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The purpose of this paper is to explore whether intellectual capital affects the probability that a particular firm will default. The authors also test whether including intellectual capital performance in bankruptcy prediction models improves their predictive ability.

Using a sample of US public companies from the period stretching from 1985 to 2015, the authors test whether intellectual capital performance reduces the probability of bankruptcy. The authors use the VAIC as an aggregate measure of corporate intellectual capital performance.

The findings show that the intellectual capital performance is negatively associated with the probability of default. The findings also indicate that the bankruptcy prediction models that include intellectual capital have a superior predictive ability over the standard models.

This paper contributes to prior research on intellectual capital and firm performance. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to show that the benefits of intellectual capital extend from superior performance to long-term financial stability. The research can also contribute to bankruptcy studies. By using a time frame covering decades, the findings suggest that intellectual capital performance measures can be included in bankruptcy prediction models and can effectively complement traditional performance measures.

This paper highlights that intellectual capital is associated with long-term financial stability and a lower bankruptcy risk. Firms realising the potential of their intellectual capital can produce a virtuous circle between higher performance and greater financial stability.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), this study investigates how tax planning affects the likelihood of financial default in different stages of the corporate life cycle.

Collecting a large sample of US firms between 1989 and 2016, hypotheses are tested using a hazard model. Several robustness and endogeneity checks corroborate the main findings.

The results show that tax-planning firms are less likely to default in the introduction and decline stages, while they are more likely to default in the growth and maturity stages. The findings suggest that introductory and declining firms use cash resources obtained from tax planning efficiently to meet their needs and acquire other useful resources. In growing and mature firms, tax aggressiveness generates unnecessary slack resources, weakens managerial discipline and increases reputational risks.

The results shed light on the benefits and costs associated with tax planning throughout firms' life cycle, holding great significance for managers, investors, lenders and other stakeholders.

This study contributes to the literature that examines resource management at different life cycle stages by showing that cash resources from tax planning are managed in distinctive ways in each life cycle stage, having a varied impact on the likelihood of default. The authors shed light on underexplored cash resources. Furthermore, this study shows the potential linkages between the agency theory and RBV.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate resilience to extreme weather events (EWE) in a sample of Italian local councils (LCs), impacted by flood disasters. Whether resilience as a concept is adopted by the affected councils and factors that promote or inhibit LC resilience are explored.

Using semi-structured interviews, the authors investigate seven Italian LCs that were severely impacted by the flood event. An interview protocol was developed and background information collected. A number of themes were drawn from the interview transcripts and relationships with the relevant literature were examined.

The findings highlight that the adoption of the concept of resilience is at an early stage in the LCs decision and policy making. The authors find that the financial resources and the external relations management with other public entities, NGOs and local communities, promote the LCs resilience during and after an EWE. By contrast, bureaucratic constraints and poor urban planning restrain resilience. The findings suggest that LCs resilience needs to be distinguished from local community resilience.

The paper contributes to the literature on public sector management and investigates the under-researched area of resilience within the context of the public sector, vis-à-vis, local government. In particular the realization that EWE are not the realm only of emergency personnel, but that local government managers have an integral role placed upon them during and especially after the EWE.

This paper aims to study the effect of new regulatory requirements on disclosure through a longitudinal study. The empirical setting is offered by the risk reporting in the management commentaries of Italian listed companies. In this setting there is an evolution from a voluntary disclosure environment toward a regulated one, with the gradual introduction of new reporting requirements.

This paper uses the content analysis method to investigate the narrative risk disclosure. Non‐parametric statistics are used to test the hypotheses.

It is found that even when new mandatory disclosure is introduced, managers exploit discretion and do not change their disclosure policy, continuing to withhold relevant information to external users. Before and after the introduction of new regulation, managers' behaviour appears in line with self‐interest to protect themselves from litigation and competitive costs, as well as from possible decreases in the firm's value.

The study provides a longitudinal study, covering changes from a voluntary disclosure environment to a regulated one. The paper provides evidence that the management incentives do not change in the presence of new disclosure regulation.

This purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of board and audit committee meeting frequency.

The determinants studied are related to the ownership structure and to the board characteristics. The study is conducted in an agency setting featured by high ownership concentration and large insider shareholders. Hypotheses are developed based on agency theory. The empirical evidence is provided by a sample of Italian listed companies. Negative binomial regression is used in the multivariate analysis to test the relationships. Robustness checks provide further empirical support.

The paper finds that insider ownership negatively impacts – either on the board or on the audit committee meeting frequency – whilst the proportion of independent directors in the board has a positive impact. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that insider ownership and board independent monitoring are substitute control mechanisms. The findings also show that audit committees are more active in larger firms.

The paper provides an agency theory‐based explanation of the board and the audit committee meeting frequency, in a setting featured by large controlling shareholders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the implementation of internal environmental management and voluntary environmental information is related to organisational change.

Organisational change literature provided a framework for the analysis of the materials which were collected through a mixed method. Data on internal environmental management were collected through a survey, while a quality disclosure index was used to assess the quality of the environmental voluntary disclosure. Interviews were used to enhance the quantitative results interpreted according to the four pathways proposed by Tilt (2006) and characterised by several levels of internal environmental management and voluntary disclosure.

The results indicated that companies implement more internal activities than external disclosure. Environmental planning and operational practices were the most important changes carried out. When environmental management accounting and environmental disclosure were also implemented, environmental aspects were more integrated within companies, thus revealing that a more structured integration of sustainability aspects within organisational values had taken place. The results underline the importance of primarily establishing a set of internal changes, driven by environmental planning, to promote organisational change.

The study presents a larger empirical analysis of the organisational change pathways followed by companies, showing similarities and differences among the four pathways. The results underline the importance of both dimensions for studying organisational changes. The framework of Tilt has been enriched, considering a more precise explanation of the internal aspects and adding the concept of the quality of disclosure as proxy to assess organisational change.

Organisational change is investigated through an extensive analysis of internal and external aspects and collecting quantitative and qualitative evidence. The analysis complements previous sustainability accounting literature focussed on the analysis of internal environmental management and external disclosure.

The cost-optimal analysis is not able to address the multi-dimensionality of the decision according to the new European objectives and International sustainable development goals in the field of the nearly-zero energy building (NZEB) design. The purpose of this paper is to study the role of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for guiding energy investment decisions.

The paper explores the Preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations II (PROMETHEE II) application to support the project of transforming a rural building into a NZEB. The evaluation provides an estimate of the effects of alternative energy efficiency measures, involving energy consumption, life cycle costs, carbon emissions, property value and indoor comfort criteria. The study performs a multi-actors analysis in order to understand how different consumers' point of views can influence the final choice of the best investment. Furthermore, a multi-site analysis explores the spatial variation of NZEB building appreciation in the real estate market.

The PROMETHEE II-based model ranks 16 alternative solutions for the NZEB according to energy, economic and extra-economic criteria. The multi-actors analysis highlights the configuration of the NZEB building that best meets the needs of different end-users, respecting the European directives and national standards. The multi-site analysis concludes that location does not change users' appreciation and not influence the output for the best solution.

The MCDA occurs as a support tool that helps to optimize the preliminary design phase of NZEB through the exploration of the optimal solution considering crucial criteria in the energy and environmental and real estate market rules.

The “economic miracle” in postwar Italy was accompanied by a rapid increase in the industrial accident and illness rates. Italian workers demanded occupational safety and health enforcement mechanisms that would be more accessible to grass‐roots workers' groups and unions. In the early 1970s local “Occupational Medicine Services” were voluntarily established in many regions. The entire health care system was decentralised in 1978, giving regions exclusive authority to implement occupational safety and health standards within Local Health Units (USLs). The concrete results of these reforms are investigated and the validity of the assumptions of the calls for decentralisation. The difficulties encountered by leftist‐administered regions in attempting to translate their political commitments into significant health and safety improvements are documented. The track‐record of the USLs is examined. An ironic consequence of decentralisation has been that the concentration of all health care activities in the USL has swallowed up occupational safety and health. As a result it is less politically visible and less responsive to worker input.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.