Cinzia Colapinto

Financial portfolio management through the goal programming model: Current state-of-the-art

Since Markowitz (1952) formulated the portfolio selection problem, many researchers have developed models aggregating simultaneously several conflicting attributes such as: the return on investment, risk and liquidity. The portfolio manager generally seeks the best combination of stocks/assets that meets his/her investment objectives. The Goal Programming (GP) model is widely applied to finance and portfolio management. The aim of this paper is to present the different variants of the GP model that have been applied to the financial portfolio selection problem from the 1970s to nowadays.

A cardinality constrained stochastic goal programming model with satisfaction functions for venture capital investment decision making

Venture capital has proven to be an essential resource for economic growth, especially in some technological clusters. The focus is on the way the venture capitalist makes the investment decision and the portfolio selection. The aim of this paper is to formulate the venture capital investment problem through the Goal Programming model where the Financial Decision-Maker’s preferences will be explicitly incorporated through the concept of satisfaction functions. The proposed model will be illustrated by using data from an Italian venture capital fund.

Moving to a Multichannel and Multiplatform Company in the Emerging and Digital Media Ecosystem: The Case of Mediaset Group

In a moment of technological development, Mediaset Group, as most media incumbents, has to experiment with the revenue model, the industry value chain, and the enterprise model, including the use of partnerships and acquisitions, both in Italy and Spain. Mediaset needs to sense and respond rapidly to stay in synchrony with consumer behavior shifts. In the last decade, the company ventured in Internet, digital television (2004), pay-per-view (2005, starting from a smart card strategy), and mobile TV (2006); and got the current networked form of a fully international, integrated company. As a result, advertising is no longer the only revenue stream: Nowadays, Mediaset receives money from premium content access and from the renting of spectrum, widening the value created by new businesses (portfolio strategy). Relevant investments have been made on the content side: First, the acquisition of Endemol, a top editorial content company, enables Mediaset to act as leading producer in the television market. The success of Mediaset in the 2000s is also due to a networking logic and the ability to interlock with networks of finance, production, advertising, technology, and (more than others) politics.

The Presentation Of Celebrity Personas In Everyday Twittering, Managing online reputations throughout a communication crisis

New and social media are powerful new communication platforms capable of underpinning marketing and communication strategies; the new material mediation of interaction creates new sorts of interactional problems which need to be resolved. We intend to provide qualitative research and reflection on social media and their impact on issues pertaining to public relations activities and communication management. This article analyses management of the online reputation of an Olympic athlete, applying a Goffmanian framework regarding self-presentation. After a theoretical component concerning the concept of celebrity, sport sponsorship and crisis management, the authors focus on the uses and misuses of social media, addressing an exploratory research question, that is: how should a celebrity manage a communication crisis caused by misuse of a social media platform?

Beijing Olympics between media, sport and politics: perspectives from the Swiss and Italian media.

In this essay we aim to identify the approach taken by the Swiss and Italian traditional media, the Internet and new media during the Beijing Olympic Games (hereafter BOG). In general, the evening news programmes on the main Swiss and Italian television channels dedicated little coverage to the BOG and this coverage focused mainly on the performance of local athletes. Interestingly, our analysis shows that the tone of the captions used for the images differed between the paper edition of the newspapers and their online edition: the former appeared to be more critical of China whereas the latter focused more on the games as a sport event in which everyone could take part and share their emotions with other people.

Stochastic goal programming model and satisfaction functions for media selection and planning problem

In the knowledge society characterised by audience fragmentation and new media consumption, the success of a media campaign relies more on the effectiveness of the chosen media to achieve the desired aspiration levels. A media planner has limited financial resources and aims to get the best return on investment in terms of attention and engagement with potential customers, and at the same time to minimise total costs of advertising and communication. These objectives are conflicting, commensurable and their evaluations are generally stochastic. In this paper, we present a stochastic multi-objective approach for media planning decision-making and we propose two different goal programming formulations with satisfaction function based on scenario forecasting and deterministic equivalent. The proposed models will be illustrated through a numerical simulation based on data from the Italian market.

Exploring Academic Entrepreneurship in the Milan Area

Academic entrepreneurship has become an increasingly important means by which universities can contribute to the economic development of a country. In Italy, universities have produced more than 700 academic spin-off companies in the last ten years. This paper uses case studies to develop an understanding of the key factors that underpin the spin-off phenomenon in the area around Milan, a region which contains three public universities and has experience of spin-off activity originating from public research dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. The role of technology transfer offices in increasing the capacity for knowledge transfer and commercial exploitation is discussed. The paper also outlines how the involvement of the financial services sector, and venture capital companies and business angels in particular, can be necessary for supporting revenue growth in academic spin-offs.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony: visual insights into China's soft power

As sports media events, and especially Olympic Games, can be considered a public relations instrument, the 2008 Beijing Olympics allowed China to showcase its rapid economic development to the rest of the world and win respect and favour internationally. This paper explores how China used the Olympic Games as a soft power and international communication strategy by analysing particular moments and images of the 2008 opening ceremony. The ritual of the opening ceremony represents a concentration of features, qualities and messages that combine the local and global, the culturally specific and universal, in a complex production. For the purpose of our analysis, we adopted a thematic approach and focused on the images related to messages such as ‘harmony and peace’, ‘unity’ and ‘power and innovation’. These themes are mainly related to the revival of Chinese traditional cultural values based on Confucianism whose central element is the value of harmony.

Adaptive Decision Making and Intellectual Styles

Chapter 1:Introduction to the Role of Decision Making from Multiple Perspectives.-Chapter 2: Literature Review of Critical Thinking and Intellectual Styles.-Chapter 3: Case study - International Convergence and Divergence of Intellectual Styles and Critical Thinking Between Italy, Finland and Australia.-Chapter 4: Conclusion and Directions for Further Exploration.

Iterated Function Systems, Iterated Multifunction Systems, and Applications

In the first part of the paper we recall the theory of iterated function systems and iterated multifunction systems. In the second part we show some applications in economics, statistics and finance.