Logistic Game™: learning by doing and knowledge-sharing

The aim of this article is to define a new simulation game in operation management called Logistic Game?. The main objectives are to introduce a new simulation game approach in solving the different correlated subsystems based on ‘visual interactive learning’ and to verify its positive effects on the learning process with respect to the usual simulation games. The game is based on an inside plant virtual supply chain simulation and copes with the educational challenges of teaching Industrial Logistics in a new, effective way. By applying a visual interactive simulation package, the game creates a virtual dynamic scenario directly visible by participants, with an improvement of experimentation and conceptualisation phases, and offers several logistic decisions and their strategic links from a holistic point of view. The challenge goes beyond a pure theoretical setting and students learn strategies and gain experience directly by operating in a virtual supply chain and sharing knowledge. The Logistic Game has been used to train more then 300 students since December 2006 in three different Italian workshops and has been designed to encourage the employment selection process by the companies involved.     

A Contingency Model of Boards of Directors and Firm Innovation: The Moderating Role of Firm Size

This study asserts that the effects of board characteristics on firm innovation need to be evaluated with reference to contingency variables. A literature review suggests that relatively few studies adopt a contingency view when examining the outcomes of boards of directors. This study examines the influence on firm innovation of characteristics such as board size, outsider ratio and board diversity, and suggests that their influence is contingent upon firm size. The model is tested on a sample of Italian companies and finds support for the contingency hypothesis. This study advances research on boards of directors by emphasizing the importance of context.     

Corporate governance and management practices: stakeholder involvement, quality and sustainability tools adoption

Local public services are the field in which New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance issues are most in evidence. The local public services are characterized by the rethinking of the role played by local government in the provision of services. An evolution has taken place. From a traditional configuration in which local public services were managed by local governments they moved to a configuration where a separation has taken place between the local government role (which continues to be the guarantor of the satisfaction of public needs) and the role of local public utilities (LPUs) (responsible for delivering the services). This transformation implies both the delegation of resources and authority to lower organisational levels within the public sector and the reconfiguration of accountability chains between the state institutions and the society. In recent years, an intense debate has developed regarding the introduction of new tools and control systems. Particular attention has been paid to planning and control systems, human resources management systems, and performance management systems, leaving a few pioneers to develop their analysis on corporate governance mechanisms with regard their relationships with both the external (stakeholders) actors and the internal (management) ones. On one hand, the OECD wrote guidelines in order to ensure good corporate governance practices, focusing on relations with stakeholders. On the other hand, the dialogue between corporate governance and stakeholders has been already tackled by a number of International organizations guidelines or principles, following a debate on corporate governance that has progressively combined a stakeholder perspective with a more classic shareholder-maximizing model of governance. This article contributes to the debate on the stakeholder involvement process. By means of both a theoretical discussion and an empirical research conducted on 37 Italian LPUs, this paper attempts to analyse specific management tools which can be used to improve the quality of corporate governance in LPUs, by extending the stakeholder involvement. Some NPM’s tools, such as quality standards and sustainability tools imply an effort to offer new forms of organizational behaviour in the decision-making processes (i.e. the choice of the performance indicators and the reporting tools) and to create a dialogue between the enterprise and its stakeholders. In particular, in our study we focus on the adoption of quality standards (ISO 9000 and Customer Satisfaction) and sustainability tools (sustainability reports and ISO 14000 standard) as NPM’s tools to facilitate the stakeholder involvement practices.     

Empirical evidence on internal control systems and corporate governance in Italy

The Corporate Governance (CG) theme has recently been the subject of significant measures to try to restore confidence among investors by encouraging information and communication transparency. The Italian Parliament approved Law 262 in 2005; and in 2006 the CG Committee of the Italian Stock Exchange approved the new Self-Regulatory Code for listed companies. This paper deals with control matters and moves on to causes and cases of their failures in relation to a sample of Italian companies. More precisely, it investigates, through an empirical survey, the main limits and areas for improvement in the working of company Internal Control (IC) system(s) and in the objectives of the role of the three main professional bodies currently in charge of it in Italy (i.e. Internal Auditing, Statutory Auditors and External Auditors). The results obtained show that the Italian situation is very unusual, due to a long tradition: the possibility to choose between different administration and control systems, often with coexisting and overlapping roles, creates problems in terms of responsibility and control. The first answers to the critical issues highlighted are given by the aforementioned laws, intended as the main catalysts for a review of the roles of all IC bodies. However, much work has still to be done. The final aim was to come up with suggestions about the possibility of finding areas for improvement within those companies’ IC systems.     

Parental Housing Assistance and Parent‐Child Proximity in Italy

Many studies of intergenerational exchanges include parent‐child proximity as an exogenous explanatory variable. Proximity may itself be a consequence of intergenerational resource flows, however. We analyze patterns of economic transfers between generations and their relationship to parent‐child proximity in Italy. Parental support for a child's home purchase may influence the child's choice of location, whether to facilitate parent‐child contacts, grandchild care, or parent care. We examine the situation of married couples, focusing on housing help received and the association of that help with proximity to each spouse's parents. Using 1998 survey data and multinomial logistic regression models, we find that past housing assistance has a significant effect on current proximity to each spouse's parents, controlling for parents' survival, family composition, and other factors.     

Localizing ruptures in block stochastic systems

Summary In the present paper, rupture detection in a possibly complex stochastic system is enhanced by means of a procedure for localizing the actual rupture among various possible sources. A general model is considered which includes a variety oflinear and non-linear innovation based models. The proposed localizing multiple comparison procedure satisfiescoherence andconsonance and, for a wide class of models, strongly controls the familywise error i.e. the various type I error probabilities involved. The first order autoregressive optimal control model is considered as a popular example. Montecarlo simulations are performed to evaluate asymptotic approximations and diagnostic performances by means of mean time of delay and mean time between false alarms. Some conjectures are then given on the possible structure of these indicators.