Francesca Masciarelli

• Doctor of Business Administration
• Professor (Associate) at University of Chieti-Pescara

The rise of smart cities is a significant trend in urban development. However, only in recent years has the focus on the international promotion of these cities become prominent. Despite ongoing academic discussions on the impact of smart city development on urban environments, the global recognition of smart cities is uncertain due to their multid...

In an increasingly transformative and digital era, cities are reshaping their strategies to position themselves in a highly complex landscape where they have to integrate capital, talent, resources, businesses, and tourists in the urban environment (Hollands, 2015; Buck & While, 2017). Central to this transformation are smart city initiatives, whic...

Smart cities, while widely recognized for utilizing information communication technologies (ICTs) to amplify urban efficiency, face challenges given the varied local interests and factors that influence their effective implementation. Existing urban divides further complicate the understanding of how smart city technologies truly function. While te...

Over the years, we have witnessed an ongoing and interrelated combination of smart city implementation and tourism trends. The current development of cities integrates technological implementation, the adoption of social media, and "smart" practices to interact with users and tourists, influencing their travel choices by offering a highly technolog...

Purpose This study aims to investigate the synergies between the economic environment and the smart living dimension embedded in the current smart city initiatives, focusing on the localization of female entrepreneurship in contemporary cities. This interaction is under-investigated and controversial as it includes cities' practices enabling users...

The Social Media landscape is characterized by constant and rapid changes, with new platforms emerging in the market and existing ones evolving by integrating new features. Amidst this dynamic environment, the phenomenon of Social Media Dependency (SMD) has become particularly salient. This study seeks to explore individual usage behavior on Social...

Purpose The significance of smart mobility practices in shaping cities from a smart perspective has grown in recent years, influencing policies and the choices made by inhabitants. This transformation has led to the emergence of novel services and strategies, creating a new, vibrant and highly personalised urban environment that caters to the needs...

In recent years, there has been a growing interdependence between the urban environment and tourism, with each influencing and shaping the other (Vanolo, 2014). This dynamic relationship is fueled by emerging technologies, evolving tourism trends, and a more expansive and innovative perspective of the city defined in the current smart city debate (...

The appeal of "smart" cities in the current urban trajectories has prompted cities across the globe to pursue smart city initiatives. However, in this transformation from city to smart city, a large part of the research corpus has mostly focused on technology and digital advancement in the city as a driver of this transformation, losing the intrins...

L’interesse verso la trasformazione smart nelle attuali politiche urbane ha spinto molte città nel mondo a perseguire iniziative di smart city. Tuttavia, in questa trasformazione da città a smart city, gran parte della ricerca si è concentrata principalmente sulla tecnologia e sull’avanzamento digitale nella città come motore di questa trasformazio...

Purpose The concept of a smart city is becoming more closely linked to tourism destinations. The relationship between the environment, sustainability and tourism has become more interrelated. An eco-friendly city environment can influence tourists’ decisions, but tourist flows can also negatively impact the local ecosystem by increasing energy cons...

This study draws on the linguistics literature, which recognizes the role of language attributes in shaping individual behaviour. We theorize that weak-future languages (e.g., Chinese), which create the perception that the future is closer temporally to the present than do strong-future languages (e.g., English), favour future-oriented behaviours s...

The complexity of contemporary urbanization and its interactions with technological solutions, social contexts, ecological ambitions, and economic activities highlight cities' role in medium-long-term development plans [1], [2]. Today, there is a need to evaluate cities` and urban areas' readiness and their transformation from static environments t...

The number of smart city initiatives is growing worldwide at an incredible pace. Their ambition is to add to the competitiveness of local communities through innovation while increasing and attracting users, financial capital and talent by offering an environment suited to current needs. Digital implementation plays a key role in this evolution, fa...

The study explores how social capital affects the performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a transition economy. Social capital is referred to as firm’s social interactions with formal and informal creditors, which is financial social capital, and social interactions with politicians and civil servants, which is political social...

This paper explores the role of local knowledge spillover and human capital as a driver of crowdfunding investment. The role of territory has already been studied in terms of campaign success, but the impact of territory on the use of financial sources like equity crowdfunding is not yet known. Using a sample of 435 equity crowdfunding campaigns in...

Southern Italy has been confronting dire economic and resource scarcity challenges to keep up with the national growth. Digitalization is a changing phenomenon that transforms the firm’s structure and enhances production, operational, and service efficiency helping to reduce economic and geographical disparity. Firms play a crucial role in the deve...

The worldwide growing concern for environmental protection compels businesses to incorporate green orientation in their strategies. Crowdfunding has opened new possibilities to attract investors by encompassing green concerns in their agenda. This study investigates the relationship between green orientation and UK crowdfunding campaign success. We...

The impact of the smart city concept in the urban landscape has been the subject of considerable attention over the last few years. Cities are changing their development strategies by trying to attract not only capital but also knowledge and talent. This change has led cities to turn increasingly to the outside world by developing international str...

Cities have increasingly asserted their central role in the national economy and in developing and promoting knowledge and innovation at local and national levels. Scholars, economists, and policymakers have examined the effects of innovation in this field as well as the resulting impact on the competitiveness and attractiveness of cities, regions,...

Over the years, smart cities have become at the centre of the urban and economic academic debate in response to cities' sustainable and technological transformation (Goodspeed, 2015). This "Smart" (r)evolution in the city aims to address the current intrinsic problems in urban development, such as digitization, pollution, energy consumption, sustai...

Smart city has become an increasingly present theme in the urban and economic trajectories in response to the impacts of sustainable and technological transformation in cities (Goodspeed, 2015). The main objective of this "Smart" evolution is to address various intrinsic problems in urban development such as digitization, pollution, energy consumpt...

Rising environmental and social challenges have compelled policymakers and academicians worldwide to look for an optimal solution to spur cities into a new dimension to meet future needs. In this transition, technological advancement and institution quality has emerged as viable solutions to ensure sustainable city development. However, urban inequ...

Nel corso degli anni, le pratiche di mobilità intelligente hanno assunto un ruolo centrale nelle traiettorie di sviluppo delle città poiché influenzano non solo le politiche interne legate allo sviluppo urbano, ma anche le scelte degli utenti e gli utilizzatori della città. Questa evoluzione determina lo sviluppo di nuovi servizi e strategie che el...

This paper aims to develop a better understanding of the influence of the social environment in which entrepreneurs reside on the success of the crowdfunding projects they propose. Specifically, this study investigates on the importance of local religiosity on the propensity to support cross-regional crowdfunding projects. We theoretically discuss...

Southern Italy has been confronting dire economic and resource scarcity challenges to keep up with the national growth. Digitalization is a changing phenomenon that transforms the firm’s structure and enhances production, operational, and service efficiency helping to reduce economic and geographical disparity. Firms play a crucial role in the dev...

Book chapter in "Sustainable Digital Transformation: Paving the Way Towards Smart Organizations and Societies"

Purpose This paper analyses how entrepreneurs recognise and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities following a sustainable approach that respects the equilibrium among environmental, social and commercial purposes, and how their personality affects this process. The main personality traits focused in this study are narcissism, locus of control and s...

Entrepreneurial decision-making is a complex area that impacts the creation and development of new ventures and is one of the main subjects of entrepreneurial research. Our study focuses on the impact of regional disparities on the entrepreneurial decision-making process regarding the adoption of alternative funding sources such as crowdfunding. Cr...

Entrepreneurial decision-making is a complex area that impacts the creation and development of new ventures and is one of the main subjects of entrepreneurial research. Our study focuses on the impact of regional disparities on the entrepreneurial decision-making process regarding the adoption of alternative funding sources such as crowdfunding. Cr...

This paper explores the role of local knowledge spillover and human capital as a driver of crowdfunding investment. The role of territory has already been studied in terms of campaign success, but the impact of territory on the use of financial sources like equity crowdfunding is not yet known. Using a sample of 435 equity crowdfunding campaigns in...

The paper explores the concept of cultural proximity and its effects on firm innovation, paying specific attention to the moderator role played by digital technologies. In order to improve the innovative performance, firms should construct and maintain relationships with the members of other organizations and should develop and take care of the rel...

The impact of the smart city concept in the urban landscape has been the subject of considerable attention over the last few years. Cities are changing their development strategies by trying to attract not only capital but also knowledge and talent. This change has led cities to turn increasingly to the outside world by developing international str...

Southern Italy has been confronting dire economic and resource scarcity challenges to keep up with the national growth. Digitalization is a changing phenomenon that transforms the firm’s structure and enhances production, operational, and service efficiency helping to reduce economic and geographical disparity. Firms play a crucial role in the dev...

The concept of Smart City is relatively recent, but it is spreading very quickly in a variety of areas. It aims to tackle several urban problems such as digitalization, pollution, energy consumption, sustainability, and knowledge sharing (Allam & Dhunny, 2019; Leitheiser & Follmann, 2020; Vanolo, 2014). However, the Smart city concept involves the...

Purpose Smart cities and their internationalization process and efforts in order to gain the competitive advantage in the international arena have received a great deal of attention by marketing scholars and practitioners alike. Yet, the growing number of studies focused on this topic has led to considerable fragmentation and theoretical confusion....

In a world where around 3.5 billions of the entire population are active social media users, the individual usage behavior of social network sites and related aspects should require further investigation. Specifically, this paper focuses on the social network dependence, considering the utilitarian and goal-oriented facet rather than the psychologi...

Uncertainty and information asymmetries in crowdfunding can be reduced via the quality signals project proponents send to potential supporters. Drawing on signaling theory, this study analyzes how costly signals—venture’s statements about past achievements and results—and costless signals—venture’s statements about future plans and goals—influence...

During the last decade, the role of human capital and knowledge flow on city development has increased the attention of researchers and institutions. The focus is on the role played by knowledge inputs, knowledge generation, and knowledge spillovers in local innovation processes (Faggian and Mccann, 2009; Lee, Florida and Gates, 2010). Toward this...

This study examines the role of cities' human capital when geographical areas faced a natural disaster. It focuses on two important earthquakes in the last 16 years in Italy (Abruzzo, 2009 and Emilia-Romagna, 2012) in order to explain the linkage between students' mobility and city attraction post-natural disasters. Using the ordinary least-squares...

Leadership succession is inevitable for most family businesses. To effectively face this challenging transition, next-generation leaders need to have the ability to gain their employees' trust which is typically very challenging due to previous generation' influence on the business. The chapter explores how trust in family leaders can impact succes...

Leadership succession is inevitable for most family businesses. To effectively face this challenging transition, next-generation leaders need to have the ability to gain the trust and respect of their employees, however, the impact of employees’ trust during a change in family leadership is challenging given the incumbent’s shadow. The chapter aims...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how bonding (i.e. tightly knit, emotionally close social relationships) and bridging social capital (i.e. outward looking open social relationships) affect opportunity recognition and innovation implementation in a cultural network of firms, investigating the main benefits of and drawbacks to both bon...

Entrepreneurial orientation is especially important for economic growth, innovation, and employment. This paper investigates how entrepreneurs’ narcissism and resilience affect the entrepreneurial orientation of small and medium sized enterprises. We identify two sides of entrepreneur narcissism: exhibitionism and manipulation. Using survey data fr...

Several studies prove the existence of a relationship between entrepreneurs’ personality traits and firm performances. However, few of them focus on how these personality traits can be correlated with start-ups’ innovativeness. We focus on start-ups because entrepreneurs play a crucial role in managing them: their personality strongly influences bu...

In this chapter we look at entrepreneurs as permanent learners (Franco and Haase 2009). We posit that the networks to which the entrepreneurs belong play a crucial role in their learning process. It is widely accepted that being immersed in a network is strongly related to the sharing of similar cultural values. However, we know precious little abo...

We focus on a group of firms that share the same norms, beliefs and values to analyse how bonding social capital (i.e. internal links within the group) and bridging social capital (i.e. links with actors outside the group) affect innovation based on content analysis of qualitative data. We find that bonding and bridging social capital affect differ...

This paper illustrates how organizations change their architecture in response to environmental feedback, measured in relation to performance gaps. Based on a study of 762 organizations, we explore the modus operandi underpinning architectural change and argue that the interplay between social and historical aspiration levels: (i) constitutes a ben...

External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to invest in external R&D than their older counterparts. We expl...

In this paper we illustrate how the kind of interorganizational network influences firm innovation. .We distinguish between a bonding social capital kind of network, where members share the same norms, beliefs and value and bridging social capital kind of network, where . To explore this issue, we collected qualitative data that we analyse using co...

Drawing on social capital theory and the international business literature, we argue that domestic geography, in terms of localized potential social capital, facilitates individual firms’ awareness of business opportunities, including knowledge related to involvement in the foreign markets for goods and technology, thereby enhancing firms’ involvem...

To introduce new products, firms often use knowledge from other organizations. Drawing on social capital theory and the relational view of the firm, we argue that geographically localized social capital affects a firm's ability to innovate through various external channels. Combining data on social capital at the regional level, with a large-scale...

This is an outstanding book by an outstanding scholar. This is the first book to really explain what social capital means and how and why firms generate value and profit from social capital. The author combines a rigorous approach to empirical evidence in support of her arguments with new theoretical insights. This is a "must read" for all those co...

This chapter aims to explore how the information-processing capabilities that emerge from a network structure affect the diffusion of innovation in a multidivisional organization. In particular, this study analyzes the role of firm investments in ICT to facilitate communication and knowledge diffusion. Using a qualitative approach, we investigate t...

Offshoring of intangibles is a global production strategy based on the decision to externalize intangible activities to foreign countries. In the present work we test the existence of a positive relationship between offshoring intangibles and firm performance. To reap the full benefit of offshoring, firms are required to integrate and coordinate ac...

Drawing on social capital theory and international business literature, we argue that firms’ home region social capital increases the degree of firms’ internationalization for both goods and knowledge. Beyond a certain level of social capital, however, firms become over-embedded in their home region social relationships so that the degree of intern...

While conventional farming systems face serious problems of sustainability, organic agriculture is seen as a more environmentally friendly system as it favours renewable resources, recycles nutrients, uses the environment’s own systems for controlling pests and diseases, sustains ecosystems, protects soils, and reduces pollution. At the same time o...

To introduce new products and processes, firms often acquire knowledge from other organizations. Drawing on social capital and transaction cost theory, we argue that not only is the impact of such acquisitions on the successful development of product and product innovations dependent on strategic and economic variables, it may also be contingent on...

Without Abstract

Putnam (1993) defined social capital as social structure that facilitates coordination and cooperation among individuals. Two broad approaches characterize the existing theoretical and empirical literature on social capital: the micro (that focalize in particular on individual social capital) and meso (that focalize in particular on a structural ap...

Regional social capital is a collective asset and represents the level of social connection and interaction within a given community. Entrepreneurs' social capital is an individual asset and represents the investment that entrepreneurs make in order to build their social networks. We focus on the relationship between regional social capital, entrep...