Quantitative Storytelling in the Making of a Composite Indicator

The reasons for and against composite indicators are briefly reviewed, as well as the available theories for their construction. After noting the strong normative dimension of these measures—which ultimately aim to ‘tell a story’, e.g. to promote the social discovery of a particular phenomenon, we inquire whether a less partisan use of a composite indicator can be proposed by allowing more latitude in the framing of its construction. We thus explore whether a composite indicator can be built to tell ‘more than one story’ and test this in practical contexts. These include measures used in convergence analysis in the field of cohesion policies and a recent case involving the World Bank’s Doing Business Index. Our experiments are built to imagine different constituencies and stakeholders who agree on the use of evidence and of statistical information while differing on the interpretation of what is relevant and vital.

     

Going concern modifications and related disclosures in the Italian stock market: do regulatory improvements help investors in capturing financial distress?

Journal of Management and Governance - This paper investigates the investor reaction to audit reports containing a going concern modification (GCM) in the Italian market following new amendments...     

Factor analysis for ranked data with application to a job selection attitude survey

Summary.  Factor analysis is a powerful tool to identify the common characteristics among a set of variables that are measured on a continuous scale. In the context of factor analysis for non-continuous-type data, most applications are restricted to item response data only. We extend the factor model to accommodate ranked data. The Monte Carlo expectation–maximization algorithm is used for parameter estimation at which the E-step is implemented via the Gibbs sampler. An analysis based on both complete and incomplete ranked data (e.g. rank the top q out of k items) is considered. Estimation of the factor scores is also discussed. The method proposed is applied to analyse a set of incomplete ranked data that were obtained from a survey that was carried out in GuangZhou, a major city in mainland China, to investigate the factors affecting people's attitude towards choosing jobs.     

Ranking Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism Scenarios: The Italian Case

A quantitative criterion for ranking the different scenarios of nuclear and radiological terrorism has been developed. The aim of the model is not to predict terroristic events but only to indicate which scenario has the higher utility from the point of view of a terroristic organization in terms of balance between factors favoring and discouraging the attack, respectively. All these factors were quantified according to a scoring system that takes into account the logarithmic relationship between perceptions and stimuli. The criterion was applied to several scenarios, each of which was modeled in a simple but not trivial way in order to estimate the expected damage in terms of probable life losses from both radiative and nonradiative effects. The outcome from the ranking method indicates that the attractive scenario appears to be the detonation of a low yield improvised nuclear device in the metropolitan area of a major city.     

Can Corruption Erode Confidence in Political Institutions Among European Countries? Comparing the Effects of Different Measures of Perceived Corruption

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of corruption on institutional confidence through testing alternative perceptions-based indexes of corruption. Scholars who have investigated this topic have often employed only indicators of corruption based on experts’ surveys. In this article we also consider a new index of corruption developed aggregating citizens’ perceptions. The first part of the paper explores the levels of corruption perceived by the citizens of EU member states, stressing the differences with the experts’ opinions. The second part tests, through a multivariate analysis, the impact of citizens’ and experts’ perceptions-based indexes of corruption on institutional confidence. The main results show that experts and citizens tend to express similar opinions on the extent of corruption in EU member states though, especially in some countries, these actors present some noticeable differences. Nevertheless, irrespective of the indexes used, more corrupt countries are characterized by lower levels of confidence in parliament and government. This relationship holds even controlling for the presence of reverse causality between corruption and confidence.     

Fads and Fashions in Management Practices: Taking Stock and Looking Forward

Established management practices – such as Six Sigma or business process re‐engineering, as well as more recent practices such as agile management processes, HR analytics and beyond budgeting – are viewed by practitioners as the basic tools of their trade. Yet they have been known to wax and wane in popularity, often quite unpredictably, with one technique following the other in wave‐like fashion. The scholarly observation of this phenomenon has given rise to the literature on fads and fashions in management studies, which – building on earlier work in allied disciplines – has sought to explain the transience, persistence, and overall trajectory of management practices. In this paper, we review and integrate the existing literature on management fads and fashions, taking stock of the sizable body of work that has accumulated over the past three decades and which has, to our knowledge, never been reviewed comprehensively before. At the same time, we also note that technological change – with the advent of social media and the ubiquity of Internet connectivity, for example – has radically transformed how practitioners seek, consume, and engage with new practices, as well as the way in which such practices are broadcast and diffuse. In our review, therefore, we try to make this well‐established body of literature current by explicitly discussing how well its central tenets and theoretical arguments have stood the test of time, and propose useful directions for moving forward.     

Business Collaboration within the Nazi War Machine: Corporations and the State in the Austrian Semiperiphery

The military strength of German National Socialism was based on the collaboration of large corporations with the Nazi state. Business provided capital, loans, taxes, managerial expertise and production for war industries. I elaborate four ideal‐typical modes of business collaboration. Each mode is illustrated by a case study of a German corporation that acquires an Austrian firm: Krupp (traditional mode); the Reichswerke state conglomerate (coercive); Deutsche Bank (managerial nationalist); and IG Farben (competitive investment mode). The first and the last modes occurred when the state was highly dependent on large businesses for the economic requisites of war. The acquired firms in the Austrian semiperiphery contributed to Nazi war mobilization, as they exploited labor and resources from the peripheral regions of southeastern Europe. Patterns of the state's resource dependency on business led to bargaining interactions between state and business, over time shaping the mix between state and private ownership of war industry.     

Psychological Well‐Being and Career Indecision in Emerging Adulthood: The Moderating Role of Hardiness

This study investigated the moderating role of hardiness in the relationship between psychological well‐being (PWB) and career indecision in 131 never‐employed Italian emerging adults. Cluster analytic methods produced high and low hardiness profiles. A structural equation modeling analysis underscored the importance of hardiness for moderating the negative association between PWB and career indecision. Specifically, findings revealed that being hardy is a crucial relevant personal resource in the presence of lower levels of PWB. The authors discuss the importance of analyzing simultaneously the role of PWB and hardiness in promoting engagement in the career decision‐making process and provide implications for setting up appropriate career counseling interventions with emerging adults. Suggestions for future research are presented, such as the use of longitudinal designs and qualitative methods.     

The Meta Co-production of Community Outcomes: Towards a Citizens’ Capabilities Approach

This article contributes to the growing amount of literature on co-production, focusing on co-production of public outcomes and taking the perspective of local government and public managers. A model for explaining the dynamics of outcomes’ creation at the community level is provided. The core argument of the article is that community outcomes result from a sum of peer production, co-production and inter-organizational collaboration processes promoted and activated at individual, organizational and network level across the public, third and private sectors. Institutional, managerial and organizational implications are discussed. The article argues that local government and public managers are asked to play new roles and to employ a new ethos grounded in a citizens capabilities’ approach.