The amount of literature on IR has grown over the last few years, but while particular attention has been paid to the variables that can play a role in IR adoption, IR quality and its determinants are still the subject of debate. The main determinants of IR quality outlined by the literature are firm size, industry, national context, firm performance, assurance, and to a lesser extent, corporate governance and company ownership structure. However, previous studies have usually reached conflicting results, thus not providing shared conclusions.This paper aims to understand the impact of the Board of Directors’ features on IR quality, evaluated in terms of the degree of compliance between IR content and the guidelines suggested in the IR framework presented by IIRC. The Board’s characteristics considered are size, composition and diversity with regard to board members’ gender, age and level of education.53 companies were taken into consideration from 2013 to 2016 for a total number of 212 integrated reports. Five research hypotheses were developed. Research findings highlight that IR quality is positively associated with the level of education of board members, and negatively with the presence of women. Moreover, among control variables, profitability (positive relation) and leverage (negative relation) are relevant determinants. Our research findings support the idea that the “quality” of the board members matters more than their “quantity” in increasing IR quality, and that diversity in the board is more relevant than diversity of the board.

The purpose of this paper is to verify the presence and intensity (extent) of the relationship between corporate governance and performance in Italian listed companies by using both accounting and non-accounting performance measures. We extended previous literature in considering all the main aspects of governance (board structure and ownership structure) and all relevant peculiarities of Italian entrepreneurial system (family business, concentrated ownership, State ownership, pyramidal groups). In the first part of the paper, we used regression analysis on a sample of 182 Italian listed companies to find that firm performance was positively related to board size and audit committee's effort and negatively related to leverage, although with a very low coefficient. No particular relationship was highlighted for ownership structure. We tested the consistency of this finding by doing a follow-up analysis between a sub-group of 134 of 2003 sample companies and the same companies in 2007 to verify the stability of the determinants of performance and their relative impact overtime. What we found was that only board size kept its positive relation with performance. Audit committee and leverage lost their relevance in 2007 sample in which the presence of a compensation committee showed a positive impact on performance. From our findings, we can conclude that, according to other studies (Belcredi & Rigamonti [1]), the relationship among ownership and corporate governance structure and firm performance is ambiguous. The ambiguity improves if considering the relationship overtime.

Abstract. Preventive archaeology aims at assessing the archaeological interest of a given area, as well as discovering, interpreting, documenting, and protecting archaeological remains that might otherwise be destroyed by land development works. On request of private stakeholders or institutional bodies, archaeologists intervene on a given construction yard (of infrastructure or urbanisation works) in order to investigate the possible archaeological significance of zones subjected to excavation works. In many cases archaeological assays are carried out, which are associated with thorough stratigraphic documentations and definition of the final preservation conditions. The latter can involve suitable re-burying or musealization of some of the archaeological remains recovered. During these activities, the construction works are slowed down or completely interrupted up until the conclusion of the mentioned archaeological research, which can generate possible delays with respect to the planned time schedule and increase of the costs. Improvements are needed in order to minimise the duration of the archaeological assessment and, simultaneously, to guarantee quality standards even higher than tose stated by the competent superintendences. Within this framework, the project ARCHEO 3.0 "Integration of Key Enabling Technologies for rising the efficiency and quality of preventive archaeological excavations" (co-funded by Tuscany Region, POR-CReO 2014-2020) aims at speeding up the archaeological excavation and at improving its documentation. It foresees the development of a set of characterisation tools, their integration and validation in archaeological yards. Thanks to ICT solution such a multidisciplinary integration will be made possible by a dedicated web-based platform that will allow to manage 2D and 3D photogrammetry along with the data provided by electromagnetic, and acoustic sensors. The project aim at promoting a substantial step ahead of the preventive archaeology in order to overcome the traditional empiric approach. In this respect, data exchange and the ICT solutions for direct collection of information on archaeological evidences represent the major challenge. Here, we preliminarily focus on the general features of management protocols of the archaeometrical data, as well as on their suitable integration within the operative phases of the archaeological excavation.