No abstract

Purpose This paper provides a historical case study, through the analysis of Luisa Spagnoli’s entrepreneurial life. Luisa Spagnoli was one of the most famous Italian businesswomen of the twentieth century, founder of “Perugina” chocolate factory and creator of “Luisa Spagnoli” fashion firm. The study aims particularly to examine the role of Luisa in the development of her businesses within the wider context of Italy of the 1900s, and to verify if and how gender has influenced the meaning and the shape of her entrepreneurial initiatives over time. Design/methodology/approach This study offers a historical analysis of entrepreneurial life of Luisa Spagnoli, developed through an archival study in a synchronic view. An interpretive historical method is adopted to deepen and better understand the links among personal, cultural, social and institutional domains. Findings This study contributes to the scholarship on businesswomen’s role in history and underlines the role of personal perceptions of female entrepreneurs to overcome external barriers. Research limitations/implications The limitations of this study concern the nature of the analysis itself, which is a single-case study. Originality/value This analysis highlights the centrality of personal self-perceptions to face up to the difficulties of an unfavourable context, contributing to create the pre-conditions necessary to become an entrepreneur.

New processes of urbanization have recently led to a concentration of inhabitants in big cities and a consequent depopulation of marginal areas. In Italy, this phenomenon has also affected mountain regions, which are still facing dramatic depopulation and economic depression. The incapacity of public administrations to remedy this public problem has recently led to the introduction of new forms of collaborations with actors belonging to diverse jurisdictional areas (governmental institutions, private companies, no-profit organizations, and local communities). These forms of partnership can be defined as cross sector collaborations and, in the case of community involvement, can also be arranged as community-based enterprises (CBEs). In this paper, we investigate the capacity of CBEs to be an effective instrument for cross-sector collaboration in the field of urban regeneration. In particular, by applying a specific analysis model inspired by the framework elaborated by Bryson, Crosby, and Stone (2015), we analyze an Italian experience of community engagement promoted in Castel Del Giudice, a small town in the Southern Apennines. Through document analysis and an interview method, the paper gives a twofold contribution to the field. Firstly, it provides a rigorous exploration of the preconditions, processes, structures, and results of a successful case of cross-sector collaboration. Secondly, it offers elements to assess potentiality and points of criticisms of CBEs to promote urban regeneration policies. In this sense, we conclude that the creation of a community-based network represents a second level of cross sector-collaboration that can potentiate the capacity to pursue the community interest.

This article responds to a scarcity of literature on pre-nineteenth-century accounting education and addresses calls for more research into what gave rise to how we teach accounting today. The sixteenth century was when double entry began to extend beyond its Italian roots and the first printed bookkeeping manuals began to appear alongside Pacioli’s of 1494. Yet, it is the least covered period in our literature. We address this lacuna using hermeneutic analysis to critically analyse Dominico Manzoni’s seldom studied manual of 1540 to discover what he hoped to achieve, what he did, and identify what impact his manual had on how accounting education and accounting practice developed thereafter. We find Manzoni’s objective was to replace school and apprenticeship with the printed book; and that his experience as an accountant and teacher of bookkeeping resulted in his adopting a highly innovative pedagogy that led, taught, and engaged students through the written word. Finally, we identify Manzoni’s manual as the foundation of a dominant genre of bookkeeping manuals that adopted an approach to accounting education which led to the widespread adoption of Pacioli’s definition of double entry and the double entry system in accounting practice that has lasted to the present day.

This paper analyzes the legitimacy strategies of Monte di Pietà of Perugia – the first ever Italian Monte di Pietà - in its early years of activity (1462-1468). Monte di Pietà represent an innovative case of historical financial institutions, a result of the Franciscan preaching to fight against usury and to respect the Catholic ban on any kind of remuneration for loaned capital. But to ensure its survival, Monte needed to request interest, immediately introducing problems of legitimacy. So, the institution endeavored to design strategies to rebuild its legitimacy toward its immediate audience. Starting from Suchman’s (1995) approach to legitimacy restoring strategies, and through an archival and interpretive analysis, the aims of the paper are as follows: to provide a plausible interpretation of changes in the administrative system, to report how those innovations constituted actions to successfully restore legitimacy, and to illuminate interactions among pragmatic, moral, and cognitive strategies.