Search Results (4)

Business groups comprise independently owned firms based on different types of owner solidarity, such as kinship, ethnicity, religion, or political identity. However, research has been slow to account for how the adverse effects of ethnic solidarity influence BG-affiliate firm performance. We investigate the interplay of owner ethnicity and their firms’ innovation and export performance. We find variations in affiliates’ performance based on their self-identified ethnicities by analyzing data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys (WBES) across 20 sub-Saharan African countries. Notably, long-established migrant communities, including Indian, Middle Eastern, and European entrepreneurs, experienced waning performance within the BG structure. In contrast, group-affiliated firms led by Chinese entrepreneurs show significant outperformance compared to their African counterparts and minority group affiliates. This study contributes to a novel understanding of the heterogeneous relationship between ethnic solidarity and BG-affiliated firms’ performance across sub-Saharan Africa. Full article

Since 2012, the University of Udine has been directly involved in research to study the Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) solidarity-economy sector, even collaborating to develop the first regional law on the solidarity economy (ESol). Recently, the university has implemented a project to profoundly investigate the practices that can be part of the Regional ESol tissue, based on the indications provided by the Regional Law 4/2017, to delimit and characterise them, know their distribution over the regional territory, and divide them by territorial areas (thinking about the activation of future economic-solidarity communities) and sectors (thinking about the activation of future economic-solidarity chains). After an initial qualitative analysis at the conceptual and values levels, and after building a database of regional ESol realities—useful for further qualitative–quantitative in-depth analysis in the future, too—we mapped and georeferenced the FVG ESol framework, obtaining indications on where to intervene to enhance ESol local supply chains as active laboratories for future bioregional territorial development, and to understand where the activation of local solidarity-based community assemblies is possible, to support local solidarity initiatives as the Regional Law states. The results show a regional picture rich in economic-solidarity realities spread throughout the territory with a wide variety of proposals but still struggling to concretely apply the tools provided by the Regional Law even though they are acting in the microsphere as cells of sustainable and solidarity-based “re-appropriation” and “re-inhabiting” of the territory. In this paper, we want to present the project results by discussing the size and characteristics of the regional solidarity-economic sector and the opportunity inherent in developing a different logic of “doing enterprise”, combining the need to produce wealth with maintaining, preserving, and enhancing our environment, cultivating an economical and productive culture distinct from the one still prevailing today, and making our territories “places of life”. Full article

Few studies have investigated sustainable management in the semiconductor industry. Consequently, this study analyzed the characteristics of companies excelling in sustainable management in the semiconductor industry using chief executive officer messages. It compared high- and low-performing groups to identify leading sustainable firms. Centrality analysis was conducted to extract keywords, which were mapped to the sustainability criteria to conduct network analysis. The results showed that the high-performing group emphasized sustainable development across the semiconductor industry ecosystem, while the low-performing group focused on internal sustainability aspects. This underscores the need for effective sustainable development in the semiconductor industry that extends beyond individual company efforts and embraces industry solidarity. Thus, this study presents a methodology that can be applied to similar studies in industries beyond semiconductors. Full article

In this contribution, we explore the possibilities of Responsible Innovation (RI) to assess and support the engagement of businesses in the spectrum of Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) and, in particular, cooperatives to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the firm level. We conduct a critical review of the academic literature on sustainable development and responsible innovation, focusing on the role of business to identify how firms in the spectrum of SSE can contribute through responsible innovation to the sustainable development agenda and how firms in the spectrum of SSE can benefit from it. Results suggest that firms can benefit from responsible innovation in the transformation of their business models. On the other hand, firms in the spectrum of SSE contribute to extending the scope of SDGs to business, not focusing on what cooperatives do by their nature (e.g., principles and values), but their contribution to key horizontal enablers (e.g., partnership and innovation) for the integration of firms in the sustainable development agenda. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the relationship between SSE firms and RI is assessed from the perspective of firms’ contribution to SDGs. Further research is needed to sophisticate the translation of particular tools developed in the framework of RI to firms in the spectrum of SSE and, in particular, cooperative firms. Full article