Mauro Sciarelli

Sustainability and stakeholder approach in Olivetti from 1943 to 1960: a lesson from the past

Purpose of the paper : The sustainable enterprise focuses on its stakeholders’ interests. Today this perspective is a central one in the dialogue on enterprise goals and on the nature of the firm but it was already clear in the past history of some enlightened entrepreneurs like Adriano Olivetti. This important entrepreneur was able to balance economic responsibility and social ones in his managerial model and he showed that the pillars of sustainability, as we call them today, were internally coherent. Methodology : We apply an interpretative framework (Carroll’s pyramid) to analyze the entrepreneurial choices by Adriano Olivetti according to the various perspectives of Corporate Social Responsibility. Our analysis is based upon Adriano Olivetti’s texts and the transcriptions of his speeches, his biographies, and on interviews to managers that were active during the years of Adriano Olivetti’s administration of the Olivetti Group or later experienced the values left in the company after his untimely death. Findings : This article highlights how their extraordinary experience has demonstrated the full compatibility between social and economic responsibilities. Moreover, the article proves that the various dimensions of corporate social responsibility are tightly connected. Finally, it shows how good stakeholder management practices are a successful strategy. Research Limits : The article’s main limitation is that it is mostly based on anecdotal evidence and secondary sources. Practical implications : The analytical framework we employ can be useful in driving responsible management processes for modern managers and entrepreneurs. Originality of the paper : This article proposes two modified versions of a classic model on corporate social responsibility.

Mediating Service Recovery Satisfaction in the Relationship between Internet Service Recovery and Customer Loyalty

This current study purposes to identify the relationships between service recovery strategies, service recovery satisfaction, and both dimensions of customer loyalty in regard to Internet providers using the partial least squares (PLS-SEM) approach on a sample of 430 internet customers in Egypt.This study contributes insights into how seven service recovery strategies affected customer loyalty with its both attitudinal and behavioral dimensions directly and indirectly via service recovery satisfaction. These insights are helpful for service managers faced with service failure and academicians interested in how service providers respond to service failures and customer dissatisfaction in the B2C context.The results of this study show that some SR strategies positively influence both service recovery satisfaction and customer loyalty toward internet providers. Furthermore, service recovery satisfaction positively influencing the customer loyalty. In addition, SRS plays a mediating role in the relationship between SR strategies and customer loyalty. The results highlight that internet service providers should implement SR strategies quickly and with an empathetic manner to satisfy customers and to encourage customers loyalty. Finally, some implications and further research directions were presented.

Alliances and Sustainability in Agricultural Small and Medium Enterprises

The relevant role of agricultural enterprises in sustainable development processes has been broadly studied; in developed countries these firms are subject to several forces driving them towards an intense, less sustainable, way of growing crops. One answer by small farmers, the most common agricultural organization in Europe, has been to aggregate in order to increase their negotiation power and get access to more efficient production techniques.In this theoretical paper we have focused on sustainable development processes and the strong relationship between their “three pillars”, or circles, and alliances by agricultural firms; we have used the lens of Resource-Based Theory (Barney, 1996) with a Market-Driven Management (Day, 1994) approach to understand how these various classes of alliances succeed, or hinder, each single agricultural enterprise in developing the needed capabilities to create and sustain a competitive advantage without endangering none of the two other perspectives.In order to assess sustainable development potential in alliances involving agricultural enterprises we have later developed an interpretative model that will be applied to several alliances types whose main characteristics will be discussed referring to some examples from Italian agricultural alliances.