Gianpaolo AbatecolaUniversity of Rome Tor Vergata | UNIROMA2 · Department of Management and Law
Gianpaolo Abatecola
PhD
About
100
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Introduction
How can enterprises survive in the midst of disruption? How can their decisions affect their evolution? These questions drive my research curiosity as a management scholar. I am passionate about investigating these topics; it also guides how I teach, provide students with professional development, foster academia-industry connections and perform institutional service.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
January 2015 - December 2021
October 2008 - September 2011
University of Rome Tor Vergata"
Position
- Researcher
October 2011 - December 2014
Education
November 2003 - November 2006
Publications
Publications (100)
What are the determinants of Unicorns and Gazelles’ early success? This review article examines the factors that contribute to the success of Unicorns and Gazelles in their early life stage. Indeed, despite their unique characteristics and significant impact on the global economy, Unicorns and Gazelles have yet to be thoroughly examined in terms of...
How can studying paradoxes in business networks help understand the networks' adaptation and survival? IMP identifies three central paradoxes influencing business networks: i) Development of Relationships vs. Inability to Change, ii) Controlling vs. Effectiveness, and iii) Stability vs. Change. Studying them seems critical to knowing how interdepen...
This paper answers the call for a deeper understanding of innovation issues in relation to female entrepreneurship. In doing so, it offers a comprehensive and updated picture of the state of the art of management research on innovation in women-owned firms. Specifically, by conducting a systematic literature review, which is widely used in manageme...
Behavioral strategy integrates psychology with strategic management theory and practice, offering realistic insights into human cognition, emotions, and social behavior in strategic management. Yet behavioral strategy's antecedents, mechanisms, consequences, and moderators and their interconnectedness and future directions remain unclear. We explor...
Purpose
How does the interaction between time and knowledge affect the evolution of organizations? Past research in organizational evolution has mostly investigated time and knowledge as two separate variables. In contrast, theoretical perspectives integrating these variables are still seemingly scant. The authors believe that filling this literatu...
Purpose: Unicorn companies, such as Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb, significantly impact our economies. This happens although they had a dramatic initial start – at least in terms of financial performance – that would have let any other “conventional” business close. In other words, Unicorns challenge the start-ups’ problems traditionally associated wi...
Behavioral strategy integrates psychology with strategic management theory and practice, offering realistic insights into human cognition, emotions, and social behavior in strategic management. Yet behavioral strategy's antecedents, mechanisms, consequences, and moderators and their interconnectedness and future directions remain unclear. We explor...
How do environmentally-driven and firm-specific factors influence business innovation and adaptation? How can the analysis of their co-evolutionary relationship help explain firm survival or failure over time? To address these key questions, this article focuses on the study regarding the 20-year performance (1997–2017) of the Fiat (later Fiat Chry...
What executive profiles govern the industry of real estate services in Europe? Does heterogeneity emerge in these profiles if different industry sectors and/or geographical areas are considered? Ultimately, does this heterogeneity impact on their firms' performance? As a key component of the real estate value chain, real estate services are central...
How can cognitive biases affect the birth and evolution of entrepreneurial ventures? In Entrepreneurial Decision Making (EDM), this lively research question remains largely unaddressed when the world of Unicorns, as a per se entrepreneurial species, is considered. Thus, through this conceptual article, we aim to contribute toward knowledge creation...
Whilst research in innovation ecosystems has focused on the connectivity, interdependence, and coevolution of actors, technologies, and institutions, there has been a gap in the study of these relationships between actors, with little explanation given on how mutually interdependent parties adapt. In this paper, we draw further on the ecological me...
This paper aims to offer a comprehensive picture of the state of the art of management research on innovation in women-owned firms by conducting a systematic literature review. In so doing, two main areas around which today’s conversation is centered have been identified, namely the analysis of those factors able to affect innovation in women-owned...
What is the state-of-the-art literature regarding the adoption of the complexity theory (CT) in engineering management (EM)? What implications can be derived for future research and practices concerning sustainability issues? In this conceptual article, we critically discuss the current status of complexity research in EM. In this regard, we use IE...
How can virtuous real estate Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) be developed? This question appears buoyant in urban planning. In fact, notwithstanding their increasing appeal for governing the current complexity of urban infrastructure projects, evidence from the PPP practice is still controversial; some PPPs appear virtuous (i.e. value generating...
This conceptual article discusses and, from some aspects, also problematizes the state-of-the-art regarding co-evolutionary research in Management and Organization Studies (MOS). Analyzing 76 characteristic studies published since 2000, we address three simple, significant questions: What co-evolves? What causal relationships are considered? What a...
How has Upper Echelons Theory (UET) (Hambrick and Mason, 1984) been evolving over time? Through our historical discussion in this article, we aim to provide an updated – and also innovative from some aspects – big picture on this famous approach to strategic management. In fact, after more than 30 years since its original conceptualization, we beli...
Deadline for full paper submissions: February, 1st, 2021
What forces drive organizational evolution? In particular, how much does bounded rationality matter? We do believe that the longstanding determinism/voluntarism dichotomy on how organizations evolve has, until now, missed focusing on one major driver of organizational evolution, which, we think, is Herbert Simon’s seminal, bounded rationality miles...
How can be crises classified? What does the term “corporate crisis” mean? Corporate crises have always been a topic of tremendous interest for both the research in and practice of strategic management at an international level. Attention has been given to elaborating appropriate interpretative conceptualizations, together with implementing effectiv...
What CEO attributes can improve corporate sustainability? In this regard, what do superstar CEOs, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates, have in common? Also, did the personalities of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay contribute to the crack in the US Enron Corporation early in this century? Why, as far as presidential electio...
What are the risks of prioritizing short-term goals in corporate strategy against more long-term oriented (and hopefully sustainable) corporate performance? Through a qualitative case study narrative recalling some aspects of the sadly famous, but still insightful, bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation in the US (2001), this article aims at contribut...
Può l’utilizzo dell’approccio teorico co-evolutivo aggiungere valore al quanto mai vivo dibattito sull’efficientamento dei rapporti tra pubblico e privato nei sistemi socio-economici? Un sempre crescente corpus di studiosi e policy makers oggi ritiene che la co-evoluzione rappresenti un importante strumento per analizzare razionalmente il rapporto...
Purpose – Why and how do cognitive distortions in managerial decision making occur? All organizations are imperfect systems (Katz and Khan, 1966), with wrong decisions often just round the corner. As a consequence, addressing these important questions continues to be particularly lively in the management development area, especially in terms of its...
Class Materials for the General Management/Enterprise Evolution Course (Master of Science in Business Administration, University of Rome Tor Vergata, School of Economics)
Purpose
What entrepreneurial competences can increase the start-ups’ infant survival chances? How can the liability of newness be successfully handled? Positioned in this research stream, which, especially over recent years, has been particularly lively also in the Journal of Management Development , the purpose of this paper is to meet not only th...
How do organizations adapt? Although constantly receiving attention, addressing this key question still needs elaboration. Thus, in this paper we critically review the evolution of Upper Echelons Theory (UET), which, as well known, was initially born as a strongly voluntaristic perspective on organizational adaptation. As we explain, the UET body o...
How do social organizations evolve? How do they adapt to environmental pressures? What resources and capabilities determine their survival within dynamic competition? Charles Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species (1859) has provided a significant impact on the development of the management and organization theory literatures on organizational...
Which executive profiles currently govern the construction value chain? Addressing this lively research question is the key point of our article and it appears central to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers interested in project management in general, and construction and real estate in particular. For this reason, we draw from Upper Echelons...
Quali sono le caratteristiche socio-demografiche e le competenze distintive di chi oggi governa i maggiori player del settore immobiliare in Italia? Nel presente lavoro indaghiamo sulla proposta domanda di ricerca attraverso un’analisi comparativa delle figure alla guida di 135 rilevanti operatori attivi, in detto settore, al 31 dicembre 2013. L’an...
Real estate has always played a key role in the economy of industrialised countries. To date, fine-tuned studies have started to grow and develop to inform about the evolution of real estate management as a per se
discipline for education, research and practice. Increasing reviews have also systematised what is hot and what is not in terms of resea...
This editorial introduces the associated Special Issue guest co-edited for this journal.
Purpose: Over the years, the empirical evidences have demonstrated that particular board features can improve the survival chances of firms suffering a crisis and, to date, experts agree that discussing these evidences is necessary for the further improvement of knowledge in this field. This article aims to contribute to this goal by commenting on...
Book review of the homonymous monograph.
How can newborn firms survive to the high mortality rates associated with their infancy? To date, shedding substantive light on this lively – and still unaddressed from many aspects – question is undoubtedly crucial for both the research and practice of management. Thus, this attempt constitutes the core of this article, that is positioned within t...
The literature about organizational evolution has been witnessing a tremendous amount of and continuous development among strategists since the second half of the 20th century and this critical review article aims to provide readers with a thorough discussion of past and contemporary research within this area. From the beginning, the article works...
Purpose: Over the last 30 years, specific investigations into self-reinforcing processes in managerial decision making have been gaining momentum within the mainstream literature of management. However, to date, it is claimed that understanding these processes properly still requires additional research efforts. Thus, this conceptual article aims t...
Past research has increasingly suggested that CEO/TMT personality can play a relevant role in influencing various external (e.g. firm performance) and internal (e.g. firm organizational structure) management outcomes. These promising results need appropriate systematization and discussion, which we aim at providing through a literature review based...
Online dataset of this systematic literature review published in the Journal of Management and Governance
This article seeks to provide its readers with useful insights about what key factors towards survival (or failure) can be associated with different stages of the organisational life cycle. In particular, the article aims to explain how the empirical developments from ‘organisational adaptation’ literature can be useful, especially to the practice o...
This article aims at discussing how the literature about the real estate management has been evolving over time. To date, both scholars and practitioners substantially converge in maintaining that, if properly performed, that bundle of operations known as corporate real estate management (CREM) can positively affect the overall corporate profitabil...
This editorial introduces the content of the associated special issue guest co-edited for this journal.
Over the years, understanding the possible antecedents of corporate distress has received considerable interest among the scholars and practitioners of management worldwide. Also, much of the evolving empirical research around this topic has been increasingly devoted to studying what board features can increase or decrease the survival of distresse...
Over the second half of the 20th century, a great contribution to the studying of the relationship between organizations and their competitive environment has been provided by the continuous flourishing of the management literature about organizational evolution. To date, this literature appears as mature enough to warrant the discussion of its fin...
Can particular characteristics of the board of directors positively affect the survival chances of distressed firms? How has the empirical research on this topic evolved over the years? How have the statistical techniques been developed? Corporate distress has always represented an outstanding topic for both scholars and practitioners. However, ide...
Managing corporate crises has always been a topic of interest in the evolving research about futures, especially as far as recent literature about scenario planning is concerned. Dealing with crises is even more important to date, because of the large amount of corporate failures determined by the current macro-economic recession worldwide. While a...
In November 2011, Zahra and Wright published a very thought-provoking article aimed at discussing the state of the art associated with the entrepre-neurship research domain. The main idea behind that article was that, alt-hough tremendously growing, entrepreneurship still lacks strong theoretical micro-foundations. Thus, this gap negatively affects...
Purpose
– This conceptual paper aims at providing the readers of the Journal of Management History with an evaluation of the overall impact of Arthur Stinchcombe's liability of newness construct on the management literature about organizational evolution over time.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper adopts an historical approach for discussin...
Over the second half of the 20th century, a great contribution to the comprehension of a number of key phenomena associated with corporate competitiveness and survival has been provided by the continuous development of the literature on organizational adaptation, which has been increasingly finding relevant space within the scientific conversation....
Purpose: The purpose of the article is to contribute to the debate on organizational adaptation by providing both scholars and practitioners with reasoned observations as to where this research domain is and, perhaps, could be going, and as to what important questions and gaps still exist in this research area.
Design/methodology/approach: The ar...
This research examines the relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance through the findings of an empirical longitudinal investigation of public utilities listed on the Italian Stock Exchange (2000 -2008). The data for the measurement of the corporate governance variables are taken from the latest edition of the Italian Pred...
II Edizione del materiale didattico per il corso di “Processi e Modelli Decisionali d’Impresa”, Corso di Laurea specialistica in Economia e Management, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata” (I Edizione - 2010).
Although still fragmented, the advancements within the empirical literature about the board-distress relationship have suggested that particular board features can have a role in enhancing the survival chances of distressed firms. This article aims at providing both the strategic management scholars and practitioners with the systematization of the...
Nel presente capitolo effettuiamo un’analisi dell’attuale scenario immobiliare europeo, ponendo particolare attenzione al caso italiano.
Quali sono le dinamiche evolutive del settore immobiliare italiano, inteso come insieme delle attività afferenti al comparto delle costruzioni e dei servizi ivi dedicati? Oggetto di profondi cambiamenti negli ultimi venti anni, tale settore si presenta oggi come una realtà variegata, complessa e di particolare rilievo nell’economia nazionale. Parti...
What kind of relationship, if any, exists between corporate governance and performance? Despite a lively scholarly commitment, conclusive results on this research question are still missing in the literature. This paper aims to contribute to fill this gap by presenting quantitative evidence from the population of the Italian public utilities listed...
Tutt’ora poco frequentate dalla letteratura economico-aziendale, le difficoltà del cambiamento saranno oggetto di attenzione specifica del presente contributo. Tali difficoltà, in particolare, verranno contestualizzate alle transizioni in atto nel sistema di corporate governance in Italia. E’ noto, infatti, come il provvedimento di riforma delle so...
Despite a lively research commitment, convergent results on the relationship between corporate governance and performance are still missing in the literature to date. This is particularly true for those firms which, either fully or partially, changed their nature from public to private in the last few years. Thus, this article aims at contributing...
Almost in the last ten years, interest in cross-disciplinary management and psychology research has been on the rise. Within corporate governance, nowadays, cross-disciplinary research is particularly advocated by scholars to improve an effective comprehension of the behavioral dynamics regarding board of directors. Although several enhancements ha...
Corporate crises have always been a topic of interest in management studies. Although, over the years, scholars have developed a plethora of heterogeneous research perspectives on this issue, to date, the literature still lacks a rigorous methodological approach to account for the factors determining a firm’s failure. The aim of this paper is to co...
In providing a seminal explanation of the ‘struggle for survival’ between newborn organisations and older ones, Arthur Stinchcombe (1965) introduced the ‘liability of newness’ hypothesis to account for those relevant problems that firms may face in the first years of their life cycle. Despite lively research commitment, an up-to-date systematisatio...
The paper explores the determinants of corporate crisis through an «organizational adaptation» perspective. In this regard, a research framework recently developed by scholars is at first shown. It is then tested in the European automobile industry through the analysis of the huge Fiat group’s economic and financial crisis in the nineties. Empirica...
The paper explores the relationship between firm’s strategy and its structure through the case study of the Italian public utility ENI. Within the liberalization process nowadays occurring in the Italian gas market, the paper analyzes ENI’s performance in the period 2000-06 and focuses on the most relevant strategic and organizational changes of th...
La tematica della corporate social responsibility costituisce da tempo oggetto di attenzione da parte degli studiosi di management, nonché da parte dei diversi attori socio-istituzionali a cui, nel panorama politico-economico, è demandata la pianificazione e implementazione delle policy di organizzazioni complesse quali imprese, pubbliche amministr...
L’oggetto del presente contributo è costituto dai Real Estate Investment Trusts (in seguito REITs). Il contributo, in particolare, indaga circa la possibile correlazione tra diversificazione geografica degli investimenti immobiliari e performance dei REITs. La letteratura finanziaria internazionale che, a partire dalla loro introduzione sul mercato...
Nel presente contributo analizziamo il rapporto tra strategia aziendale e struttura organizzativa attraverso il caso di studio del gruppo ENI nel periodo 2000-05. Il quadro di riferimento è duplice. Da un punto di vista teorico ci basiamo su quei contributi di strategic management che, a partire dal seminale lavoro di Alfred Chandler, hanno indagat...
The paper explores the determinants of a firm’s crisis through an "organizational adaptation" perspective. In this regard, a research framework recently developed by Mellahi and Wilkinson is at first shown. The framework is then tested in the European automobile industry through the analysis of the huge Fiat group’s economic and financial crisis in...
The paper studies the possible relation between corporate governance and the performance of some Italian local public utilities listed on the Milan’s Stock Exchange. The sample, more deeply, consists of those firms which have continually been listed between January 1 2001 and January 1 2006. In the paper, the proxy variables for corporate governanc...
La tematica della crisi d’impresa costituisce, da sempre, oggetto di attenzione da parte degli studiosi di management ed economia aziendale. Il dibattito è vivo intorno ai problemi di identificazione e interpretazione delle cause delle crisi aziendali, per la varietà delle prospettive di analisi del fenomeno, da quelle economiche lato sensu, a quel...
Il presente contributo indaga circa l’attuale rapporto tra sistema finanziario e imprese in Italia, avuto riguardo delle specifiche implicazioni del rapporto per la competitività del Sistema Paese. Nel contributo, in particolare, l’oggetto d’indagine viene affrontato traendo spunto dalle più rilevanti posizioni in argomento espresse durante la sess...
Nel presente contributo illustriamo alcune tra le problematiche che, nel sistema italiano di corporate governance, sono state vigorosamente evidenziate dai recenti casi di frode contabile. Il contributo, in tale prospettiva, può suggerire alcuni spunti di riflessione in tema di tutela del risparmio, le cui proposte di riforma sono attualmente ogget...
Il presente volume si inserisce nell’ambito della ricerca MIUR ex 40% “Quale nuova impresa pubblica nell’Unione Europea”, di cui la Facoltà di Economia dell’Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” è unità capofila. Il volume, in particolare, è stato realizzato a seguito di seminari afferenti al Dottorato in “Economia e Organizzazione delle Imp...
Recensione della monografia omonima.
In the light of the liberalization process nowadays occurring in the Italian gas market, the paper studies ENI’s performance in the period 2000-05. More deeply, the research focuses on the most relevant strategic and organizational changes affecting the firm. The research framework is based on the European and Italian laws concerning the gas market...
The paper provides an overview of the Italian corporate governance problem, which takes into account the key features of the ownership structure of domestic firms listed at the Milan Stock Exchange in 2004. Basically, it is argued that, although in recent years significant rules were issued to improve the Italian corporate governance system, effect...
Attraverso l’analisi del caso Enron, intendiamo svolgere alcune considerazioni attinenti al rapporto tra economia e finanza nel governo dell’impresa. Nel presente contributo ripercorriamo, inizialmente, le tappe più significative della crescita e della crisi della società, ne descriviamo, successivamente, le pratiche gestionali più discusse e ci so...
Incat è un’impresa che opera nella cantieristica. Più in particolare, essa è specializzata nella produzione di catamarani di alluminio molto veloci, destinati ad essere utilizzati come traghetti. L’impresa, che rappresenta una storia imprenditoriale di successo, è cresciuta rapidamente, fino a diventare il maggiore datore di lavoro privato in Tasma...
Questions
Questions (4)
We published new research on corporate governance.
The extant management research in organizational evolution and entrepreneurship has demonstrated that Stinchcombe's seminal liability of newness (1965) is still generally supported across the globe. This means that most of the newborn firms do not survive the selection pressures associated with their initial 3/4 year of their life cycle. At the same time, research seems far for producing conclusive results about the resources/capabilities owned by the survivors.
Untangling self-reinforcing mechanisms in managerial decision making. Co-evolving heuristics?
What are the most promising research avenues in this exciting field of the management and organization theory disciplines?
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