Le modalità secondo cui iniziative imprenditoriali ad elevato impatto sociale possono amplificare il valore sociale creato mediante la propria attività costituisce uno dei temi più rilevanti per quelle imprese che intendono affrontare piaghe sociali ampiamente diffuse quali la povertà, l'accesso all'educazione e la salute. L'elaborato intende contribuire alla letteratura sull'imprenditorialità sociale discutendo le strategie, i modelli organizzativi e le competenze richieste per massimizzare l'ampiezza dell'impatto e aumentare le probabilità di successo. Tali temi sono discussi in tre articoli. Il primo, intitolato “Scaling social entrepreneurial impact: an open innovation perspective” presenta un modello teorico che mette in relazione tre differenti strategie di amplificazione dell'impatto sociale con le probabilità da parte dell'organizzazione di soddisfare le proprie attese in termini di valore creato atteso e di valore potenziale rivelato. Il modello suggerisce una relazione significativa tra l'adozione di confini organizzativi "aperti" e l'attitudine a rivelare nuovo valore potenziale. Inoltre, il grado di affinità tra i contesti in cui l'innovazione sociale è replicata modera tale relazione. Il secondo articolo, intitolato “Ba creation and Ba expansion in academic-practitioner partnerships in the social entrepreneurship field", fa riferimento all' "organizational knowledge creation theory" e propone, tramite un caso di studio longitudinale, un modello che illustra gli antecedenti della creazione e la successiva espansione del "Ba" nel contesto di una partnership tra un ateneo universitario e un'impresa sociale suggerendo in che modo gli attori coinvolti nel processo di creazione della conoscenza possano modificare i propri ruoli per produrre un impatto sociale superiore. Il terzo articolo, intitolato “Scaling Social Impact: A Replication and Extension of SCALERS” contribuisce alla letteratura replicando il primo test del modello SCALERS in un nuovo contesto internazionale (Italia) e sviluppandolo ulteriormente includendo alcune contingenze specifiche quali variabili moderatrici del modello. / Scaling social impact is among the most relevant challenges that social enterprises face in addressing global issues like poverty, access to education and health. The dissertation aims at contributing to social entrepreneurship literature by dealing with quests about how and why specific strategies and organizational models may improve the likelihood and the magnitude of the impact exerted by social organizations and which capabilities are most needed for impact to be scaled. Those issues are discussed along three essays. The first article entitled “Scaling social entrepreneurial impact: an open innovation perspective” presents a theoretical model connecting three strategies for spreading social innovation to organization’s confidence on achieving expected social impact and revealing new potential value. The model predicts that a strong relationship exists between the adoption of an open organizational structure and the attitude to reveal potential social value. Indeed, context similarity moderates this relation. The second article entitled “Ba creation and Ba expansion in academic-practitioner partnerships in the social entrepreneurship field” - by building on organizational knowledge creation theory - advances a model predicting the antecedents of ba creation and ba expansion within the framework of university – field organization partnerships, this way contributing to the social entrepreneurship field and suggesting how participants in ba creation and expansion may extend their roles in the knowledge creation process to achieve greater impact. The third article entitled “Scaling Social Impact: A Replication and Extension of SCALERS” contributes to the emerging scholarship on scaling of social impact by replicating initial results of the SCALERS model in an international context (i.e., Italy) and including some situational contingencies as moderating variables of the model.

Questo lavoro consiste in una collezione di 8 paper accettati da altrettante Conference internazionali di diverso indirizzo disciplinare, dal marketing B2B all'organizzazione aziendale ai sistemi informativi. In questi paper, si affronta da diversi punti di vista il tema dei business network e di come il business networking influenzi la capacità di innovazione delle imprese. Le ricerche presentate confermano su più fronti come le classiche variabili con cui si misurano i business network, quali la fiducia, la conoscenza reciproca, l'intensità dei flussi di risorse scambiate, eccetera, per quanto importanti, non siano sufficienti a spiegare l'influenza che il network ha sulle capacità di innovazione. Vengono quindi proposti 3 nuovi costrutti: Motivazioni al business network, Attitudine alle relazioni di business di lungo periodo, e Sostenibilità della collaborazione altruistica. Il lavoro ipotizza come diverse configurazioni di queste tre variabili possono influenzare le capacità di innovazione dell'organizzazione. Alcune ricerche qualitative, focalizzate sul settore turistico (sistema destinazione) e sul manifatturiero (supply chain) permettono di mettere a confronto il modello con contesti di business concreti. / The system of the organization's long-term business relationships is the organization's Business Network. This theory-building thesis focuses on how business networking influences the organization's performances, and more specifically its innovation capabilities. An important gap in theory is identified, since there is a lack of consistent research explaining why even Business Networks where all the traditional variables (such as Trust, Cooperation, Number of Ties, Strength of Ties, etc.) are ranking high, may perform poorly in terms of innovation capabilities. An inter-disciplinary effort may be a fruitful strategy for addressing such a gap in theory. Consistently, this thesis was structured as a collection of 8 papers submitted to and accepted by different international Conferences, whose disciplinary focus spanned from B2B marketing to organization studies, Information Systems, Operations research and eParticipation studies. These papers include qualitative researches for theory-building, and the considered cases belong to different industrial sectors such as Tourism and Manufacturing. The main novel outcomes of this work are: the identification of new Constructs (and related Scales) describing phenomena that influence, according to the qualitative researches conducted here, the innovation capabilities of Business Networks; and the in-depth analysis of how successful and sustainable innovation emerges from creative processes in collaborative settings. The identifed Constructs are: Motivations to Business Network, Attitude to Long-Term Business Relationships, Sustainability of Altruistic Cooperation. This work hypothesizes that if the main Motivation to Networking is the predictability of business interactions, this may result in a detrimental effect on Creativity/Innovation, and in a weakened resilience of the Altruistic Cooperation. On the other hand, if the main Motivation to Networking is to aggregate power, for example for lobbying activities, this tends to enhance only certain aspects of Altruistic Cooperation, whilst Creativity/Innovation at the network level is likely to be poorer. Finally, if the main Motivation to Networking is to aggregate capabilities, both Altruistic Cooperation and Creativity/Innovation are often positively impacted, especially when also certain levels of Predictability and of Power Aggregation are achieved.

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.

Le imprese sociali sono organizzazioni ibride che combinano missioni e processi del mondo profit e non-profit, spesso operando in ambienti con risorse limitate come i Paesi africani. A causa della loro doppia missione e dei processi divergenti che da essa derivano, gli ibridi affrontano continue sfide nella gestione e nella crescita delle loro attività, con il rischio di compromettere l'impatto sociale o limitare la sostenibilità finanziaria. Questa tesi mira a far luce sull’opportunità che la natura ibrida può offrire a queste imprese sociali. In particolare, il primo paper mostra come, attraverso strategie di hybrid harvesting, le imprese sociali possano superare specifiche carenze di risorse. Il secondo paper offre un contributo rilevante nella comprensione del processo di diversificazione ibrida nelle imprese sociali, che può essere considerato una forma di raggiungimento della doppia missione. Il terzo documento si concentra sulle strategie di crescita delle organizzazioni ibride differenziate, evidenziando le strategie per crescere l’impatto sociale verso i beneficiari e allo stesso tempo le vendite dai clienti. Infine, questa tesi offre una research agenda negli studi sulle organizzazioni ibride e imprenditorialità sociale, con particolare attenzione alla gestione della doppia missione e al contesto di ricerca rappresentato dalle economie africane. / Social enterprises are hybrid organisations that combine different missions and processes from the for-profit and non-profit domains, and they usually operate in a resource-scarce environment such as African countries. Due to their dual missions and logics, they face continuous challenges and tensions in the management and growth of their businesses, with the risk to jeopardize the social impact, or constrain the financial sustainability. This thesis aim to shed lights on the opportunity that the hybridity may bring to hybrid organizations, especially in the interesting research setting offered by social enterprises. In particular, the first paper shows how, through hybrid harvesting strategies, social enterprises can overcome specific resource constraints. The second paper offers a relevant contribution in understanding the hybrid-diversification process in social enterprises as hybrid organizations, which can be considered a dual mission achievement. The third paper focus on scaling strategies of differentiated hybrid organizations, highlighting the strategies to scale the social impact toward beneficiaries while also scaling the commercial revenues from customers. Finally, this thesis offer a research agenda in the field of hybrid organizations and social entrepreneurship, with the specific focus on dual mission management and exploiting the research setting of challenging environments as african economies.

Lo sviluppo sostenibile è oggi uno dei temi più attuali e, allo stesso tempo, una sfida per le aziende. La società, a livello mondiale, deve affrontare, ora più che mai, problemi sia di rilevanza sociale, come una popolazione in costante aumento, sia di tipo ambientale, come il cambiamento climatico. La costante perdita dell’ozonosfera, la distruzione della biodiversità, la sovrappopolazione, l’overtourism, sono solo alcune delle problematiche che sottolineano l’urgente bisogno di individui che siano capaci di far fronte a tali questioni grazie ad un comportamento imprenditoriale sostenibile. Seppur le serie conseguenze del degrado ambientale siano note da tempo, la situazione attuale ci richiede ora di riconoscere e, soprattutto, di ammettere, che le risorse, specialmente quelle naturali, non sono infinite. Il comportamento imprenditoriale con un orientamento spiccatamente green, costituisce una parziale soluzione all’esaurirsi di tali risorse. A tale scopo, la tesi si propone di indagare i drivers dell’imprenditoria sostenibile, al fine di risolvere il degrado ambientale e raggiungere uno sviluppo sostenibile. Attraverso un’analisi della environmental passion, dell’environmental bricolage e dell’authenticity, la tesi pone le fondamenta per lo sviluppo di futuri studi capaci di far riflettere su tali tematiche. / Sustainable development is perhaps the most prominent topic of our time and challenge for businesses. Today, we are facing both social issues, such as an ever-increasing population, and environmental issues, like climate change. We are thus suffering from ozone depletion, destruction of biodiversity, loss of living species, overpopulation, overtourism, and the need of individuals who are able to deal with these challenges through their entrepreneurial behaviour is more than urgent. The serious consequences of environmental degradation have been pointed out for decades, and the current situation requires us to recognize that resources, especially our natural ones, are finite. The thesis focuses on the drivers of sustainable entrepreneurial behaviours aimed at resolving environmental degradation and achieving sustainable development. Through an exploration of environmental passion, environmental bricolage and authenticity, the thesis sets a foundation for developing future thought-provoking studies.