Michela Pellicelli

Innovation policy and environmental sustainability as strategic tools for reaching higher performances. A regional empirical analysis to find the best practice

Despite the sector or the company’s size, the choice of the strategies is worth; it is about a set of different aspects included by firms into their own strategic and operating procedures. The general aim of this study is to analyse how Italian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are tackling the challenges by adopting more responsible and sustainable strategies and tools in order to create social and economic value and to compete successfully. Moreover, the paper is focused on setting up a rulebook for family business SMEs in which are specified suggestions about overcoming the crisis and achieving the success.

The new economics of outsourcing: empirical evidence from italian textile-apparel industry

There is extensive evidence to indicate that many high-end/luxury firms in textile and apparel industry decided not to outsource to other countries. In order to accomplish the objective of the study we will take the propensity not to outsource as the dependent variable, taking into account not only the present degree of outsourcing but also the tendency to outsource at any given time. Having this in mind we asked those people surveyed what factors have they considered in the trade off between advantages and disadvantages. We also asked the relative importance of each factor. Our findings suggest that the main reason for maintaining production in Italy is the crucial role of brand for luxury goods.

The importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for branding and business success in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in a business-to-distributor (B2D) context

ABSTRACT Integrating corporate social responsibility into brand positioning strategies has become a key concept for the brand marketing of many companies. There is a wealth of studies focusing on the effects of CSR for large international brands and companies operating in business-to-consumer markets. However, there is only limited empirical evidence about the relevance of CSR for sales and branding strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a business-to-distributor (B2D) context. Using a qualitative research design based on an exploratory case study approach, this paper therefore explores how CSR can be incorporated into the brand marketing strategy of a SME in the B2D sector and how CSR is evaluated in terms of brand perceptions and purchase intentions of business partners (n = 25). The findings suggest that although industrial buyers attribute a certain importance to CSR, product design and perceived product quality are nevertheless the main purchase reasons. The paper concludes with discussing practical and theoretical implications.

From Outsourcing and Offshoring Strategies to Extreme Outsourcing

Technological innovation and competition have made products increasingly complex. This allows firms with complex production processes to specialize in one part only of the entire activity, outsourcing the other parts to specialized suppliers. The outsourcing strategies have undergone a profound evolution, from simple forms of production contracts made with third parties to agreements that involve functions and activities which, requiring core competencies, or being part of the core business, were until then considered inseparable from the company and not capable of being outsourced. The tendency today is to adopt global sourcing and offshoring. The propensity to outsource most of the functions and processes can take an extreme form, which we can define as extreme outsourcing , and lead to the formation of a virtual organization, a company characterized by the pure business coordination of its businesses, where all the productive and economic processes have been outsourced through the formation of a stable but flexible network.