This article investigates intellectual capital (IC) and value creation at an ecosystem level, whi... more This article investigates intellectual capital (IC) and value creation at an ecosystem level, which is a topic relatively unexplored within public administration. Yet, public sector organisations are a prime example of how IC transcends the scope of individual entities and contributes to knowledge transfer and value creation into wider society. The research was developed within the first step of an interventionist research project focusing on a public sector agency which supports local authorities in Italy and launched an in-depth review of its processes to assess in how far it was fulfilling its mission. Part of this initiative was to assess whether, how, and to what extent the agency creates value for itself and for its stakeholders. The research develops a framework which visualises the importance of accounting for outcomes which are both internal and external to an organisation. The analysis underlines the need for reporting frameworks to consider the overall value creation, maintenance, and erosion. The analysis moves beyond the outcomes of activities and outputs for a single entity to appreciate their impact on its stakeholders' IC. Results call for the emergence of defined roles for IC management and for the adoption of an ecosystem perspective in governance, business, and reporting models for the public sector. Public managers should adopt a business case imperative with a particular emphasis on maximising value creation for the whole ecosystem. IC visual maps including key stakeholders can help in such endeavour and improve reporting frameworks.
Economia Pubblica - The Italian Journal of Public Economics and Law, 2022
La rendicontazione extra-contabile è oggetto di crescente attenzione con l’evoluzione normativa a... more La rendicontazione extra-contabile è oggetto di crescente attenzione con l’evoluzione normativa a livello internazionale. Anche la normativa italiana richiede alle grandi aziende e agli enti del Terzo settore di predisporre una rendicontazione non finanziaria. Questo contributo si focalizza sulle organizzazioni sindacali, un settore poco frequentato in letteratura, per approfondire in che modo le caratteristiche istituzionali e la natura degli stakeholder coinvolti influenzino la rendicontazione extra-contabile. Approfondendo il caso dell’Unione Sindacale Regionale CISL del Friuli Venezia Giulia, si evidenzia come questi aspetti influenzino in particolare la rilevanza delle informazioni che vengono rendicontate e il modo in cui vengono rendicontate.
The contribution of intellectual capital to value creation beyond individual companies into wider... more The contribution of intellectual capital to value creation beyond individual companies into wider society, as described in the fourth stage of intellectual capital research, is of particular relevance for the public sector where organizations have a stewardship responsibility. They should engage stakeholders into value co-creation by developing organizational and ecosystem collective intelligence through traditional as well as innovative tools such as online technologies. Yet, the relationship between intellectual capital and value creation often remains a relatively unexplored process within public administration. This paper focuses on the case study of a regional agency in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy, which is not only responsible for assistance, regulation and service delivery, but also for engaging its stakeholders and the public at large to disseminate knowledge to promote values and appropriate behaviour in the policy areas it is responsible for. The research looks at the role played by intellectual capital in the agency's value creation strategies and how the agency's structure and processes influence the development and management of intellectual capital in an effort to create value for its ecosystem. The research not only validates the existence of ecosystem frameworks in public administration and the key role played by intellectual capital in their design, creation and implementation, but it also highlights the need in the public sector for a defined role for intellectual capital, stakeholder engagement and collective intelligence in governance models. In particular, findings underline the need for new intellectual capital management systems based on a collective intelligence approach within multi-stakeholder co-creation frameworks in a public service ecosystem logic, reflecting the public sector's evolving role and the new tools developed with the advent of new technologies.
L'evoluzione delle forme della rendicontazione: il bilancio di missione nelle organizzazioni sindacali
ECONOMIA PUBBLICA
La rendicontazione extra-contabile è oggetto di crescente attenzione con l'evolu- zione norma... more La rendicontazione extra-contabile è oggetto di crescente attenzione con l'evolu- zione normativa a livello internazionale. Anche la normativa italiana richiede alle grandi aziende e agli enti del Terzo settore di predisporre una rendicontazione non finanziaria. Questo contributo si focalizza sulle organizzazioni sindacali, un settore poco frequentato in letteratura, per approfondire in che modo le caratteristiche isti- tuzionali e la natura degli stakeholder coinvolti influenzino la rendicontazione extracontabile. Approfondendo il caso dell'Unione Sindacale Regionale CISL del Friuli Venezia Giulia, si evidenzia come questi aspetti influenzino in particolare la rilevanza delle informazioni che vengono rendicontate e il modo in cui vengono rendicontate.
Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 2021
PurposeThis paper explores how global pandemic crises affect the financial vulnerability of munic... more PurposeThis paper explores how global pandemic crises affect the financial vulnerability of municipalities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is developed from the relevant literature an analytical framework to examine municipal financial vulnerability before a global pandemic crisis and in its immediate aftermath by mapping and systematizing its dimensions and sources. To illustrate how it can be used and evaluate its robustness and flexibility, such a tool was applied to Portugal and Italy, two countries that particularly suffered from the Covid-19 crisis.FindingsThe application of the analytical framework has shown how financially vulnerable municipalities are to global pandemic crises. Financial vulnerability relates to issues ranging from institutional design to internal financial conditions and the perception of the capacity to cope with a crisis. Results further reveal that vulnerability has an inherent contingent nature in time and space and can lead to paradoxical outcom...
Public sector accounting in transition: Changing frameworks and practices among Italian public nursing homes
Over the past twenty years, mounting financial pressures and intensifying requests for better pub... more Over the past twenty years, mounting financial pressures and intensifying requests for better public services have often resulted in an increased focus on efficiency, accountability and sustainability within an overall modernization effort of public administration processes. This has led to an emphasis on performance information and to the adoption of new accounting techniques, such as cost and accrual accounting. These new frameworks and standards can supplement or replace more traditional cash- and commitment-based budgetary accounting systems. In some instances, public organizations were given the choice to adopt a harmonized system or to leap-frog to pure accrual accounting. This paper explores what is advisable according to current regulations and the opinions of financial managers at public nursing homes in the Italian Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia.
At a time of growing expectations and diminishing public resources for healthcare, improving the ... more At a time of growing expectations and diminishing public resources for healthcare, improving the performance of health systems becomes a crucial issue as well as identifying key challenges and weaknesses. This paper provides insights into the comparison of health system performance in order to explore on the one hand whether there is any convergence of policy indications and, on the other, how structures and processes of health systems affect their performance. In particular, it sheds light on the contribution that management studies have provided to the appreciation of these core management issues in comparing health systems, while identifying important gaps in the literature and sketching out an agenda for future research. The paper develops an informed analysis of published articles on comparing health system performance using a Structured Literature Review. While there are more and more articles comparing health systems, i) few focus on comparing their performance, ii) even less...
Stakeholder Engagement: Which Arrangements for Value Co- Creation?
Micro & Macro Marketing, 2020
The theoretical understanding of marketing is nowadays focusing extensively on value co-creation ... more The theoretical understanding of marketing is nowadays focusing extensively on value co-creation and stakeholder relationships. However, despite the growing interest, still little is known about how value is co-created in multi-stakeholder settings. This paper explores how stakeholder engagement contributes to value co-creation and which engagement mechanisms help such process in service delivery. Starting from a review of the relevant literature a qualitative analytical framework is developed and used to analyze six cases of multi-stakeholder interaction. Findings show that promoting accessibility in terms of process inclusiveness and openness allows to enhance value co-creation. Results are relevant from an academic perspective, since they shed a new light on a fundamental phenomenon in a given empirical setting such as public service, and for practice, since they provide decision makers with insights about how to approach stakeholder engagement in order to enhance its value creation effects
International journal of business and social science, 2016
Recent literature on risk management has suggested that the selection of risk assessment tools ma... more Recent literature on risk management has suggested that the selection of risk assessment tools may be influenced by the type of risk being managed. In particular, the assessment of strategic risk seems to imply the use of both quantitative and qualitative techniques. This exploratory study investigates whether this characterisation holds in practice, based on a survey considering a random sample of 61 large manufacturing firms from Italy. Results point out that surveyed firms tend to use both quantitative (probabilistic and non-probabilistic) and qualitative techniques (risk maps) to evaluate strategic risk. The analysis also indicates that quantitative techniques are perceived as important as qualitative ones, and that they are moderately relevant overall. The results suggest that what risk management literature posits about the use of tools for strategic risk assessment broadly aligns with the responses of Chief Financial Officers.
Uploads
Papers by Silvia Iacuzzi
Questo contributo si focalizza sulle organizzazioni sindacali, un settore poco frequentato in letteratura, per approfondire in che modo le caratteristiche istituzionali e la natura degli stakeholder coinvolti influenzino la rendicontazione extra-contabile. Approfondendo il caso dell’Unione Sindacale Regionale CISL del Friuli Venezia Giulia, si evidenzia come questi aspetti influenzino in particolare la rilevanza delle informazioni che vengono rendicontate e il modo in cui vengono rendicontate.