Elisa Truant

From Sustainability to Integrated Reporting: The Legitimizing Role of the CSR Manager

This article aims to explore how an individual actor, embodying the role of the institutional entrepreneur, legitimizes new corporate reporting practices. This study is based on a longitudinal and explanatory case study of an Italian listed public utility, operating in the electricity sector, which has recently implemented Integrated Reporting. Findings were analysed through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship, revealing that Integrated Reporting can be implemented through the legitimizing activities carried out by the corporate social responsibility manager. This organizational professional, with strong competences and intrinsic engagement, efficiently uses available resources and gains support from various organizational groups through intense networking. A substantial change in corporate reporting practices can influence the position of the institutional entrepreneur who originally triggered the change process. The institutional entrepreneur first moves from the periphery to the centre of the organization and then shares such central role with other organizational professionals once the change has been implemented.

Management control systems in family businesses: Do women matter? Evidence from the Italian food sector

The aim of the project was to investigate medium-size family firms in Italy operating in the food sector, which is crucial for the national economy as it ranks second after the metal and mechanical engineering industries. Special attention was paid to whether the presence of women in top managerial positions had any significant effect on the strategic orientation of family firms (FFs), in terms of strategy formulation and implementation of management control systems. The results of empirical analysis using a sample of family businesses show that gender diversity in top managerial positions can benefit strategic orientation, as FFs are more likely to formulate and implement strategy through advanced management control tools.

Management control practices and benefits: evidence from Italian family and non-family firms

The importance of management accounting systems to the running of an organisation is widely recognised, even though these tools are not uniformly adopted by companies, with significant differences seen between small and large enterprises, family and non-family firms. The research was conducted through an empirical analysis of a sample of small and medium-sized Italian family and non-family firms, with the aim of investigating the different types of management control systems implemented. Furthermore, seeking to fill the existing gap in the literature, the paper focuses on the benefits perceived by the users of these systems. The results show that, both in family and non-family firms, a considerable percentage of managers gained significant benefits, especially as regards decision-making processes, business growth, business innovation and performance improvement. The article may have some theoretical implications as it may be considered a development in research studies on management control systems and family business management.

Influence of internationalization on management accounting tools: evidences from Italian firms

This paper aims at analyzing the diffusion of management accounting tools in Italian manufacturing firms. More specifically, this paper investigates, with an exploratory purpose, the role of internationalization. The elimination of trade barriers, the markets globalization and the environmental turbulences affected company strategies. The search for new partners, new clients and new suppliers from foreign countries are only some of recently Italian firms’ trends due to the up-above phenomena. The research is based on the qualitative data analysis collected through a survey by questionnaire. In particular, 264 questionnaires of Italian manufacturing companies were analyzed. The results of this paper provide empirical evidence on a high positive correlation between the increasing foreign client percentage and the management control tools, activity-based costing and target costing in particular. In the range of internationalization contingency variables, this exploratory study considered only the impact of foreign customers. Further researches can involve other factors as foreign suppliers, joint-ventures, and technological exchanges. This paper contributes to analyse the impact of internationalization, a contingency variable today not fully investigated in management accounting system researches. In fact, managerial control systems and management accounting systems can be considered as key variables in each kind of organization (Anthony, 1956), both publicly-owned and private, both in manufacturing industries and services.