Antonio Costantini

The effect of scholar collaboration on impact and quality of academic papers

We study how scholar collaboration varies across disciplines in science, social science, arts and humanities and the effects of author collaboration on impact and quality of co-authored papers. Impact is measured with the aid of citations collected by papers, while quality is determined by the judgements expressed by peer reviewers. To this end, we take advantage of the dataset provided by the first-ever national research assessment exercise of Italian universities, which involved 20 disciplinary areas, 102 research structures, 18,500 research products, and 6661 peer reviewers. Collaboration intensity neatly varies across disciplines: it is inescapable is most sciences and negligible in most humanities. We measured a general positive association between cardinality of the author set of a paper and citation count as well as peer quality of the contribution. The correlation is stronger when the affiliations of authors are heterogeneous. There exist, however, notable and interesting counter-examples.

The first Italian research assessment exercise: A bibliometric perspective

In December 2003, seventeen years after the first UK research assessment exercise, Italy started up its first-ever national research evaluation, with the aim to evaluate, using the peer review method, the excellence of the national research production. The evaluation involved 20 disciplinary areas, 102 research structures, 18,500 research products and 6661 peer reviewers (1465 from abroad); it had a direct cost of 3.55 millions Euros and a time length spanning over 18 months. The introduction of ratings based on ex post quality of output and not on ex ante respect for parameters and compliance is an important leap forward of the national research evaluation system toward meritocracy. From the bibliometric perspective, the national assessment offered the unprecedented opportunity to perform a large-scale comparison of peer review and bibliometric indicators for an important share of the Italian research production. The present investigation takes full advantage of this opportunity to test whether peer review judgements and (article and journal) bibliometric indicators are independent variables and, in the negative case, to measure the sign and strength of the association. Outcomes allow us to advocate the use of bibliometric evaluation, suitably integrated with expert review, for the forthcoming national assessment exercises, with the goal of shifting from the assessment of research excellence to the evaluation of average research performance without significant increase of expenses.

Management control systems in complex settings: Emerging research and opportunities

Management Control Systems in Complex Settings: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a noteworthy reference work for the latest academic research on business management and the complexity involved in decision-making, direction, measurement, and the evaluation of a company. Containing broad commentary on an assortment of relevant views and issues, such as customer loyalty and reputation, effective manufacturing processes, and strategic issues in complex rms, this book is optimally intended for business professionals, managers, and aspiring entrepreneurs as well as students and academics looking for groundbreaking analysis on the Three Vs model of inventory management and value creation.

The Effect of Perceived Environmental Uncertainty on the Use and Perceived Usefulness of Strategic Management Accounting: Some Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) affects the use and the perceived usefulness of strategic management accounting (SMA). The study takes the perspective that SMA can be regarded as a set of strategically oriented management accounting techniques and makes the research hypothesis that as PEU increases the use and perceived usefulness of SMA techniques also increase. To test the hypothesis, the responses of 55 CFOS to a questionnaire survey were analysed. The survey considered a cross-section of large manufacturing companies in Italy. The regression-based analysis mainly shows: (1) a positive relationship between PEU and the use of strategic pricing as SMA technique supporting product pricing decisions; (2) a positive relationship between PEU and the use of balanced scorecard; (3) a positive association between PEU and the perceived usefulness of all the SMA techniques included in the study