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Research

Research activities at the Insitute of Management (IoM) are inspired by an interdisciplinary approach and aim to combine rigour and relevance, generating impact for business and society. Starting from a strong collaboration among IoM's researchers and public/private managers and organizations, projects aim to provide robust empirical findings and theoretical developments for both contributing to the academic debate and developing managerial solutions for improving the performance of public and private organizations. 

These are the main research areas of our Faculty: 

 

  • Tech Transfer and Doing Business in China. Our research develops synchronously between Italy and China. We promote research activities on the subject of technology transfer, the protection of intellectual property, doing business in China and Sino-Italian tourism cooperation. A key role is played by collaboration with our Chinese partners both of Chongqing University and other Chinese scientific institutions, with whom we have established a long standing and successful partnership. We aim at becoming a reference point in Italy on research topics related to Chinese current affairs and relations between China and the rest of the world.
     
  • Digital transformation of SME. This research activity investigates which are the drivers triggering digital tranformation of SMEs, their antecedents and benefits. In particular, this resarch focuses on the role of knowledge brokers in helping digital transformation.
     
  • Open Innovation. Innovation processes are studied from technological, managerial, organizational, cultural and institutional perspectives. The lines of research on open innovation at the Institute of Management concern:
    (1) the open innovation paradigm and the development of open business models;
    (2) IP management and appropriation strategies;  
    (3) the pursuit of OI in SMEs, with special emphasis on performance determinants and managerial challenges.
     
  • Industry 4.0 enabling technologies. Industry 4.0 technologies are transforming industrial production processes from design and engineering to manufacturing. Our research activities allow companies to better comprehend how they can use these technologies to be more competitive in the digital arena in which they operate. These research activities are usually conducted at various levels: teaching (Coach industry 4.0., summer and winter schools on artificial intelligence), EPO founded projects, or consulting services. These offerings cover every manufacturing domain and comprise the nine enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 (additive manufacturing solutions, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, simulation, horizontal and vertical integration, industrial internet, cloud, cyber-security, and big data analytics).
     
  • Knowledge management for technology transfer. Our research promotes the investigation of knowledge management practices and experience to boost the collaboration between institutions and organizations for the technology transfer. The digital and technological challenges push both universities and companies to access external knowledge to improve or maintain their competitive advantage. Scouting or accessing external knowledge is a challenging activity for organizations. Still, a crucial role is played by the organizational knowledge management mechanisms that might boost or bind the acquisition and the internal absorption of the acquired information. Our researchers are engaged in exploring the knowledge management dynamics that help organizations to transfer technology. Our studies include a wide plethora of partners from world-leading universities to big international corporations and knowledge-intensive SMEs, focusing on different research settings such as Europe, Israel, China, and South Korea.
     
  • Proactivity and willingness to change. The success of organizational change increasingly depends on employees, managers and entrepreneurs taking personal responsibility to promote change by adapting effectively to developing conditions and proactively anticipating new challenges. On the one hand, this research aims to study the orientation of a company to undertake and seize new opportunities, anticipating market demands and actively modelling the external environment; on the other hand, we investigate the positive behavioural intention towards the implementation of changes in an organization's structure, work or administrative processes, resulting in employees' efforts to support or enhance the change process.
     
  • Cost Management and Management Accounting in Service economy. Research in this area is mainly focussed on the design and development of cost management systems, particularly under a value chain perspective. The most recent innovations of Activity-based Costing (ABC) and Time-driven Activity-based Costing (TDABC) are particularly researched both in private and public companies.A specific context of interest is represented by the service economy. Service economy is affecting the fourth industrial revolution, and such transformation is changing even more the relationships between products and services. The increasing service weight in the world economy and the servitization of manufacturing phenomenon (offering services in addition to products) have stimulated a specific research focus in this area. The role of management accounting, such as costing and pricing of products and services, in supporting the decision making process represents a challenge for the future.
     
  • Performance Measurement and Management. The design and implementation of Performance measurement and management systems both in private and public companies is a relevant area of research. Another area of interest deals with the link between financial and non-financial information and the balancing of financial and non-financial measurements. These topics become relevant in monitoring and controlling performance and in process control in the new competitive environment.
     
  • Sustainability accounting and Non-financial reporting. A relevant research topic is represented by Sustainability accounting both for internal and external purposes. From an internal perspective it affects the internal decision making process and the creation of new policies having an effect on the company’s performance. From an external perspective it represents the disclosure of non-financial information about a firm's performance to external stakeholders. The latter becomes particularly relevant after Directive 2014/95/EU (non-financial reporting directive - NFRD) defining the rules on disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by large companies.