Archive

2026-01-28 Antonio Giannino

Why SMEs are the new front line of cybersecurity

In today’s digital ecosystem, the perception that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are “too small to be a target” is a dangerous and obsolete anachronism. The strategic reality is diametrically opposed: SMEs are not only a primary target, but are often regarded by malicious actors as the “weak point” of the entire economic value chain. Their interconnectedness with large corporations, in their role as suppliers of goods and services, turns them into a privileged attack vector. By compromising an SME with less sophisticated defences, an attacker can gain a foothold from which ...

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2026-01-22 Matteo Cristofaro, Kate Black, Salvatore Moccia

Training managers in the era of AI: why judgment matters more than algorithms

Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming management education in business schools around the world. This is not just about new teaching tools, but about a profound change in how judgment, responsibility, and decision-making are taught—and assessed. It is from this transformation that the Vademecum on Generative AI in Management Education was born, promoted by the Management Education Committee of IFSAM, the international federation of management academies and academic associations. Although addressed to the education sector, the Vademecum delivers a direct message to managers, ...

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2026-01-15 E&M Plus

More Trust, More Future

The word chosen by Treccani[1] as the “Word of the Year 2025” is “trust”: one of the most searched terms on the platform and the one showing the highest percentage increase compared to the previous year. Given that trust is a fundamental concept in both social and personal life, it is hardly surprising that it has moved to the centre of attention in a period of extreme uncertainty, and that it may also be linked to another word beginning with the letter F: “future”. Our Scientific Director, Sandro Castaldo – who has devoted decades of academic research and managerial dissemination ...

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2025-12-23 Fabrizio Zerbini

The drivers of change in urban mobility

Urban mobility is not a concept that necessarily conjures positive associations. Transportation systems are often at the center of criticism in discussions around the green transition – and with good reason. According to the European Environment Agency (2022), the transport sector is the only segment in the broader energy system that where CO₂ emissions have increased since the end of the twentieth century. Moreover, urban traffic has progressively become an objective constraint on individual freedom. To travel just ten kilometers in the city, it takes a London resident an average of 36 minutes, ...

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2025-12-22 Ronnie Rith

CSR as a strategic lever in professional football clubs

The agenda of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been gaining momentum in the industries of professional team sports, including the football industry. Professional football clubs have been engaging more intentionally and extensively in a plethora of CSR activities. In practice, CSR engagement activities, in the forms of community-oriented programmes, socio-cultural activities, and environmental initiatives, have been well endeavoured by European football clubs in the top-tier leagues of England’s Premier League, France’s Ligue 1, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s ...

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2025-12-19 Alberto Grando

The Glass Half Full of Italian Innovation

One of the key recommendations highlighted in the Report on the Future of European Competitiveness (Draghi, 2024) stresses the need to “bridge the innovation gap,” particularly with respect to the United States. The report notes that “in Europe, innovative digital firms are unable to scale or attract financing, resulting in a significant gap in later-stage investment between the EU and the United States.” Among the various obstacles hindering innovation, the document also points out that Europe lacks a sufficient number of academic institutions capable of achieving top levels of excellence, ...

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2025-12-15 Donato Masciandaro

Cash and digital money: beware the Stockholm syndrome

The digital euro is a public investment that needs to be made as soon as possible. Europe must maintain both physical and digital euros. The rationale is straightforward: the less public money is used, the greater the risk of becoming hostage to private and foreign monies – often without realizing it, and even inadvertently encouraging them. This is a kind of Stockholm syndrome, and it is precisely what is happening in Sweden. The only institution sounding the alarm is the central bank, while politicians have so far ignored the issue. Is this a case of regulatory capture? The starting point ...

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2025-12-09 Yingying Zhang-Zhang

The power of shared ideas: IFSAM’s journey in a book

A living archive of global academic collaboration, a tribute to intellectual kinship, and a call to action for the future of management scholarship. The IFSAM 35th Anniversary Memory Book is far more than a commemorative publication. Edited by Yingying Zhang-Zhang and Nic Beech, the volume gathers approximately 40 reflections from nearly 50 scholars across five continents, each offering a distinctive lens on the evolution, impact, and aspirations of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM). A Federation Rooted in Diversity and Dialogue Founded in 1990 with the ...

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2025-12-05 Massimo Aielli

Understanding costs to make better decisions

To measure costs effectively, it is essential to understand their possible alternative classifications and determine which items to consider and how to include them in measurement processes. Although each company may organize its costs differently, it is still possible to identify several typical categories observable across all firms, and these can therefore be regarded as the most common classifications. First, cost elements can be distinguished as either variable or fixed. Variable costs change in proportion to production and sales volumes, while fixed costs do not vary in their total amount ...

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2025-11-24 Partha Dasgupta

Managing nature’s portfolio: why natural capital really matters

Whether as farmers or fishers, foresters or miners, households or companies, governments or communities, we manage the assets to which we have access, in line with our motivations as best as we can. But the best each of us can achieve with our individual portfolios may nevertheless result in a massive collective failure to manage the global portfolio of all our assets. We are like a crowd of people, each of us trying to keep balance on a hanging bridge, only to bring it crashing down. How would you know whether you are managing your portfolio of assets well? What rule would you follow? For simplicity, ...

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