Stefania Veltri

• University of Calabria

Purpose This paper aims to systematize the literature focused on the environmental, social and governance (ESG)-based executive compensation (ESGBEC). Design/methodology/approach This paper carries out a systematic literature review analysis, where the first phase of systematic literature review returns the final set of sampled articles analyzed i...

This study investigates the governance drivers of a firm's eco‐efficiency. We measure eco‐efficiency using data envelopment analysis (DEA), emphasizing efficiency measures aimed at minimizing inputs and ensuring constant returns to scale (CRS model). The governance variables considered within the study include board size, board independence, freque...

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between firm value and the ESG performance of European listed small-capitalized energy firms for the 5-year period 2017–2021. To study this relationship, we employ panel data models. In our model the dependent variable—that is, firm value—is proxied by Tobin’s Q, while our main independent explic...

There is a growing awareness of the need to integrate non-financial information arising from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into corporate strategies, processes, and credit risk assessment to generate long-term value. Our paper aims to develop, through a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-based approach, a credit risk assessment t...

Our paper intends to investigate the nexus of circular economy (CE) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the synergies between the two concepts at micro level, that is, firm level. In the chapter, the authors intend to perform a case study on FaterSMART, a firm that developed a technology for converting Absorbent Hygiene Products (AHPs) was...

This study aims to analyze the current state of research on the determinants of nonfinancial disclosure quality (NFDQ). The systematic literature review analysis applied in the study is based on the systematic literature review principles, and on bibliographic analysis and manual content analysis instruments to highlight the key factors that have b...

Investors, society, and policymakers have all paid growing attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics over the past few years, pushing businesses to adopt sustainable practices and stakeholder-focused initiatives.

In a changed scenario, characterized by great attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, few industries feel the pressure more than utilities. The paper investigates, by employing a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, whether including ESG factors increases the efficiency of utilities companies and whether banks, by consid...

Introduction: Accounting history research on cost accounting theory and practice is still at an early stage in Italy for two main reasons. The first relates to the im-portance that the double-entry bookkeeping technique assumes in Italy, charac-terised by a typical financial focus, and the second to the delay with which Italy en-tered the industria...

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors are increasingly at the center of corporate and investment decisions. In this context, the aim of the paper was to test whether ESG factors impact on financial efficiency of a sample of firms belonging to different European sectors. This study enriches the literature of the field through a multi‐s...

With the 2014/95/EU Directive, implemented in Italy with the Legislative Decree no. 254/2016, public interest entities with specific requirements, among which credit institutions, have been obliged to report several aspects of non‐financial information (NFI) in a non‐financial statement (NFS). It remains an open question whether NFI disclosure regu...

The proliferation of sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) has led investors to favor socially responsible companies (Galbreath, 2013; Avetisyan & Hockerts, 2017). This has contributed to the growing importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, and ESG rating agencies have established themselves as a primary source of i...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the relationship between the governance structure of universities and the universities' knowledge transfer (KT) performance outcomes measured in terms of university spin-off firms university spin-offs (USOs). Design/methodology/approach The universities' board of directors has been analyzed u...

The chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of materiality and assurance in an Integrated Report (IR) context. It briefly presents the main characters of IR, the criticalities and strengths of IR assurance in increasing stakeholders’ trust, and the significance of a materiality determination process. We discuss the importance of materiality jud...

The chapter aims to deepen the emerging issue of cyber-risk that, among non-financial (NF) risks, represents a major threat for organizations due to the growing sophistication and variety of data breaches and cyberattacks. The research provides a general background for NF risks disclosure illustrating the path that led from external voluntary to ma...

Creating and transferring knowledge is actually considered crucial for universities to improve their competitiveness in a new mission to flank teaching and research (third mission). A key concept within the “third mission” is the idea that universities should pay greater attention to knowledge transfer (KT), under the assumption that an efficient K...

The aim of the study is to investigate whether the board of directors (BoD) diversity affect corporate social performance (CSP), an alternative measure of corporate performance based on social outcomes. The article distinguishes between a structural diversity of boards (proxied by director independence), and a demographic diversity in boards (proxi...

The circular economy (CE), definable as a system focused on the reorganization of material, information, and energy flows to achieve greater resource efficiency through the reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling of materials, is a concept widely discussed by practitioners and scientists of many disciplines. Waste recycling is integral to the CE, but...

In this chapter we investigate the value relevance of financial risk-related information disclosure, that is, the usefulness of financial risk information for investors. In the chapter, we present the main empirical studies addressed to test the usefulness of financial risk information for investors’ investment decisions. On the basis of the litera...

In October 2014, the European Union adopted Directive 2014/95/EU (hereafter EU Directive), which mandates companies of a certain size to draft and publish a non-financial declaration (NFD) related to the disclosure of corporate non-financial information (NFI) about society and the environment, with the ultimate aim to enhance the consistency and co...

In the chapter we focus on the path that led to the issuing of the 2014/95/EU Directive (hereafter EU Directive), and then we deeply analyse two important supranational initiatives, GRI and Integrated Reporting, and their relationships with the EU Directive. The chapter also provides a brief analysis of EU Directive, before examining deeply the Ita...

In the chapter we systematize the three regression equation identified in Chaps. 5, 7 and 8, to hypothesize a mediating role of the NF risk on the association between financial risk and market value. To test this hypothesis, we run three regression equations simultaneously and analyse the beta coefficients to investigate whether NF risk fully media...

In this chapter we investigate the value relevance of the NF risk-related information disclosure, that is, the usefulness of NF risk information for investors. In the chapter, we present the main empirical studies that address to test the usefulness of NF risk information for investors’ investment decision. On the basis of the literature, we posit...

In the chapter we introduce the main research question of the book, namely, RQ: Does quality mandatory NF risk disclosure affect investors’ decisions? The answer to the research question requires a context in which to carry out the research (we justified the choice of Italy in the previous section), the analytical framework for NF risk-related disc...

In the chapter we illustrate the other theoretical framework at the basis of our research, that is, the semi-strong market efficiency theory, according to which, on average, the market reflects all the publicly available information. This theory is the necessary prerequisite to make the value relevance theory work, a theory that focuses on the shar...

The chapter focuses on risk disclosure, stressing the significance of risk disclosure (and the difference with reporting), and then separately investigates the main studies on financial and NF risk disclosure, examined under three relevant points: the determinants of disclosure, the character of disclosure (voluntary/mandatory) and the theoretical...

In the chapter we introduce the first novelty element of our research. Different from the extant literature, which does not take into account the possibility that the financial and NF corporate risk disclosure could interact, we make a strong hypothesis in our research, namely, that the two typologies of risk disclosure are different yet interconne...

The integrated report (IR) is a new reporting tool connecting financial and nonfinancial information, in one report. The aim of IR is to present the firm's value creation over time. In recent years, IR has received both increasing academic and professional interest. Recent researches have focused on the potentialities (and criticalities) of IR and...

In October 2014, the European Union adopted Directive 2014/95/EU (hereafter, EU Directive), mandating companies of a certain size to draft and publish corporate nonfinancial information (NFI) regarding society and the environment. In this study, we examine the mandatory disclosure of nonfinancial (NF) risks by listed Italian companies, as required...

Purpose: This paper draws on a family business perspective to explore the historic accounting records of an Italian liquorice juice business. The applicability of the three-circle model of family business systems to such an historic context is examined. Design/Methodology/Approach: Using archival records, the Cassa accounting book of the business i...

The last few decades have witnessed the increasing pressures for organizations to behave in a socially and environmentally responsible fashion, and businesses have started to acknowledge the importance of sustainability, embracing the sustainability rhetoric in their external reporting and in their mission statement. One area that has not yet been...

According to the Directive 2014/95/EU on non‐financial information (NFI), from 2017 onwards, large companies of member states must provide social, environmental, and governance disclosures. This paper, focusing on the evaluation of the credibility of NFI in Italy after the implementation of the EU Directive, aims to investigate whether making non‐f...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether universities performance management systems (PMS), consider intellectual capital (IC) management as a criterion for evaluating their managers. The issue has been addressed investigating the case study of the University of Calabria. The evaluation systems for managers of the University of Calabria...

This book focuses on the impact of the disclosure of non-financial risk, which could be seen as the most relevant non-financial information (NFI), in the aftermath of the 2014/95/EU Directive. The author analyses whether the switch from voluntary to mandatory NFI enhance the quality of disclosed NF risk-related information and the usefulness of the...

The main aim of the paper is to provide evidence that merging the corporate social responsibility (CSR), the leadership, and the social entrepreneurship literatures informs and benefit all these literatures. With this aim, a literature review on the studies investigating how leaders affect organizational CSR, why organizations engage in CSR, and ho...

The paper aims to develop a specific research template able to support researchers in analyzing the quality of an organizational IR, in terms of degree of accountability towards the stakeholders. The research template makes an original contribution to the IR literature simplifying the elements to consider to express an evaluation about the degree o...

The paper aims to challenge the a priori usefulness of OCI for financial statement' users in credit-oriented financing systems. Italy was chosen to investigate the research question for its accounting features. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical research that investigates the incremental OCI value relevance in the Italian pos...

Purpose The scope of the study is to analyze an Italian family firm operating in the transformation and marketing of durum wheat to investigate the degree of accountability of the integrated reporting (IR) disclosed by the organization. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a case study approach proposing a specific research template to evalu...

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the integration of new forms of sustainable control systems (SCSs) and traditional management control systems (MCSs), and the use of these control systems affect the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. A qualitative case study based on a longitudinal investigation of an Italian f...

The paper aims to depict the forces responsible for an effective introduction of a sustainability report within SMEs. The paper’s aim is addressed employing the case study methodology. In detail an SME considered a best practice in introducing sustainability innovations has been selected and analyzed. The main outcome of the paper is to use the cas...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze a case study of an ethical strategic alliance operating in a depressed territory belonging to the South of Italy, with the aim to investigate whether an alliance guided by ethic principles could be effective in recovering a territory while pursuing, at the same time, economic aims for the alliance it...

The paper investigates whether the managers' attitude towards the investments in human capital (HC) vary in relation to the financial healthiness of firms. The sample includes all the listed European firms belonging to the European Monetary Union, excluding emerging European markets. The data was gathered for a seven-year period (2005-2011) and was...

The paper investigates whether the managers' attitude towards the investments in human capital (HC) vary in relation to the financial healthiness of firms. The sample includes all the listed European firms belonging to the European Monetary Union, excluding emerging European markets. The data was gathered for a seven-year period (2005-2011) and was...

Abstract: Whilst many organisations worldwide have stopped disclosing intellectual capital (IC), to the best of our knowledge, the only longstanding NPO still measuring, managing and reporting its IC is a large Italian non-profit organisation (NPO), ANPAS Piemonte. The main aim of the article is thus to investigate the reasons why ANPAS Piemonte co...

Whilst many organisations worldwide have stopped disclosing intellectual capital (IC), to the best of our knowledge, the only longstanding NPO still measuring, managing and reporting its IC is a large Italian non-profit organisation (NPO), ANPAS Piemonte. The main aim of the article is thus to investigate the reasons why ANPAS Piemonte continues to...

The article focuses on the measurement of a relevant component of the human capital, the managerial ability (MA). Quantifying MA is central to management literature. Prior research indicates that manager specific features (ability, talent, reputation, or style) affect economic outcomes but, in management literature, most of the measures used in arc...

The association of Corporate Governance (CG) with Firm Performance (FP) has always been an issue relevant to management literature, despite the notable heterogeneity of studies and their mixed results highlighting the opportuneness of continuing to investigate the association of CG with FP. The article aims to contribute to this lively debate by po...

The association of Corporate Governance (CG) with Firm Performance (FP) has always been an issue relevant to management literature. Nevertheless, the notable heterogeneity of studies and their mixed results highlight the opportuneness of continuing to investigate the association of CG with FP. The article aims to contribute to this research by buil...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the integrated report (IR) of a South African public university (UFS), by comparing it with the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) framework, to verify whether UFS IR matches the IIRC framework main aims, which is integrating IC and non-IC information into a single report for stakehol...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to measure intellectual capital (IC) in firms involved in strategic alliances, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, as existing research is focused mainly on organizational level mainly and increasingly on macro-level unit such as regions or nations. There are very f...

The purpose of this article is to analyze intellectual capital (IC) measurement, management, and reporting practices at organizational level, with the aim to address a relevant research question: are IC reports used as accountability or as image-building tools? The article presents a single in-depth case study of an Italian nonprofit organization (...

This paper proposes a regime-switching version of the Ohlson model (Contemp Account Res 11:661–687, 1995). We assume that abnormal earnings and the other information variable follow a regime-switching dynamics, which represents a simple yet rigorous way to incorporate the stochastic volatility pattern revealed by financial variables. We derive clos...

Purpose – The article aims to investigate whether the integration between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and intellectual capital (IC) reports could be a plausible issue. To address this aim, the paper posits three main research questions: whether there is a theory able to explain the relationship between IC and CSR ( RQ1 ); whether empirica...

In management literature, intellectual capital (IC) is considered the key driver of the competitive advantage of the third millennium enterprise firm; consequently, measuring, managing and reporting IC has become a critical issue. Frameworks addressed to measure and report IC have proliferated, nevertheless the adoption of these frameworks is not s...

This paper positions the analysis of intellectual capital (IC) reporting within the stakeholder accountability paradigm. Within this paradigm, corporate information is seen as essential to provide an account to stakeholder groups and for management to discharge its accountability. A good relationship with various stakeholders could gain support and...

Purpose - The aim of this study is to propose a method to measure Intellectual Capital (IC) in firms involved in strategic alliances, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, as existing research is focused mainly on organizational level mainly and increasingly on macro-level unit such as regions or nations. There are very few w...

The main aim of this study is to find a method to measure the intellectual capital (IC) of an organization which is able to combine management and measurement views, to reflect the newest concepts regarding IC, and to take into consideration the “vague” interactions between IC categories. We posit the idea that a Fuzzy Expert System (FES) model can...

The paper, published in Social Responsibility Journal has been selected by the journal’s editorial team as a Highly Commended paper in the 2015 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence (http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/authors/literati/awards.htm?year=2015) The paper is freely available until the end of July 2015.

The paper has the aim of overcoming the additive property of the VAIC™ model in order to take into consideration the synergies among different IC components. Hence, the paper proposes a new formulation of the VAIC™ methodology, enriched with a term which measures the IC interaction (interacted term). This improved VAIC™ method, interacted VAIC, has...

Intangibles are the main firm value drivers. This c onsideration implies that becomes more and more cri ti- cal to measure and report the intellectual capital, for each kind of firm. The new reporting statement for firm's intangible assets (i.e. intellectual capital report) are not yet of common use for the firms, b ut many of them already publish,...

The article illustrates the empirical experiences of some Italian companies which started to integrate social and intangible issues in their voluntary corporate communication report. The main aims of the paper are twofold. Firstly, using a small sample of companies disclosing their intangibles in a single document, the article describes some genera...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance (CG), in terms of its internal significance, and the cost of equity capital (CEC), based on a sample of companies listed on the Italian Stock exchange on 31/12/2009. We used Italy as a case study mainly because we expect that the key features of the Italian settin...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the IC reporting practices of an Italian non‐profit organization (NPO), the ANPAS Piemonte, selected as it is one of the few cases with a longstanding experience in issuing IC reports. Design/methodology/approach This is an exploratory, qualitative case study focused on a single case study organizati...

Purpose Intangibles are the main value drivers of a firm. This consideration implies that it becomes more and more important/urgent to measure and report intellectual capital. The new reporting statement (intellectual capital report) is not yet commonly used by firms, but many, on a voluntary basis, already publish environmental, social and sustain...

L'obiettivo principale dello studio è quello di testare l'assunzione, validata da una parte della letteratura, che l'Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) items reporting sia value relevant per gli investitori in misura incrementale, ossia che fornisca loro informazioni aggiuntive rispetto al reddito netto. La rassegna della letteratura evidenzia risult...

The main aim of the article is to test whether the Foreign Currency Translation Adjustments (FCTA), the largest components of Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) for most firms (Dee, 1999), is incrementally value relevant for investors with respect to net income. Previous archival research on value relevance of OCI and its components pointed out that...

The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, by using the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model in measuring intangibles, companies are using an ‘old’ model to measure ‘new’ factors.1 This demonstration is given from a theoretical point of view, by comparing the BSC and the Intellectual Capital (IC) measurement models in relation to four variables:...

The issuing of the SFAS 130 in 1997 and subsequently of the revision of IAS 1 in 2007 became current again the long-standing debate between the ‘all-inclusive’ (or ‘comprehensive income’) and ‘current operating’ performance concepts. The accounting standards required firms to report in the financial statements the Comprehensive Income (CI), as the...

This article analyzes the concept of intellectual capital (IC) in the health sector sphere by studying the case of a major nonprofit research organization in this sector, which has for some time been publishing IC reports. In the last few years, health care organizations have been the object of great attention in the implementation and transfer of...

The paper focuses on the intellectual capital (IC) report in universities, a relevant theme actually for the growing interest in applying an IC approach in managing universities. The paper compares the experiences in reporting IC of two different university institutions, the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the Austrian Universities, to hi...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of two different new management tool, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the Intellectual Capital Report (ICR) in managing and reporting intangibles. Unlike the majority of IC scholars the author, and consistently with Bukh et al. (2005), the author starts from the idea that BSC and ICR are not alterna...

This article belongs to the current in research literature, which is concerned with value relevance. Its main aim is to test the impact of the current and future accounting variables on the firm’s market value, by analyzing these relations with reference to the financial sector of the Italian Stock Exchange. To pursue this objective we carried out...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether information on intellectual capital (IC) is value relevant for investors and the role played by the single components of IC (human capital, organizational capital, relational capital) in creating firm value. Design/methodology/approach The 1995 Ohlson model has been employed to investigate th...

The article analyzes the concept of Intellectual Capital (IC) in the light of the health sector environment, by studying a case of a major health research organization that draft an IC report (ICR). Lately health care organizations have been the object of great attention in terms of implementation and transfer of managerial models and tools, but th...

Nell’economia attuale, la competitività delle imprese e, più in generale, di qualunque sistema organizzativo, non si fonda solo sui tradizionali beni tangibili e sui capitali finanziari, ma in via preponderante sulle risorse cognitive ed intangibili, in grado di garantire differenziali competitivi sostenibili e duraturi (Cañibano et al., 2000; Lev...

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the value relevance of intellectual capital (IC) of Italian listed firms. The paper applies the Ohlson model (1995) to 524 firm-year observations of Italian listed companies for the three-year period 2006-2008 using a panel econometric model. The findings show that the fundamental variables of the Ohlson m...

The main aim of the article is to offer a systematic review of the literature on the relation between Intellectual Capital (IC) and Firm Performance (FP) through the statistical technique of meta-analysis (MA). MA synthesizes the quantitative results of different empirical studies on the relationship between explicative, independent variables (IC i...

The purpose of this the article is to investigate if the Fama and French three-factor model is able to explain the variations in stock returns in Italian market. We choose Italian market as it is a weak equity market, characterized by small listed firms. Asset pricing literature believes that risk factors additional to beta are as more relevant as...

The paper focuses on the intellectual capital (IC) report in universities, a relevant theme actually for the growing interest in applying an IC approach in managing universities. The paper compares the experiences in reporting IC of two different university institutions, the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the Austrian Universities, to hi...