Luca Pirolo

The Impact of Social Capital on the Start-Ups' Performance Growth

This paper analyzes the development of strong and weak ties of social capital between a start-up and its main customers and its impact on the growth of the start-up’s economic and innovative task performance outcomes. Results confirm that there are different configurations of social capital able to influence the start-up’s performance growth during its life cycle, which are contingent on the selected measures of task performance outcomes. Our findings can offer some interesting reflections in the field of social capital, entrepreneurship, and performance research, raising critical strategic implications for start-ups in terms of opportunities, resources, and governance.

Demand Forecasting in the Fashion Industry: A Review

Forecasting demand is a crucial issue for driving efficient operations management plans. This is especially the case in the fashion industry, where demand uncertainty, lack of historical data and seasonal trends usually coexist. Many approaches to this issue have been proposed in the literature over the past few decades. In this paper, forecasting methods are compared with the aim of linking approaches to the market features.

Revitalising the Outsourcing Discourse within the Boundaries of Firms Debate

Despite outsourcing has been at the core of managerial practice and literature for a long time, still authors do not agree on a clear understanding of the overall outsourcing process. This article answers two main questions, relevant to researchers and practitioners: 1.What are the main findings so far in outsourcing literature? 2. What do we still need to learn? Through a comprehensive review of the literature, we offer systematization of the existent body of knowledge on outsourcing, its implications on firms’ boundaries, and the theoretical challenges. In conclusion, implications for managers are drawn.

Product Lifecycle Management as a Tool to Create Value in the Fashion System

The aim of this paper is to present the fashion system as a “cluster” and to evaluate the characteristics of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) taking into account various factors, in particular the different approaches to dealing with market needs. More specifically, the “ready-to-wear fashion” and “fast fashion” models will be presented and compared. The paper takes the Italian fashion system as the unit of analysis and assumes that consumer behavioural factors act in a non-predictable (i.e., random) way in the constantly changing social and cultural environment. Considering the internal complexity of a whole market system, a simplified system dynamics model is proposed.

Improvement of Manufacturing Operations through a Lean Management Approach: A Case Study in the Pharmaceutical Industry

This paper aims to demonstrate the positive effect of a Lean Management (LM) approach to increasing efficiency, even in a company which is subject to critical market issues. The pharmaceutical industry is a well-known example of a crisis-affected context and companies have directed attention to Lean Management for a long time, but they are stable in increasing effectiveness. This research uses a case study to move the attention to efficiency as an attractive LM goal. The result of this study provides a reference for academia as well as the business field.

The Italian Footwear Industry: an Empirical Analysis

This paper aims to provide readers with a deep empirical analysis on the Italian footwear industry in order to investigate the evolution of its structure (trends in sales and production, number of firms and employees, main markets, etc.), together with the identification of the main drivers of competitiveness in order to explain the strategies implemented by local actors.

La creazione di valore nelle strategie di disinvestimento: evidenze dal contesto europeo

Purpose of the paper : In this work, we analyze the role of pre-divestiture performance on the divestiture’s value creation in the context of European countries. Specifically, we explore the existence of potential interaction effects between pre-divestiture performance and the presence of blockholder and the degree of relatedness between the divesting firm core business and the divested business unit. Methodology : Econometric analysis on a unique dataset of 147 divestitures across thirteen countries is used to test the hypotheses. Findings : The pre-divestiture performance of the parent firm moderates the impact of both the blockholder and the relatedness on the parent’s post divestiture performance. Our findings indicate that when prior performance is higher, the impact of the presence of a blockhdolder on parent performance is less positive, while the impact of unrelatedness between the divesting firm’s core business and the divested business unit is less negative. Research limits: While our empirical analysis controls for the two most common modes of divestiture - spinoffs and sell-offs, we were not able to focus on homogeneous samples of divestiture deal types. Future work might more systematically test for differences across these modes, for instance through separate samples. Practical Implication : From a managerial point of view, executives need to be aware that divestiture strategies do not only represent tools to remedy to wrong managerial decisions, but rather can also be used to pursue the firm’s growth. Moreover, they should consider that ownership structure and relatdness may affect the performance of the divestiture deal in ways that are dependent on the pre-divestiture performance. This may lead managers to modify the timing and overall design of their divestiture strategies. Originality of the paper : Our study contributes to the divestiture literature by addressing the research gap on the determinants of the parent performance in European countries through a focus on pre-divestiture performance.

Spin-off and Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Parent companies usually undertake corporate spin-offs to cope with higher competitive environments or when, in high technology industries, the differences between R&D investments and intangible assets are larger. Consistent with the recent “positive view“, spin-offs can be considered as a “proactive strategic choice” to foster innovation, develop new activities, being different from past strategic initiatives and, more generally, not being strictly connected to the corporate strategy of the firm. In order to investigate the relation between divestiture decisions and innovation, we conduct an explorative case study in the pharmaceutical industry to show how spin-offs can help firms to explore new opportunities for innovation, search for new funding and push to create the basis for future development.

Product lifecycle management and compliance with international standards: a case study analysis in the footwear industry

As the globalisation of markets in the footwear industry became more evident, several restrictions have been imposed by international directives, standards and regulations, as well as by market requirements. Such external needs are progressively pushing the footwear manufacturers to introduce continuous improvements in their production processes and in the firm management in general. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the awareness of the adoption of product lifecycle management (PLM) in the fashion industry, in order to describe the state of the art in the Italian context. To this extent, we investigated the conformity to industry-related technical regulations as a first step towards the international development of companies. The paper presents the preliminary results of a survey conducted in the Riviera del Brenta industrial district in the Veneto Region of Italy.

Business model adaptation in response to an exogenous shock: An empirical analysis of the Portuguese footwear industry

Business models have received increasing attention in both academic and managerial communities. However, little attention has been paid to how business models change in response to extreme events. This topic is of critical importance since failure to achieve adaptation in a timely manner can lead to negative consequences such as a significant decrease in firm value or bankruptcy. This study explores how the business model paradigm of the Portuguese footwear industry changed following China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The empirical results suggest that the shock acted as a trigger for change for the Portuguese footwear firms which reflected in the adoption of a new business model characterized by speed and flexibility in the manufacturing process, faster response to customer needs and, in specific cases, in downward integration through the creation of own brands selling directly to final consumers. This result, however, was not the outcome of a sudden change but rather the consequence of a planned adaptation strategy led by a key industry actor that acted as a network orchestrator coordinating the actions of the Portuguese footwear firms. The implications of these findings as well as directions for future research are discussed in the last part of this study.