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The paper deals with the experimental validations of the corrective coefficient used to take into account the skin effect in the equivalent circuit rotor resistance of induction motors with squirrel cages.

Locked rotor tests have been performed at several supply frequencies on different induction motors; the collected experimental data have been used to validate the rotor parameters analytical estimation obtained by means of a numerical procedure previously proposed by the authors.

The reported analyses regard both open and closed rotor slots. For frequencies up to 80‐100 Hz, the reported comparison between experimental and calculated skin effect corrective coefficients shows that the adopted model allows to get satisfactory results in terms of accuracy, lower than 3 percent for open rotor slot machines. The upper frequency limit has to be judged taking into account the objective difficulties to estimate accurate values of the rotor parameters from experimental tests.

The proposed algorithm can be easily implemented and added to self‐made induction motor design software tools.

The proposed procedure allows the computation of the skin effect in induction motor squirrel cage without the use of finite element method approaches.

Purpose – This paper aims to explain through a statistical model the link between innovation and performance. The data taken into consideration is from Unicredit Group survey for the period 2004–2006 on Italian manufacturing firms.

Methodology – We consider a broad concept of innovation: investments in R&D and technology, new processes, new products, innovation in terms of marketing and organization, investments in training of human resources. Performance is measured in terms of ROA without considering extraordinary items and taxes, to eliminate exceptional events and fiscal aspects.

Findings – With respect to innovation strategies, we find a weak, but significant, relationship between ROA and innovation. In addition, the influence of innovation on ROA does depend on innovation types and industry structures. Conversely, the amount of innovation expenditures does not have an influence on performance.

Limitations – The main limitations of our analysis are represented by the missing values coming from the financial reporting in short form and by the consideration of a short time period (the year 2006), with reference to the innovation expenditures and the measurement of performance.

Implications – From a managerial point of view, our model describing the relationship between innovation drivers and financial performance might represent a useful tool for managers aiming to introduce or implement innovation strategies in their organization.

Originality – Innovation is a common topic in econometric studies but not so much in managerial and accounting literature. The goal of the paper is to link macro and micro perspectives in a combined framework based on managerial and financial accounting.

We investigate the innovative supply chain contracts developed and implemented by Barilla, the leading Italian pasta company, in sourcing high-quality durum wheat from farmers in Northern Italy in the Emilia Romagna region.

Using case study techniques to gather information, we captured the evolution of the supply chain contracts adopted by Barilla. We gained information mainly through semi-structured interviews with Barilla’s managers, co-op and consortium managers representing farmers, Barilla’s quantitative data related to contracts’ elements and structure, preliminary experimental results, agri-business magazines, industry reports, and academic literature.

These contracts helped the company improve not only its long-term profits and strategic objectives such as supply security, but also the farmers’ income as well as environmental sustainability, thus providing triple bottom line benefits.

We investigate how Barilla and its suppliers – with the support of additional stakeholders, such as regional institutions – combine in their innovative contracts fixed and market-based prices as well as quality and sustainability-based premiums for desired triple bottom line benefits.

There is considerable evidence that long periods of success in organisations can lead to ossification of strategy and strategic inertia. Burgelman (2002) shows how co-evolutionary lock-in occurs through the creation of a strategy vector. He demonstrates that the internal selection environment can become configured to create sources of inertia that dampen the autonomous strategy process, driving out unrelated exploration and creating a dominance of the induced, top-down strategy process. While this study shows how lock-in occurs, it does not address how a company breaks out of co-evolutionary lock-in. This is the focus of this paper. We argue that to understand how an organisation breaks out of a strategy vector a more complete conceptualisation of the structural context, and in particular the under specified cultural mechanisms, is required. It also requires an understanding of the linkages between the structural context and the new core capabilities required for breakout. Thus we first expand on what is known about strategy vectors and review research from the strategy process tradition that explores the linkages between strategy, culture and strategic change, to build a more comprehensive picture of the structural context. Our model demonstrates the extent of interconnectedness between the ‘hard’ (e.g., control systems and organisation structure) and ‘soft’ (e.g. beliefs, symbols and stories) components, and that development of new required capabilities is dependent on a holistic shift in all these aspects of the structural context, including, therefore, change in the organisation's culture. We then illustrate the link between lock-in, capability development and culture change through the case of the famous Formula One team, Ferrari. We finish with a discussion of the implications of our findings for strategic change.

This paper aims at exploring the effect of knowledge management (KM) practices on the relationship between external research and development (R&D) and innovative performance. The authors argue that the firms which develop and possess superior KM capabilities have the ability to better manage external knowledge and combine it with the internal one.

The authors used a sample of 117 European MNC subsidiaries. An OLS regression analysis was carried out to evaluate the moderator effect of KM on the relationship between external R&D and innovative performance.

The authors found positive evidences in favor of a moderator effect of KM. This means that subsidiaries with superior KM capabilities are more effective in using external R&D, augmenting the magnitude of their external sources of knowledge and, consequently, improving their innovative performance.

Managerially speaking, both corporate and subsidiaries’ managers need to understand the relevance of managing knowledge effectively and efficiently at the subsidiary level. Corporate managers need to allocate more resources (both financial and managerial) to the subsidiaries that are active in knowledge transfer and sharing, while subsidiaries managers need to implement practically the KM tools and processes at the subsidiary organizational level to improve subsidiary’s innovative performance.

This paper contributes mainly to the KM field, highlighting the importance of KM at the subsidiary level, whereas most of previous studies focus on different units of analysis.

The link between mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and innovation has been analysed in both corporate finance studies and the innovation literature. Despite this attention and the practical evidence that highlights different connections between these two terms, there is a need to investigate the latest trends with regard to these important topics, and to put a particular focus on the emerging paradigm of open innovation. Thus, this paper aims to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) about the relationship between M&As and the concept of innovation in the current scenario.

Through an SLR from 2012 to June 2017, 55 papers have been identified and analysed to give a better understanding of the motivations and the methodologies adopted in past studies.

This paper identifies various conceptual and research methodological characteristics of studies that have connected, directly or indirectly, M&As and innovation in recent years. In addition, the results highlight a scarcity of studies that explicitly or implicitly refer to the open innovation paradigm, marking only a partial understanding of this emerging phenomenon.

This paper improves the knowledge on the link between extraordinary corporate transactions and innovation, and it highlights that a clear consensus, particularly regarding the open innovation paradigm, is lacking. Thus the authors propose that future studies should carefully evaluate M&As by following the open innovation approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of strategic communication during a change management process within the internationally famous Ferrari corporation. The aim is to show that strategic communication, through its main components, can be a pivotal lever that supports continuous improvement and helps drive organizational success.

The change management process at Ferrari is described and interpreted through the framework of the entrepreneurial organization theory (EOT), from which the four components of strategic communication are derived.

The paper explores the case of Ferrari, which started a reorganization process in which the main actors were employees and strategic communication represented the crucial component.

This paper focuses on one single organization. Additional research is needed to generalize the effectiveness of the proposed strategic communication model.

The paper shows that the four strategic communication components (i.e. aligning, energizing, visioning, and constituting), if applied in an integrated manner, can give insightful stimulus for the management of important change programs.

The paper contributes to the change management literature by linking strategic communication, continuous improvement and entrepreneurial theory.