Claudio Travaglini

Online Review Contents and Their Impact on Three and Four-Star Hotel Reservations: Some Evidence in Italy

Scholars and practitioners in the tourism sector seem to agree that web reputation affects hotel operational performance. This study addresses this issue by analysing the online review contents of 40 (20 four-star and 20 three-star) hotels in the Province of Rimini (Italy). In particular, it questions if and to what extent the positive/negative sense of TripAdvisor reviews influences the online reservations of the hotels considered. The content analysis performed on hotels suggests that traditional core services (like room and interaction with staff) represent key factors in determining customer appreciations and criticism. Panel data analysis, of the same hotels, seems to suggest the presence, to some extent, of a linear relationship between operational hotel performance and online reputation.

Accounting Regulation for Nonprofit Organizations in Italy and Spain: Towards an European Perspective

The paper present the nonprofit entities accounting regulation in Italy and in Spain in an European perspective. After a presentation of activities of nonprofit entities and difference in their governance, the paper presents the accounting regulation for nonprofit entities in Italy (Raccomandandazione sul rendiconto delle aziende nonprofit della Commissione Aziende Nonprofit del Consiglio Nazionale dei Dottori Commercialisti) and in Spain (Plan General de Contabilidad - Adapataciones para fundaciones de competencia estatal y asosciaciones declaradas de utilidad publica por Istitudo Central de Auditoria y Contabilidad) and compare the two regulations. The paper substinues the need for an European framework.

The generation and re-generation of social capital and enterprises in multi-stakeholders social cooperative enterprises: a system dynamic approach

Teorias sobre el capital social y el emprendedurismo social ponen de relieve la iniciativa del capital social en generar y nutrir buenas relaciones entre el sector terciario y el sector publico. En este trabajo se considera el capital social como un activo del sector terciario; en el, las cooperativas sociales de multistakeholders son vistas como resultado del capital social y, a la vez, como sus creadoras y difusoras. Para representar esta dinamica, se emplea un enfoque sistemico desde el punto de vista cualitativo asociado al analisis de las redes sociales como herramientas para la reconstruccion y modelado de procesos en las empresas sociales de la comunidad y de los sistemas de negocios relacionados. La colaboracion de voluntarios, clientes, lideres de la comunidad y los negocios locales del sector terciario son fundamentales para establecer la confianza en las relaciones entre las autoridades publicas locales y las cooperativas. Dichas relaciones ayudan a las cooperativas a mantener contratos a largo plazo con las autoridades locales como proveedoras de servicios sociales y les permite agregar innovacion a sus servicios, desarrollando experiencias, administrando modelos y manteniendo un intercambio con los servidores publicos. En el largo plazo esas relaciones unen a las empresas cooperativas sociales entre si y al sector publico, lo que ayuda a crear y renovar el capital social. En su actividad, las cooperativas conviven con trabajadores que permanecen como miembros de la cooperativa, mientras que otros stakeholders dejan la organizacion. Aun estos que mantienen un vinculo mas debil son fundamentales para convertir una cooperativa de trabajadores en una autentica cooperativa social de multistakeholders. Para mantener la gestion de los multistakeholders y las relaciones con el sector terciario y la sociedad civil, las cooperativas sociales tienen que estimular y reforzar la participacion y el dialogo con la comunidad por medio de un esfuerzo continuo de inclusion social. Con el uso de un enfoque de ingenieria inversa, se puede considerar determinante la creacion del capital social y, por consiguiente, apoyar la administracion que lo genera.

Controllo della performance nelle aziende dei servizi: contributi e tendenze

This issue of Management Control focuses on the socalled service sector or tertiary sector, which represents the most important component of every country’s economy. Since this sector covers a wide variety of activities, this issue gathers contributions on performance measurement systems and metrics used in different types of service businesses, such as transport companies, restaurants, public utilities, financial institutions, software companies and organizations delivering healthcare services. Reasons for a thematic issue on performance evaluation in service companies are: the speed at which modern countries have made the transition to servicebased economies, the emergence of new Internet-based services and ways of using ser-vices due to the spread of ICTs and the demand for new management control systems or metrics capable to respect services’ characteristics and their trends of change like the increasing involvement of costumers in service production. Selected contributions coherently highlight the need to integrate financial performance metrics with the measurement of qualitative and non-monetary results like customer satisfaction and socio-environmental impacts, the shift from monitoring processes to focusing on service outcomes and the opportunity offered by ICTs to collect and elaborate a great amount of data on customers, processes and external sources and use them to improve service managers’ decision making.

Community-Based Enterprises in Italy: Definition and Governance Models

In recent years, a new form of co-operative business is taking shape in Italy: the community-based enterprise, a community acting collectively at both management and business level, to pursue common goals. Community-based enterprises grow on a system of networks of free relationships among the members of a local community, with a high degree of reciprocity; when individuals work together in a business systems, relationships become social relationships. The complex of the community members’ relationships, objectives and expectations towards the company reflects necessarily on governance models that should follow a multistakeholder pattern. Multistakeholdership implies a direct and active participation of subjects bearing conflicting interests in the decisional process. This paper describes community-based enterprises in Italy, draws their governance models, and emphasizes how the passage from opening to different stakeholders to implementation of multistakeholder governance is very slow and difficult to put into practice.

La generación y reconstrucción del capital social en empresas cooperativas sociales de multistakeholders: un enfoque dinámico del sistema

Teorias sobre el capital social y el emprendedurismo social ponen de relieve la iniciativa del capital social en generar y nutrir buenas relaciones entre el sector terciario y el sector publico. En este trabajo se considera el capital social como un activo del sector terciario; en el, las cooperativas sociales de multistakeholders son vistas como resultado del capital social y, a la vez, como sus creadoras y difusoras. Para representar esta dinamica, se emplea un enfoque sistemico desde el punto de vista cualitativo asociado al analisis de las redes sociales como herramientas para la reconstruccion y modelado de procesos en las empresas sociales de la comunidad y de los sistemas de negocios relacionados. La colaboracion de voluntarios, clientes, lideres de la comunidad y los negocios locales del sector terciario son fundamentales para establecer la confianza en las relaciones entre las autoridades publicas locales y las cooperativas. Dichas relaciones ayudan a las cooperativas a mantener contratos a largo plazo con las autoridades locales como proveedoras de servicios sociales y les permite agregar innovacion a sus servicios, desarrollando experiencias, administrando modelos y manteniendo un intercambio con los servidores publicos. En el largo plazo esas relaciones unen a las empresas cooperativas sociales entre si y al sector publico, lo que ayuda a crear y renovar el capital social. En su actividad, las cooperativas conviven con trabajadores que permanecen como miembros de la cooperativa, mientras que otros stakeholders dejan la organizacion. Aun estos que mantienen un vinculo mas debil son fundamentales para convertir una cooperativa de trabajadores en una autentica cooperativa social de multistakeholders. Para mantener la gestion de los multistakeholders y las relaciones con el sector terciario y la sociedad civil, las cooperativas sociales tienen que estimular y reforzar la participacion y el dialogo con la comunidad por medio de un esfuerzo continuo de inclusion social. Con el uso de un enfoque de ingenieria inversa, se puede considerar determinante la creacion del capital social y, por consiguiente, apoyar la administracion que lo genera.

A construção e reconstrução de capital social em empresas cooperativas sociais de multi-staheholders: uma abordagem dinâmica do sistema

Teorias sobre el capital social y el emprendedurismo social ponen de relieve la iniciativa del capital social en generar y nutrir buenas relaciones entre el sector terciario y el sector publico. En este trabajo se considera el capital social como un activo del sector terciario; en el, las cooperativas sociales de multistakeholders son vistas como resultado del capital social y, a la vez, como sus creadoras y difusoras. Para representar esta dinamica, se emplea un enfoque sistemico desde el punto de vista cualitativo asociado al analisis de las redes sociales como herramientas para la reconstruccion y modelado de procesos en las empresas sociales de la comunidad y de los sistemas de negocios relacionados. La colaboracion de voluntarios, clientes, lideres de la comunidad y los negocios locales del sector terciario son fundamentales para establecer la confianza en las relaciones entre las autoridades publicas locales y las cooperativas. Dichas relaciones ayudan a las cooperativas a mantener contratos a largo plazo con las autoridades locales como proveedoras de servicios sociales y les permite agregar innovacion a sus servicios, desarrollando experiencias, administrando modelos y manteniendo un intercambio con los servidores publicos. En el largo plazo esas relaciones unen a las empresas cooperativas sociales entre si y al sector publico, lo que ayuda a crear y renovar el capital social. En su actividad, las cooperativas conviven con trabajadores que permanecen como miembros de la cooperativa, mientras que otros stakeholders dejan la organizacion. Aun estos que mantienen un vinculo mas debil son fundamentales para convertir una cooperativa de trabajadores en una autentica cooperativa social de multistakeholders. Para mantener la gestion de los multistakeholders y las relaciones con el sector terciario y la sociedad civil, las cooperativas sociales tienen que estimular y reforzar la participacion y el dialogo con la comunidad por medio de un esfuerzo continuo de inclusion social. Con el uso de un enfoque de ingenieria inversa, se puede considerar determinante la creacion del capital social y, por consiguiente, apoyar la administracion que lo genera.

Creation, Maintenance and Dissipation of the Relational Social Capital within Social Cooperative Enterprises: The Systemic Thinking Perspective

Theories on social capital and their effects on social entrepreneurship has mainly underlined the power of social capital to generate enterprises and to foster good relations between third sector organizations and public sector. This paper proposes a different perspective to consider role in build social capital of a third sector enterprise: multistakeholder social cooperative are seen, at the same time, as social capital result, creators, and incubators. To represent this perspective we’ll use a qualitative system dynamic approach in which social capital is measured throw some proxy. Italian Social cooperatives has become during last twenty years main producers of social welfare service: some of them adopt a multistakeholder governance model and declare themselves as “community enterprise” choosing to represent “general interest of the community and integrating in an enterprise activity”. Sometimes they operate integrating disadvantaged people in work activities,these are work integration social enterprise, some of them, as effect of local authorities contracts. are involved in managing public services. Often these typology of social enterprises are engaged by people who come from third sector organizations and this is the way in which they continue their personal commitment in social enterprises. These people bring their relation and these “personal weak ties” are fundamental in developing cooperatives: so social capital developed in other third sector entities is transferred in multistakeholder cooperative. Cooperation of voluntary, customers, community leaders and third sector local organizations are fundamental to establish trust relations between cooperative and public local authorities. These relations help cooperatives to have long term contracts with local authorities contract as provider of social services and make them possible to innovate the services, developing experiences and management models and exchanging them with the public officers. The long-term relations and the organizational relations that linked social cooperatives and public organizations contribute to create and renovate social capital. In this way multistakeholder cooperatives originated by social capital developed in third sector organizations produce new social capital within the cooperatives and between cooperatives (entrepreneurial components of third sector) and public sector. In their entrepreneurial life cooperatives has to contrast the “working drift” in which only workers remain as members of the cooperative while others stakeholders (volunteers, customer, local social leaders) don’t continue their participation in cooperative. These people different from workers are (stake)holders of “weak ties” fundamental to make a worker’s cooperative an authentic social multistakeholders cooperative. To maintain the multistakeholders governance, and the relations with third sector and civil society, social cooperative has to reinforce participation and dialogue with civil society through continue effort of inclusion of people bringing social proposal. We try to represent these process in a system dynamic model, measuring social capital created by social cooperatives through some proxy as number of volunteers and deep cooperation with public institution. Using a reverse-engineering approach we can individuate the determinants of the creation of social capital and so give support to governance that create social capital. In this way, relations between third sector, public sector are at the same time in a social multistakeholder enterprise resulting and building social capital.

An Analysis of Social Enterprises Governance Models Through a Comparative Study of the Legislation of Eleven Countries

Social Enterprise is increasingly becoming a pressing area of study in European faculties, and likewise, a broad range of literature has been produced on the various, relating arguments. One of the aspects least focused upon, however, regards the issue of governance; which is a fundamental aspect when defining a type of governing system that could lead to an improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of social enterprises. The need to combine both social and economic aims in the decision making process also emphasizes the importance of stakeholder participation. Furthermore, seeing as how social enterprises work in an environment of high public involvement, whether it be with public entities or with the community as a whole, issues such as business administration and activity supervision, come to be of high importance. The production of social utility goods and/or services is directed toward a plurality of local actors, which are to be furthermore guaranteed a high level of accountability and transparency. This paper explores governance through an in-depth analysis and comparison of the legislation of eleven countries on social enterprise or social cooperatives (Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and United Kingdom).

Financial Statement Analysis in Nonprofit Organizations

A financial statement analysis framework for nonprofit organizations is proposed, based on Nonprofit Commission of Certified Public Accountants Association (Commissione Aziende Nonprofit Ordine Nazionale Dottori Commercialisti) for Italian Nonprofits.