, along with how universities should be governed, have been main issues. We argue that the demand for shared governance, i.e., faculty participation in decision‐making vs. concentrated or top‐down decision‐ making, is driven by the characteristics of academic transactions. Especially in universities, shared governance prevents that the unilateral allocation of authority paves the way to the abuse of authority, which would depress incentives to undertake optimal idiosyncratic investments in human cognitive resources, or prevent cooperation in a context characterized by contractual incompleteness and transactions involving multiple specific investments and coessential resources. To empirically analyze our hypothesis, we collect original survey data of Italian universities in 2015. We find that shared decision‐making processes are correlated with better performance.

La simulazione si basa sui dati IRIS e sugli indicatori bibliometrici alla data indicata e non tiene conto di eventuali periodi di congedo obbligatorio, che in sede di domanda ASN danno diritto a incrementi percentuali dei valori. La simulazione può differire dall'esito di un’eventuale domanda ASN sia per errori di catalogazione e/o dati mancanti in IRIS, sia per la variabilità dei dati bibliometrici nel tempo. Si consideri che Anvur calcola i valori degli indicatori all'ultima data utile per la presentazione delle domande. La presente simulazione è stata realizzata sulla base delle regole riportate nel DM 598/2018 e allegata Tabella A. Cineca non si assume alcuna responsabilità in merito all’uso che il diretto interessato o terzi faranno della simulazione. Si specifica inoltre che la simulazione contiene calcoli effettuati con dati e algoritmi di pubblico dominio e deve quindi essere considerata come un mero ausilio al calcolo svolgibile manualmente o con strumenti equivalenti. Informazioni sui dati: vengono considerati tutti i prodotti in stato definitivo. Per i prodotti indicizzati wos/scopus, l’anno di riferimento e la tipologia sono quelli riportati in banca-dati.

By considering what we identify as a problem inherent in the ‘nature of the firm’ – the risk of abuse of authority – we propound the conception of a Social Contract Theory of the Firm which is truly Rawlsian in its inspiration. Hence, we link the Social Contract Theory of the Firm (justice at firm’s level) with the general theory of justice (justice at society’s level). Through this path, we enter the debate about whether firms can be part of Rawlsian Theory of Justice showing that corporate governance principles enter the “basic structure”. Finally, we concur with Sen’s aim to broaden the realm of social justice beyond what he calls the ‘transcendental institutional perfectionism’ of Rawls’ theory. We maintain the contractarian approach to justice but introduce Sen’s capability concept as an element of the constitutional and post-constitutional contract model of institutions with special reference to corporate governance. Accordingly, rights over primary goods and capabilities are (constitutionally) granted by the basic institutions of society, but many capabilities have to be turned into the functionings of many stakeholders through the operation of firms understood as post-constitutional institutional domains. The constitutional contract on the distribution of primary goods and capabilities should then shape the principles of corporate governance so that at post-constitutional level anyone may achieve her/his functionings in the corporate domain by exercising such capabilities. In the absence of such a condition, post-constitutional contracts would distort the process that descends from constitutional rights and capabilities toward social outcomes.