The purpose of this research is to provide empirical evidence on determinants of the economic use of patented inventions in order to contribute to the literature on technology and innovation management. The current work consists of three main parts, each of which constitutes a self-consistent research paper. The first paper uses a meta-analytic approach to review and synthesize the existing body of empirical research on the determinants of technology licensing. The second paper investigates the factors affecting the choice between the following alternative economic uses of patented inventions: pure internal use, pure licensing, and mixed use. Finally, the third paper explores the least studied option of the economic use of patented inventions, namely, the sale of patent rights. The data to empirically test the hypotheses come from a large-scale survey of European Patent inventors resident in 21 European countries, Japan, and US. The findings provided in this dissertation contribute to a better understanding of the economic use of patented inventions by expanding the limits of previous research in several different dimensions.

The candidate tackled an important issue in contemporary management: the role of CSR and Sustainability. The research proposal focused on a longitudinal and inductive research, directed to specify the evolution of CSR and contribute to the new institutional theory, in particular institutional work framework, and to the relation between institutions and discourse analysis. The documental analysis covers all the evolution of CSR, focusing also on a number of important networks and associations. Some of the methodologies employed in the thesis have been employed as a consequence of data analysis, in a truly inductive research process. The thesis is composed by two section. The first section mainly describes the research process and the analyses results. The candidates employed several research methods: a longitudinal content analysis of documents, a vocabulary research with statistical metrics as cluster analysis and factor analysis, a rhetorical analysis of justifications. The second section puts in relation the analysis results with theoretical frameworks and contributions. The candidate confronted with several frameworks: Actor-Network-Theory, Institutional work and Boundary Work, Institutional Logic. Chapters are focused on different issues: a historical reconstruction of CSR; a reflection about symbolic adoption of recurrent labels; two case studies of Italian networks, in order to confront institutional and boundary works; a theoretical model of institutional change based on contradiction and institutional complexity; the application of the model to CSR and Sustainability, proposing Sustainability as a possible institutional logic.

This Doctoral Thesis unfolds into a collection of three distinct papers that share an interest in institutional theory and technology transfer. Taking into account that organizations are increasingly exposed to a multiplicity of demands and pressures, we aim to analyze what renders this situation of institutional complexity more or less difficult to manage for organizations, and what makes organizations more or less successful in responding to it. The three studies offer a novel contribution both theoretically and empirically. In particular, the first paper “The dimensions of organizational fields for understanding institutional complexity: A theoretical framework” is a theoretical contribution that tries to better understand the relationship between institutional complexity and fields by providing a framework. The second article “Beyond institutional complexity: The case of different organizational successes in confronting multiple institutional logics” is an empirical study which aims to explore the strategies that allow organizations facing multiple logics to respond more successfully to them. The third work “ How external support may mitigate the barriers to university-industry collaboration” is oriented towards practitioners and presents a case study about technology transfer in Italy.

This dissertation project aims at shedding light on the micro-foundations of international entrepreneurship, focusing on the pre-internationalization phase and taking an individual-level perspective. Three research questions are investigated building on a cognitive model of internationalization intentions. First, what are the antecedents to internationalization intentions, i.e. desirability and feasibility, and how they interact with psychological distance towards internationalization options. Second, what is the role of previous entrepreneurs’ experience on such antecedents, in particular for immigrant vs. non-immigrant entrepreneurs. Third, how are these antecedent elements influenced by entrepreneurs’ individual-level motivations and goals. Using a new data set from 140 independent, non-internationalized, high-tech SMEs and their 169 owners, a variety of analytical techniques are used to investigate the research questions, such as structural equation modeling, hierarchical regression and a "laddering" technique. This project advances our theoretical understanding of internationalization and international entrepreneurship and has relevant implications for entrepreneurs and policy-makers.

The aim of the present work is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between organization theory and management practice. It is organized as a collection of two papers, a theoretical and conceptual contribution and an ethnographic study. The first paper is concerned with systematizing different literatures inside and outside the field of organization studies that deal with the theory-practice relation. After identifying a series of positions to the theory-practice debate and unfolding some of their implicit assumptions and limitations, a new position called entwinement is developed in order to overcome status quo through reconciliation and integration. Accordingly, the paper proposes to reconceptualize theory and practice as a circular iterative process of action and cognition, science and common-sense enacted in the real world both by organization scholars and practitioners according to purposes at hand. The second paper is the ethnographic study of an encounter between two groups of expert academics and practitioners occasioned by a one-year executive business master in an international business school. The research articulates a process view of the knowledge exchange between management academics and practitioners in particular and between individuals belonging to different communities of practice, in general, and emphasizes its dynamic, relational and transformative mechanisms. Findings show that when they are given the chance to interact, academics and practitioners set up local provisional relations that enable them to act as change intermediaries vis-a-vis each other’s worlds, without tying themselves irremediably to each other and to the scenarios they conjointly projected during the master’s experience. Finally, the study shows that provisional relations were accompanied by a recursive shift in knowledge modes. While interacting, academics passed from theory to practical theorizing, practitioners passed from an involved practical mode to a reflexive and quasi-theoretical one, and then, as exchanges proceeded, the other way around.

Dopo l’analisi delle modalità di misurazione del potere di mercato e della competizione tra brand nel contesto di un mercato caratterizzato dalla presenza di prodotti differenziati, viene presentata l’applicazione dei modelli a scelta discreta nel mercato del latte alimentare in Italia. Ho utilizzato dati scanner per analizzare i comportamenti nelle scelte di acquisto dei consumatori e le dinamiche competitive tra i due maggiori brand presenti nel mercato e le marche commerciali. Ho considerato il mercato del latte alimentare suddiviso in due sottocategorie, quella del latte a lunga conservazione (UHT) e quella del latte refrigerato. Ho quindi proceduto alla stima della domanda del latte alimentare utilizzando un nested logit model, appartenente alla categoria dei modelli a scelta discreta. Utilizzando i coefficienti stimati è possibile sia calcolare le elasticità di sostituzione tra i diversi brand e le elasticità dirette, nonché i margini di profitto dei brand presi in analisi considerando differenze nelle strategie di prezzo e nella struttura di mercato. / This work first gives an overview of the measurement of market power and brand competition in a differentiated products market, secondly applies discrete choice models to asses the Italian milk market. I use scanner data to estimate consumer purchasing decisions and competitive relationships between two major industry-level brands and (as a third category) supermarket private labels. I divide all milk sold in Italian market into two distinct classes of products: “UHT” and “Refrigerated” milk. I employ a well-known “discrete choice” nested-logit model to estimate consumer demand. Then, using the estimated coefficients, it is possible to calculate both consumer substitution patterns between products, and the profit-margins of the three major retail-level brands across the different sub-categories of milk under different pricing strategies and market structure.

Through a cyberethnographic informed approach applied to a mature Free and Open Source Software video game collective this research addressed a central issue in contemporary information age: the increasing place taken by users in creating and maintaining innovative public goods thanks to the distributed carrying capacity of the Internet. The empirical work is based on an ethnographic immersion in the field and on interviews and it is theoretically informed by Actor-Network Theory and integrated with insights coming from Action Nets.

La tesi affronta la questione delle motivazioni che possono spingere la persona a donare gratuitamente il proprio tempo a favore di un’organizzazione di volontariato. Tanto la tematica del nonprofit quanto quella della motivazioni al lavoro (che costituiscono i due punti focali dell’elaborato) sono trattati in un’ottica multidisciplinare presentando una breve rassegna dei principali contributi di studiosi afferenti ad ambiti scientifici eterogenei. Nell’ultima parte del lavoro viene presentata una ricerca condotta su 292 volontari della provincia di Monza e Brianza provenienti da tre associazioni di volontariato diverse per ambito di intervento e target di riferimento: ABIO, AUSER, Protezione Civile. Tramite un questionario, costruito partendo dallo studio di Carpenter e Myers (2007), si è analizzata la rilevanza di diverse categorie motivazionali che, secondo le precedenti ricerche condotte, possono avere una qualche influenza sulla scelta di essere un volontario (e di continuare ad esserlo): l’altruismo puro e impuro, la reputazione, la carriera, la socialità, la propensione al rischio e al risparmio, la religiosità, la familiarità, l’essere stato invitato esplicitamente da amici e conoscenti. L’ultima parte presenta i risultati dell’analisi dei dati da cui si evince la presenza di fattori self-oriented ed other-oriented che sostengono ed alimentano l’impegno prestato dai lavoratori non retribuiti . / This thesis deals with the volunteers's motivations and their effort in NGO. Through a survey we have analysed some motivational variables which could have a certain influence on the decision of being a volunteer. Referring to previous researches on this topic, We have inquired into: altruism and impure altruism, reputation , career, social concerns, risk, religiosity , familiarity , having been expressly invited by friends.

La tesi affronta il tema dell’utilizzo delle informazioni in ambito pubblico sulla scia di quanto avviato dalle teorie di (bounded) rationality, e di diversi filoni di (public) management che si sono occupati nel tempo di indagare i meccanismi attraverso i quali le informazioni vengono identificate, selezionate e utilizzate nei processi decisionali. Attraverso l’analisi delle politiche sociali nei comuni italiani, la tesi si occupa di indagare tre specifiche situazioni: la presentazione delle strategie e politiche pubbliche; la costruzione di piani strategici; la risoluzione di situazioni critiche e di trade-off complessi. La tesi mostra che le informazioni sono usate per presentare le decisioni tramite meccanismi di razionalità ed altri legati alla creazione di consenso per l’innovazione dei contenuti, governance e contesto di riferimento delle politiche sociali. Nella pianificazione strategica le informazioni vengono spesso solamente raccolte oppure utilizzate in modo strumentale. Nel caso di situazioni complesse e caratterizzate da trade-off, le informazioni di accounting hanno sia una valenza manageriale che politica di costruzione del consenso e delle motivazioni ad agire. / The PhD thesis deals with the issue of information use in the public sector. Building on (bounded) rationality theories and (public) management studies focusing on mechanisms through which information is identified, gathered and used in decision making processes, the thesis analysed what happens in Italian Municipalities, in the field of social care policies. Three different situations are analysed: public presentation of social care policies; social care strategic plans; wicked problems resolutions and trade off discussion. The thesis shows that information is used to present public strategies through rationality or by building consensus towards innovation in contents, governance and context of social care policies. In the case of strategic plans, information is often only presented or used instrumentally. In the case of trade-offs and wicked situation information is used both in a managerial perspective and in a political fashion so to build consensus and motivation for action.

Il processo di digitalizzazione sta influenzando il modo in cui l'arte viene veicolata, rendendone la sua fruizione più interattiva e dinamica e portando le istituzioni artistiche e culturali a riconoscere un’enorme importanza alle leve strategiche del mondo del marketing. In particolare, il primo paper mira a comprendere, attraverso il caso studio ‘Artvisor’ come le organizzazioni artistiche e culturali abbiano avviato un processo di disintermediazione attraverso dispositivi digitali riconoscendo un ruolo centrale alle nuove tecnologie nell’ambito della gestione artistica. L'obiettivo del secondo lavoro è esaminare le dimensioni di brand trustworthiness, perceived quality e visitor satisfaction considerate componenti chiave nella prospettiva dello studio del comportamento del visitatore in una logica esperienziale della visita museale. Con il terzo paper viene analizzato nello specifico il ruolo delle nuove tecnologie in relazione alla dimensione dell’engagement nell'era dei selfie, dei social media, dei dispositivi digitali e dei social network. / The digitalization process now occurring in many sectors has influenced the way that art is consumed and has contributed to making arts consumption more interactive and dynamic recognizing a huge importance to the role of marketing. The general purpose of the proposed research is to develop an understanding of how people engage with arts in the digital era through digital devices and social networks and how important it is to recognize a role to proper marketing strategies. In particular, the first paper aims to understand how arts organizations are starting to decouple their structures and to initiate a disintermediation processes through digital devices: the example of ‘Artvisor’ allows the author to examine how a gallery might face the digitalization process with the goal to identify sensitive areas within the online arts experience which arts administrators need to be conscious of as we enter a more dynamic era of art consumption. The object of the second paper is to examine the role of brand trustworthiness, perceived quality and visitor satisfaction as antecedents of consumer behavioural intentions in a museum context and developed a research framework to investigate the relationships among all the construct taken into consideration. The object of the third paper is to deal with the role of the new technologies in the arts management context to understand how people engage with art and culture in the era of selfies, social media, digital devices and social networks.