Management still counts a lot for the results of an Italian company on the market. But to play a role in relaunching the economy, Italian managers must acquire new leadership skills beyond the traditional organization and management responsibilities of companies. Among the topics of the annual conference of AIDEA, the prestigious Italian Academy of Business Economics which on 4 and 5 October brought together 800 economists from all Italian universities on the Fisciano Campus of the University of Salerno, the Italian case analyzed through the evolution of management is at the center of the debate. The event is entitled: Management without borders. Management studies: tradition and emerging paradigms. From the excellence of research in the field of business economics, concentrated in the unpublished works presented at the AIDEA conference, indications on emerging trends and many answers to questions on the current figure of the top manager have come.
IN EIGHT YEARS 250 CHANGES OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OUT OF 200 COMPANIES
Managers have great responsibility for the success (or failure) of companies and are the first to take risks if things go wrong. Another research presented at the AIDEA conference shows that the risk exposure of managers is higher when the company is listed. The analysis, carried out on a sample of around 200 non-financial companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, in fact indicates that the top management replacement rate appears to be higher in listed companies than in a sample of unlisted companies. In the period examined by the research (2000-2008) there were approximately 250 changes of managing director. The quotation accelerates the turnover rate because there is greater pressure on performance. Indeed, the research highlights that the replacement of managers is related to the (unsatisfactory) results achieved in the two years preceding the replacement.
COMPANIES FINANCERS SHOULD ALSO LOOK AT MANAGERS
Management is important in assessing the risk associated with entrepreneurial activity. According to a research conducted by some AIDEA scholars on a sample of over 700 companies in the North, Center and South (48% manufacturing sector, the rest commerce and services), the introduction of variables connected to management characteristics, such as experience, ability , training, improves the forecasting capacity of the models that measure the probability of a firm's crisis with respect to the use of economic-financial variables alone. In particular, this forecasting capacity improves by about 10% precisely by taking into account the characteristics of the managers of the companies. An important result that should also push the lenders of the production system to carefully examine not only the balance sheets but also those who lead companies.
INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MANAGERS AND BOD
The relationship between managers and Councils, according to another research discussed in Fisciano, is by no means simple. The survey, conducted through questionnaires and direct interviews with an initial sample of about 300 independent directors, in fact shows that the boards of directors find it difficult to adopt conduct in line with rational approaches, spend little time on their own training and play a decidedly active role limited in monitoring the work of management, with the danger of distortions in the paths that lead to corporate decisions.
“Today top managers – explains Alessandro Carretta, president of AIDEA and professor of Economics of Financial Intermediaries at the University of Rome Tor Vergata – are no longer only required skills in strategic planning, budgeting, definition of the economic and financial structure of the company, human resource management and control of the purchasing-production-marketing chain. They must know how to manage relations with stakeholders, with shareholders, with the Board of Directors. It's up to them to deal with crises, just as it has become their mission to enhance the company's social and intellectual capital. In other words: top management must know how to catalyze and manage the increasingly important interactions between the company and the external environment”. "Only in this way - argues Carretta - we can imagine their positive contribution to the relaunch of our economy".
THE CONFERENCE
On 4 October, in the Aula Magna of the Fisciano Campus of the University of Salerno, after the inaugural speeches by Alessandro Carretta, President of AIDEA and Raimondo Pasquino, Rector of the University of Salerno, the XXXV conference of AIDEA opened Maurizio Zollo, President of EURAM, with the plenary session on Management without borders. This was followed by a debate on Italian companies between technological-organizational innovations and international competition, which involved Alfonso Gambardella, Editor in Chief of the European Management Review, Giovanni Zanetti from the University of Turin, Michele Tiraboschi from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Vincenzo Boccia, Vice President of Confindustria and President of Piccola Impresa Confindustria, and Carlo Palmieri, Vice President of Pianoforte Holding. The speakers outlined the underlying causes of the mediocre entrepreneurial performance of Italian companies, identifying strategic, organizational and operational innovation as an essential response to the crisis affecting businesses, public organizations and third sector bodies.
On October 5, the round table of the Journal of Management and Governance, is coordinated by Roberto di Pietra and Antonella Zucchella, and opens the second day of the Conference, framing management beyond borders starting from a globalization perspective. Speakers Peter Buckley of the University of Leeds, Roger Strange of Sussex University and Sabine Urban of the University of Strasbourg, internationally renowned speakers, who further raised the level of the event with a view to internationalization.
The conference ends with a speech by Jens Dahlgaard, Editor in Chief of the Total Quality Management and Business Excellence Review, as well as Full Professor of Linkoping University. Dahlgaard combines the theme of management without borders in a framework of maximization of quality and management excellence; his intervention prompts further reflections on the main problematic nodes that emerged from the academic debates.
WHO IS AIDEA
AIDEA (Italian Academy of Business Economics) is the prestigious Academy established in the early 1800s in Bologna, where it still has its headquarters. Its main objective is to contribute to the progress and development of the country through the dissemination of knowledge of economics and business disciplines.
AIDEA is an important network of over 800 members (the Academicians) mainly made up of: university professors of business administration, economics and business management, corporate finance, organization and economics of financial intermediaries, operating at almost all Italian universities. It carries out an intense activity of support for research and training aimed at young researchers, through the annual activities of the National School of Education and the National School of Research. At an international level, the Academy maintains relationships with foreign institutions operating in the same area of interest and promotes the Journal of Management and Governance, an authoritative journal of the Springer publishing group.
