Purpose\ud This paper aims to investigate the impact of higher education on the emergence of entrepreneurial intention and human capital as a component of intellectual capital that strongly influences the entrepreneurial process. \ud \ud Design/methodology/approach\ud On the basis of a literature review, a theoretical model that is focused on the theory of planned behaviour was defined to verify the impact of higher education on the development of entrepreneurial intention and human capital. To this end, the structural equation modelling methodology was applied to two samples of students and academics, which differ each other in terms of both education level and specific characteristics of entrepreneurship education activities. \ud \ud Findings\ud The main results show that there are significant differences between the two considered samples. In particular, the level and specific characteristics of entrepreneurial education are the key factors for the development of entrepreneurial intention and human capital.\ud \ud Practical implications\ud The research may be of relevance for universities and policy makers. Universities must devote more attention to training and practice-oriented entrepreneurial courses and collateral activities (projects, initiatives, actions), both for students (first mission) and academic aspiring entrepreneurs (third mission) to encourage the emergence of entrepreneurial intention and human capital formation. For policy makers, this study suggests the need to define policy guidelines and frameworks to support universities’ educational programmes and activities to strengthen the entrepreneurial process, so that they can be consistent with the EU and national entrepreneurship policies.\ud \ud Originality/value\ud This explorative research intends to contribute to the scientific debate by filling the knowledge gap that is due to the very limited number of studies that analyse whether and how entrepreneurial intention can mediate the relationship between higher education and human capital as an intellectual capital component

Despite the increasing interest toward environmental issues in the freight transport and logistics service sector, a comprehensive and updated assessment of the existing literature is still missing. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting the results of a systematic literature review of publications in the area of environmental sustainability in third-party logistics service providers (3PLs) between the years 2000 and 2016. The review offers insight into the critical dimensions of green matters in transport and logistics service companies using an analytical framework based on the following five topic areas: influencing factors, green actions and the impact on performance, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools supporting the green actions, energy efficiency in road freight transport and shipper's perspective and collaboration. The results indicate that, despite the number of published papers having grown significantly from 2008 onward, some areas remain highly under-researched such as ICT and performance measurement. Several research gaps have been identified in each topic area, and a set of propositions forming an agenda for future research directions has been suggested.

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The article describes how the social cooperative has become instrumental in the expansion of the social economy in Italy. It reports the contribution these associations have made to broadening the concept and parameters of volunteer organizations, providing basic social welfare services and integrating many disadvantaged people into the active society. By virtue of their ability to activate wider social projects, this type of social enterprise could be of interest and relevance to other countries (following this example, in 2001 the French government created the Sociétés coopératives d'intérét collectif), but they call for adequate competencies and protection under specific laws because, on the whole, they are too small and depended on public contributions.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to shed light on the increasing start-up competitions\ud (SUCs) phenomenon; second, to provide an interpretive framework to understand whether the SUCs have the\ud potential to be effective entrepreneurial learning environment; third, to analyse the different roles of public\ud and private actors in organizing SUCs.\ud Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a cross-section analysis of the Italian SUCs\ud population. In total, 77 competitions are analysed on the basis of different criteria which should properly mirror\ud their distinguishing structural features, helping understand the potential of SUCs as learning environments.\ud Findings – The recent increase in the number of SUCs has been mainly fuelled by private actors. Moreover,\ud Italian SUCs show some features that make them rich learning environments. Private and public actors play\ud different roles, as confirmed by statistical tests performed. Privately organized SUCs follow mainly a\ud market-oriented approach, while publicly organized ones are more education oriented.\ud Research limitations/implications – The findings cannot be easily generalized mainly due to the\ud peculiarities of the Italian context.\ud Practical implications – Soft forms of regulation should be defined to strengthen those features which could\ud potentially support the entrepreneurial learning processes. In this view, SUCs should be part of a start-up friendly\ud ecosystem where actors (startuppers, incubators, venture capitalists) are effectively coordinated with each other.\ud Originality/value – Despite the remarkable diffusion of SUCs, there are significant gaps in literature about\ud this phenomenon. Given the lack of a systematic and comprehensive analysis of SUCs as effective\ud entrepreneurial learning environments, the paper represents an important starting point

In the last several decades, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) reverse supply chain management has increasingly gained more attention due to the development of an environmental awareness, the rapid raise of e-wasted products and the EU regulations. In particular, although the new EU WEEE collection target has not been reached by many EU countries, several studies show that an optimized WEEE wastes management processes could represent a relevant way to achieve economic, environmental and social benefits expected by the adoption of circular economy approaches. According to this, the paper aims to evaluate the extent to which the current Italian organization of the WEEE management system and the related legislation are able to support the achievement of the targets defined by EU with a specific focus on the collection centers (CCs) which play a key role being the initial point of the WEEE reverse logistic cycle. An illustrative analysis based on the transition probability matrix regarding both the e-waste collecting performance and the distribution of collecting centers in the Italian provinces is illustrated. Furthermore, we have analyzed the presence of a correlation between the WEEE collection rate and the presence of the CCs in different provinces in order to better comprehend the role that can play both the investments in CC system and other soft measures in achieving the WEEE collection targets. Results show that the current Italian organization of the WEEE management system and the related legislations are not so effective in supporting the achievement of EU WEEE collection targets at the national level, although some geographical areas and provinces outperform the EU targets.

Identifying people interested into starting-up a business is becoming more and more relevant. As widely recognized, two key aspects affecting on start-up are the role of the external context factors and the influence of entrepreneurial competencies.\ud With this in mind, the paper shows an application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour with the aim to assess factors believed to affect entrepreneurial intent among engineering students. As the use of well thought-out and research-tested intent models is believed to provide a good means of examining the precursors to business start-up, the survey provides a test of the robustness of the intent approach and then examines the influence of some predictors within the contextual factors.\ud Consistently with other leading articles, the results evidence that attitudes and perceived behavioural control effectively predicts entrepreneurial intent, while social norms have no effects. As regards the role of contextual factors and entrepreneurial competencies, they exhibit indirect effects on intent via entrepreneurial attitudes and perceived behavioural control. Thus, their contribution to favour academic entrepreneurship is confirmed. The result of the study also has valuable implications for the university system

PurposePursuing sustainable development has become a necessity for all types of businesses, owing to the increasing sensitivity of stakeholders towards pollution and environmental degradation related to economic activities. To sustain this approach, investments supporting green innovations (GIs) are required. The paper investigates how stakeholders affect the choices of companies to pursue sustainable development objectives through the use of GIs.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 222 innovative Italian SMEs was collected and analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique and the importance performance map analysis.FindingsThe authors found that the stakeholders with not-contractual ties with SMEs affect GIs. Among stakeholders with not-contractual ties only workforce represents a strong stimulus to eco-innovate. Anyway, contrary to expectations, public administrations exert a negative influence; that is, they appear to hinder SMEs approach towards GIs.Practical implicationsThis paper contributes to filling the knowledge gaps about the factors stimulating innovative SMEs' investments in GIs. Specifically, by analysing the stakeholders' influences, many policy indications emerge, such as extending facilities and regulations, encouraging partnerships and networking and attracting private and institutional investors.Originality/valueUntil now, the prominent interest of researchers and policymakers has been focused almost exclusively on large manufacturing corporations because of their higher ecological footprints and the belief that SMEs are supposed to be mainly followers rather than first adopters of innovations. But in many international areas, the role of SMEs is widely predominant, and these SMEs chiefly operate in the service sectors.