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Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues have become particularly relevant in the agendas of policymakers, investment decisions by companies and asset allocation process of investors. However, the transition to a greener and more sustainable economic system is not without risks. The literature has investigated the relationship between ESG and risk in different ways, through multiple perspectives and approaches. We select all documents with "ESG" and "Risk" in the title, abstracts and keywords available in Scopus and, after removing non‐relevant papers, we are left with a sample of 589 documents published in the period 1983–2022. To provide a view of the most important studies, we also focus on the most cited documents to discuss the methodological approaches and main results. The results show that over time, ESG has gained increasing attention from the literature, but researchers work in isolation and there is no single approach or leading core topic driving academic productivity; a clear taxonomy of ESG risks appears to be missing. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss research on ESG and risk from a financial perspective. The results highlight some existing gaps in the literature that can provide a hint for the development of the topic by researchers. These include a clearer taxonomy of ESG risks that can affect investors' and companies' decisions, a greater effort to evaluate how ESG risks distribute and spill from one sector to another and the inclusion of emerging economies and small and medium‐sized enterprises in the samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and fiscal responsibility have become a hot topic of debate in recent years. Many studies have investigated CSR and tax avoidance; however, such studies have overlooked countries' tax cultures and fiscal responsibility from a historical perspective and have not addressed how these elements affect current tax avoidance practices. Using a questionnaire, that was administered to a sample of Italian and Romanian respondents, and inferential techniques (Mann–Whitney‐test and correlation‐test) the paper tries to understand the aspects that be useful in the future development and implementation of more robust fiscal ISR and CSR processes. Our results reveal similarities and differences between the relevance of certain aspects between countries, identifying tax culture as a distinctive element from a geographical point of view. Despite the considerable differences, we found a strong demand for greater transparency of the company with administrations and communities and desire for the development of initiatives to spread a responsible tax culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the relationship between the phenomenon of B Corp and M&A operations carried out by these companies. Italy is the second country at the international level and the first country at the European level to have been particularly active in this direction (Law n.208/2015). Therefore, a questionnaire was developed and sent to the certified Italian B Corps. The medium‐long‐term vision emerged in particular, and the values that guide these companies are ethics, sustainability and transparency. These are aspects that particularly characterise the ideals, identity and culture of B Corps, which are also involved in social and environmental issues. The research shows how corporate culture influences these companies from a merger and acquisition perspective. Cultural compatibility is important, as it allows the companies to operate according to common or similar visions regarding certain aspects that other companies probably find less important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious tourism and pilgrimages increasingly contribute to developing the social and economic growth of local economies and communities over time. The aim of the present study is to analyse the role of religious touristic routes as sites of pilgrimages and an opportunity to drive a pathway for sustainable tourism development. The study relies on analysing qualitative and quantitative data, through a questionnaire distributed in late 2018; the questionnaire relates to pilgrimages concerning the Camino de Santiago de Compostela and Via Francigena as religious touristic destinations that contribute to the social and economic sustainability of local economies. Indeed, these pilgrimages strengthen the importance of building collaborative processes by enabling religious touristic destinations to open up to better managing and by driving sustainability‐oriented policies, thus enhancing social and economic growth within local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Benefit Corporation is one possible alternative to traditional business models and a new way of managing business and sustainability. Emphasis on B‐Corporations in Italy dates back 2006, and 1 year later, B LAB certified the first Benefit Corporation Industry using the first version of the Benefit Impact Assessment process. Since then, the number of B‐Corporations has been growing, showing the success of the initiative of this category of firm that have voluntarily decided to pursue, like the profit, a further purpose: to obtain in the exercise of economic activity a positive impact on society and on the planet. After a presentation of the Benefit Corporation features, the main aim of this paper is to explore the relations that exists between the five different impact areas considered in certification awarded to Certified Benefit Corporation and the net profit value, using ordinary least squares regression model based on the entire sample of the Italian Certified enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web applications are among the most popular and relevant kinds of application. Most Web applications are developed using a content management framework (CMF). CMF helps to accelerate the publication of large amounts of information and the development of Web applications. However, developing Web applications through CMF is not exempt from cost and time overruns, as in traditional software projects. Currently, there is no estimation model able to adequately measure the effort of developing a Web application. This work presents a new methodology, called web framework points, to estimate the effort of Web applications developed with CMF. Web framework points is a hybrid methodology, composed of a sizing phase, which follows specific guidelines, and an effort estimation phase, obtained by applying a cost model to the size model of the project to estimate. The sizing of the project takes into account not only usual functional requirements, as in function points analysis, but also elements specific for developing a Web application through CMF. We also present the experimental validation of the proposed methodology, performed on a dataset of 29 real-world projects, of which 83% show an estimation error of less than 25%. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]