Search

Bank loans are divided into performing and non-performing loans (NPLs). NPLs are in turn divided into categories characterized by different degrees of difficulty of the debtor and level of risk for the creditor bank. Unlikely to pay loans (UTPs) are NPLs that have a non-zero probability of returning to the performing status. This paper analyzes at the firm and bank level the entire pool of UTPs vis-à-vis firms (UTP firms) in Italy from 2005 to 2019 to detect the characteristics of UTP firms that are more likely to return to the performing state. So far, the literature focused only on status changes from performing to NPLs. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that reverses the perspective and examines the drivers of return to the performing state. The paper shows that the factors most closely related to the new upgrade are — negatively — firm size and absolute value of debts, and — positively — capital and liquidity endowments. Results show that the soundness of lending banks increases the likelihood that firms return to the performing state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the COVID-19 pandemic's impacts on the regional progression toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the lens of the adoption of 2030 Agenda by firms from different Italian regions. Design/methodology/approach: Mixed methods were adopted. First, a content analysis was performed on 330 nonfinancial declarations released in the 2019–2021 period by a sample of 110 Italian listed companies from different regional macroareas. Second, regression analyses were run to test the impact of regional localization of businesses on SDGs adoption over pre-/during/post-COVID era. Findings: The regional localization of businesses does not affect the SDGs adoption in the pre-COVID-19 era because Italian firms mainly address social goals. Instead, SDGs adoption is affected by regional localization of businesses both during and post-COVID-19 age, when Northern firms prioritize economic and social goals, whereas Southern firms shift from social to environmental goals. Originality/value: This study fills the need of considering the subnational specificities in literature on sustainable development by capturing connections between firms, belonging territory, SDGs and COVID-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shareholders' agreements are quite common in many jurisdictions. Theory and empirical evidence suggest that they may have a positive or a negative impact on corporate governance structures depending on companies' characteristics and on the goals that these contracts pursue. Shareholders' agreements may be used as Control Enhancement Mechanisms (CEM) allowing controllers to circumvent rules that favor minority investors. However, comparing to other CEM, in many countries information regarding them is scarce. Is it necessary that shareholders' agreements in public corporations be fully informed? We examine the case of Chile (a country that only requires to inform that a shareholder agreement exists) and compare it to Italy and Brazil cases, countries where shareholders' agreements content is disclosed. We find out that the detail of the rules that impose or promote information might produce different results on the way that shareholders' agreements are used. For the case of Chile, we show that its use has increased over time and that case evidence show that they may have been used to circumvent minority rights. Shareholders' agreements play a much more important role in the control of public corporations in Chile than what has been previously discussed in corporate governance literature. The contribution of this paper is to provide evidence in favor of the importance of mandatory rules for shareholders' agreements disclosure and their design, not only where this information lacks, as in many developing countries, but also to reinforce the relevance of disclosure in developed markets, where the use of shareholders' agreements in public companies is also increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of corporate governance mechanisms, namely, board of directors and auditors, on tax aggressiveness in Italian companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a population of 168 Italian non-financial firms listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, holding shares in at least one foreign subsidiary in countries other than Italy in fiscal year 2018. Data on corporate boards and auditors were collected through the evaluation of companies' annual reports over the period 2011–2018. Five panel data analyses with fixed effects were performed for each tax aggressiveness index, yielding 1,176 observations to test the research hypothesis. Findings: This paper finds that corporate board characteristics, such as size, gender diversity and CEO duality, and auditors' features, such as external audit quality, increase corporate tax aggressiveness. Practical implications: This study provides investors with an understanding of corporate boards' and auditors' roles in preventing agency conflicts and evaluating a company's tax approach. Furthermore, the findings are useful for international political bodies in regulating corporate board composition and managerial monitoring. Originality/value: Almost all studies focusing primarily on corporate governance mechanisms' effects on tax aggressiveness are within the US context. Empirical evidence on the topic in the European contexts is limited. The legislative discrepancy between countries is reflected in the computation of indices measuring tax aggressiveness, affecting US studies' generalizability across nations. This paper extends the literature on the topic by investigating other unexplored corporate governance mechanisms. Five indices were used to measure corporate tax aggressiveness and to assess analysis reliability and data robustness. Moreover, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first attempt to investigate the link between corporate governance mechanisms and tax aggressiveness in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from business accounting to national accounts is carried out in this paper. The institutional units having a predominant economic interest in Italy are identified in particular for the sectors linked to Construction, Civil engineering works and Trade activities. A multivariate analysis of the economic variables (production, labor costs, intermediate consumptions, investments) allows to measure effective performance, both economic and financial, for global enterprises. Fiscal and statistical data with a profiling of these enterprises make possible to select a sub-set of medium and large sized units potentially interested in the phenomenon of foreign branch offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of migration on the export and production techniques of agri-industrial firms in the proximity of clusters of migrants. The analysis draws on an original dataset built through interviews conducted with agri-food firms in the Foggia province (southern Italy). Over the past two decades, this area has experienced a strong influx of migrants, who have concentrated in ghettos. The results do not support a pro-trade effect, but provide evidence for both a substitution and a complementarity effect of migrants on capital endowment, depending on the type of machinery used by the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the effects of services imports and exports on firm employment. We use microdata on Italian firms for the period 2009–2017. Applying a shift‐share instrumental variable approach, we show that services imports and exports have a positive impact on total employment. This finding holds for managers, white‐collar workers, and blue‐collar workers. We also show that services exports are particularly effective in increasing employment of "servitized" manufacturing firms as well as of companies that are deeply integrated into international services markets. Overall, this paper suggests that firm employment might largely benefit from the services trade dimension of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging stream of entrepreneurship studies is debating how knowledge composition influences the capacity of territories to give birth to new firms. This paper aims to study the dynamics linking new firm formation and relatedness. Some studies demonstrate that proximity between different but related sectors positively influences new firms formation. Others point out how the presence of unrelated sectors can have a more significant impact. This paper studies these dynamics across 27 individual industries, computing measures of external and internal relatedness for each sector in Italy, using data on new firm formation between 2012 and 2014. The results suggest the broadly positive impact of external relatedness on new firm formation when compared to the impact of internal relatedness. The sectoral study of the impact of relatedness on new business creation could increase policymakers' awareness of the capacity of individual sectors to promote favourable path-creation trajectories at the micro-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting energy efficiency is a key element of the strategic commitment of the European Community. Prominent among the binding measures established by the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive to further this vision is the requirement for large companies to conduct energy audits every four years. After receiving the second cycle of energy audit reports in December 2019, a new description of the energy situation of Italian companies was made available. This presented the previously inaccessible possibility of comparing the two situations reported in 2015 and 2019 to assess the development of energy efficiency practices in organizations subject to the legislative obligation of energy audits in the country. To this end, in collaboration with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), a project was initiated with the aim of developing the tools and methodologies necessary to assess in more detail the evolution that has occurred in the four years since 2015. In this paper, the findings of the analysis conducted on a significant sample of companies in Italy are presented. Through the design of a maturity model to assess the degree of progress achieved in a company's energy management, the results of the two situations were analyzed. The analysis was deepened by assessing the progress achieved in different aspects of Energy Management: "Strategic Approach", "Awareness, Competence, and Knowledge", "Methodological Approach", "Organizational Structure", "Energy Performance Management and Information System", and "Best Practices". Furthermore, the observed variations were statistically tested using a pairwise t-test to make statistical inferences about the maturity of the total population of Italian enterprises under legislative obligation. The results have shown an increase in overall energy management maturity in each maturity dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of labour protection laws on tax planning and capital investment. Exploiting a major reform that introduced firing costs in Italy for firms with fewer than 15 employees but left firing costs unchanged for larger firms combined with matched employer-employee data, I show that the rise in firing costs led small firms to increase tax avoidance and capital investment relative to larger firms. Robustness and placebo tests suggest that the results are causal. Overall, the findings indicate that tax avoidance allows small firms to generate internal funds to substitute labour for capital when employment protection becomes stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of extra‐EU workers on labour productivity in Italy. To this aim, we take advantage of firm‐level data derived from the Rilevazione Imprese e Lavoro (RIL‐AIDA) surveys merged with the AIDA‐Bureau Van Dijk archive over the period 2007–2015. Using an econometric strategy that accounts for firms' observed heterogeneity and endogeneity issues, we obtain the following results. First, an increase in the share of extra‐EU workers leads to a decline in labour productivity. Second, the relationship between extra‐EU workers and productivity appears to be different between firms located in centre‐north and those in southern regions. Third, the share of extra‐EU workers is also associated with a decline in average wages and sales per employee, even though this effect is less than that observed for productivity. Our findings support the hypothesis that the demand of immigrants arises as a labour cost reduction strategy and hence tends to weaken firms' competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by empirical evidence on firm networks in Italy, this paper explores the relationship between the nature of goods produced by firms operating in the same R&D network and their strategic location. We consider a two-firm spatial Cournot model deriving the conditions under which two firms create a cooperative link in order to share R&D cost-reducing investments. We show that the cooperative link is formed irrespective of the nature of goods produced by participating firms. However, the nature of goods produced affects the distance between firms belonging to the same networks; this distance tends to be greater when firms produce substitute goods. We also discuss the stability of the cooperative link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the growing literature on earnings management in private firms by focusing on deferred taxes. This accounting treatment requires sophisticated use of accruals that provides the chance to manage earnings and net assets without affecting the tax payable. We argue that in a setting with high book-tax conformity, the small room that allegedly exists to recognise deferred taxes remains a comfortable avenue to reach reporting objectives that a tax-minimisation strategy may preclude. We use a sample of private firms operating in a credit- and tax-driven environment such as Italy to test this expectation. Our results show that private firms use deferred taxes to extract multiple financial reporting benefits that may facilitate debt contracting: smoothing earnings over time, meeting/beating historical earnings, avoiding reporting accounting losses, and managing leverage. Tax loss carryforwards are the source of deferred tax assets where the exercise of discretion becomes more critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The article aims to show the emergence of a multicultural migrant firm (MMF) model on the market. The empirical analysis of the composition of human capital and economic strategies outlines a new type of migrant firm, which is losing its monocultural character in favour of multicultural heterogeneity. MMFs have reached a large diffusion in migrant entrepreneurship and they play an important role in the processes of integration between actors of different cultures and nationalities. Through three research questions, we investigated how this model differs from the conventional migrant firm one. Firstly, we studied how relevant are family and community ties still. Secondly how much does the propensity for innovation and differentiation of products or services change? And thirdly what is the level of internal diversification that distinguishes MMF from the migrant firm? Research Design & Methods: We employed a qualitative, interpretative approach to obtain original empirical evidence on the characteristics of MMFs. We based our research methodology on 36 semi-structured in-depth face-to-face interviews with MMFs-owners or partners operating in Italy. Next, we analysed the transcripts from the interviews using a manual approach. Findings: The research highlights, firstly, how much the diffusion of the firms studied derives precisely from the social and professional ties accumulated over time in the host country; relationships built locally, of a mixed ethnic/nationality nature and not coming exclusively from the pre-existent background, limited to one's geographical origin. In Granovetter's terminology, 'weak ties' gain importance over 'strong ties.' Secondly, the article demonstrates how MMFs are associated with processes of innovation and the identification of market spaces for hybrid products and services. Thirdly, we found that well far from being homogeneous, as the dominant monoethnic model claims, there is a variety of MMFs. Implications & Recommendations: Because MMFs are highly heterogeneous in terms of economic objectives and values pursued, institutional support has to be as varied and differentiated as the set of target companies. Moreover, policies designed for MMFs must consider adequate consultancy tools (i.e. specific mentoring programmes and projects) regarding managerial practices, strategic decisions, and the planning of workforce training. Contribution & Value Added: The article contributes to the current debate on the relationship between migration and entrepreneurship highlighting the importance and specificity of MMFs, which is a relevant under-researched segment of migrant entrepreneurship. Our work shows how the boundaries between native and immigrant entrepreneurship are much more blurred than the literature claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of green finance, minibonds play a crucial role. This financial instrument was introduced in 2012 as a valid alternative to bank credit for corporate financing, aimed mainly at small and medium‐sized enterprises. Minibonds also represent useful support for implementing the ecological transaction agreed upon in COP 21, held in 2015 in Paris. Indeed, as of 2017, this instrument has been expanded from an environmental perspective by allowing the issuance of green minibonds. This article contributes to the debate on minibonds and the companies issuing them. Specifically, it proposes a cluster analysis approach for comparing the issuance level of minibonds in 2016 and the subsequent performances of the issuing companies in the triennium 2017–2019. Performance is divided into three macrocategories: profitability, productivity, and growth opportunities. The results suggest a nonlinear connection between the variables of interest, showing heterogeneous effects of minibonds on performance. However, the statistical data analysis seems to establish a positive relationship between minibonds' issuance level and companies' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Insolvency Code has reformed Italy’s corporate governance structure with a view to protect companies’ business sustainability. The growing correlation between the environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks with the financial risks requires a radical change of the governance mindset also in relation to a sound management of companies. The adequacy of the organisational and administrative corporate governance model required by the Insolvency Code cannot be separated from ESG governing bodies, policies and procedures, as well as the balance of shareholder and stakeholder interests. The implications and impacts of ESG factors on the spectrum of the business system of crisis prevention must be taken into strong consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This research focuses on the relationship between Top Management Team heterogeneity (TMT) and University Spin-Offs (USOs) economic performance according to a micro-foundational perspective. The purpose consists in exploring whether a high academic representation in TMTs may improve USOs' performance and how their competencies and backgrounds affect USOs' economic success. Design/methodology/approach: The authors employed data from the Italian platform Netval to identify the entire population of USOs in southern Italy. They selected both pure and hybrid spin-offs that had at least one academic member on the TMT. Applying these conditions to our sample selection, the authors came to a population of 136 firms. They applied a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Findings: Our main findings reveal that the USOs' economic performance improves with more academicians in the TMT and even in the same scientific field. Our data also shows that CEO duality has a negative impact on economic performance. Originality/value: This work takes for the first time a micro-foundational perspective to analyze individual-level factors that affect USOs' performance. The authors tried to bridge a research gap in the USO literature, shedding light on the relationship between TMT composition and new venture performance, considering some significant interactions between team members. Our expected findings also contribute to the general literature on entrepreneurial teams in new ventures and suggest a means to reconcile some inconsistent literature results on TMT heterogeneity and USO performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: By combining structural contingency theory and socio-emotional wealth (SEW) theory, this study aims to identify the organizational determinants of collective performance-related pay (PRP) adoption by examining the interplay between a firm's ownership characteristics (i.e. family or non-family ownership) and other organizational characteristics. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a quantitative approach, conducting empirical analyses of a longitudinal dataset of 4,222 Italian companies in the manufacturing sector for 2009–2017. The probability of adopting collective PRP schemes is estimated using the average marginal effects of the probit and linear probability models (LPMs). Findings: The results show that family firms are less likely to adopt collective PRP schemes than non-family firms. Moreover, ceteris paribus, firm characteristics such as size, age and past (firm and labor) productivity are important determinants of firms' adoption of collective incentive pay; however, the significance and magnitude of their effects vary depending on a firm's ownership structure. Originality/value: This analysis has two major elements of novelty. First, it increases the knowledge of how organizational contingencies differ in family versus non-family contexts regarding pay decisions. Second, it brings new theoretical perspectives to the pay debate by combining structural contingency theory and SEW theory, thus developing new and fertile theoretical grounds for advancing our understanding of the pay determinants. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is one of the first (if any) studies to shed light on collective PRP in family and non-family firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the adoption of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB)‐inclusive practices by companies is triggered primarily by pressures from activists who base their claims on a business case rationale for diversity; this has been studied mainly from a social movement perspective. In Europe, by contrast, diverse actors—not necessarily constituting a unified social movement—make a variety of arguments for more inclusion, based on a spectrum of rationales. To account for this variety, this article adopts a stakeholder approach, identifying two processes through which 14 'pioneering' Italian business organizations have adopted such practices: a business‐driven process and an equality‐driven process. This article demonstrates how these processes are mutually exclusive, and how they differ in terms of rationales, actors involved and outcomes achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study provides an overview of the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) standard and its potential in helping a company to improve its environmental performance. The work aims to investigate a company's perception towards the implementation of the EMAS environmental management system with the benefits and the critical areas derived from it, the overall assessment of the certification and its possible future developments. Design/methodology/approach: The study develops an empirical analysis of Italian EMAS III certified companies, through the administration of a questionnaire to all those Italian companies that were EMAS certified and that provided a valid e-mail address on the EMAS register. Overall, 231 Italian companies took part in the survey. Findings: The results confirm the heterogeneous effects of an Environmental Management System depending on the company profile and highlight the positive influence of certification on environmental management. It emerges how the EMAS certification is approached more for internal reasons, and therefore gives more internal benefits to companies that implement it. Moreover, the time from which companies have been certified turns out to be a relevant factor for obtaining environmental and organizational benefits connected with EMAS certification. Originality/value: The recent decrease in EMAS registrations has not been sufficiently studied, leaving unsolved questions for scholars, practitioners and policy-makers. Previous studies used a negativist perspective, identifying the barriers that led to the non-renewal of the certification. The present study aims to focus on the positive factors, which have led still active companies to renew the certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of almost 7000 Italian municipalities from 2002 to 2019, we investigate how the removal of mafia‐infiltrated firms affects commercial sale and rental prices. We conjecture that targeting mafia businesses leads to a reduction in local disamenities and an increase in the demand for commercial properties. Applying the latest methodologies based on difference‐in‐differences approaches, we show that antimafia policies aimed at confiscating and reassigning mafia firms have positive spillover effects on commercial real estate prices, driving values upward by about 4%. This is especially true for small–medium municipalities in mafia‐ridden provinces. The evidence we provide supports the enforcement of antimafia policies with an economic content, as they pose a threat to criminal financial interests and curb the mafia influence in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dairy processing industry is the largest subsector in the EU food industry and is characterised by high concentration. We investigate the extent of output market power exerted in EU dairy processing, applying an advanced stochastic frontier approach to estimate firm‐level markups of price over marginal cost using data for France, Italy and Spain from 2008 to 2017. We further relate markups to firm characteristics to identify what type of dairy processors possess the highest power in the sector. Our findings only reveal small average deviations from perfect competition but we find considerable heterogeneity of markups within and between the three countries. We identify a strong positive relationship between markup and profitability, though we find firm size and markups to be inversely related. This indicates that small firms operating in differentiated niche markets are able to charge higher markups, thereby ensuring their profitability. This result can serve EU dairy processors for future strategic alignment, and is particularly interesting from a policy perspective as large firms are mostly blamed in the exercise of market power in public and policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how connections to organized crime manifest on firms' financial statements and analyze the impact of these connections on firm performance outcomes. Using a unique dataset that identifies Italian firms connected to organized crime, we find that connected firms have lower profitability, even though they report higher sales and lower labor cost. Connected firms also have higher bank debt, report lower cash holdings, experience quicker operating cycles and are more likely to file for bankruptcy. Further, we find that connected firms are more tax aggressive and engage in downward earnings manipulation. To corroborate our results, we exploit an amendment to the Italian Anti-Money Laundering regulation as a shock to the extent to which criminal organizations could expropriate connected firms' resources through money laundering. Our collective evidence suggests that connections to organized crime can drain a firm's resources, possibly through money-laundering schemes, and jeopardize its existence, thereby harming its shareholders. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G31; G32; G38; K42; K49. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of a persistent demand shock on corporate factor utilisation. Our identification strategy leverages a legislative change designed to permanently reduce spending in certain targeted municipalities. This change generates an arguably exogenous drop in the revenue of procurement firms, which differs depending on each firm's reliance for its revenue on procurement in the targeted municipalities. We find that firms responded to the demand shock by cutting capital rather than labour. We propose a theoretical mechanism based on the irreversibility of capital investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 hit firms by surprise. In a high frequency, representative panel of German firms, the business outlook declined and business uncertainty increased only at the time when the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to domestic policy changes: The announcement of nation-wide school closures on March 13 was followed by the largest change in business perceptions by far. In contrast, the data provides no evidence for the relevance of other potential sources of information on business perceptions: Firms did not learn from foreign policy measures, even if they relied on inputs from China or Italy. The local, county-level spread of COVID-19 cases affected expectations and uncertainty, albeit to a much lesser extent than the domestic policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Retail networks present new challenges in the business-to-business (B2B) collaboration between technology-based spinoffs and traditional businesses. This study aims to explore a public–private partnership (PPP) that leverages advanced digital technologies via spinoffs to tackle the key challenge of showrooming that retail shops are facing. Showrooming is the phenomenon in which shoppers go to the physical stores to gather in-depth product information, and later on, decide to buy the product from online retail competitors. Design/methodology/approach: This research draws on a longitudinal qualitative study of a social context in which digital entrepreneurs are embedded. The empirical setting is a retail network in Italy, Germany and Finland with a particular focus on the process in which a PPP delivers innovation via spinoffs in the context of brick and mortar shops (B&M). The research design enables an understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon from a business and a social perspective. Findings: New technology to tackle showrooming enables the creation of substantial hybrid value in retail partnerships. Spinoffs are key actors in leveraging digital technologies to create value faster and more tailored compared with large software companies. Spinoff entrepreneurs leverage on specific technologies (e.g. virtual reality and artificial intelligence) available inside organizations' network (i.e. PPPs). Spinoffs are found to be a fundamental actor in the process of dealing with showrooming because of their time to market. Large software companies usually are not interested in approaching B&M shops because of the high operational costs of product customization for B&M shops. Practical implications: Managers could use the success factors of the spinoffs in helping their B&M shops to improve both shopper experience and salesperson performance. For managers of B2B retail network, the results are useful towards increasing the involvement of shoppers while they are visiting physical stores, and it also improves salesperson performance. It also leads to the observation that cross-selling is one of the most effective responses to the phenomenon of showrooming. As practical implications for policymakers, the current research supports the view that PPPs should support the creation of spinoffs as a result of longitudinal innovation projects. Social implications: Retail technologies leveraged from a PPP and commercialized by spinoffs are powerful tools to enable a better quality of salespeople's life in the working place. At the same time, these new technologies help shop owners increase the retention rates, conversion rates and reduce short-term loss, increasing the likelihood of B&M shops to survive in the condition of extreme competition caused by the showrooming phenomenon. Originality/value: This research proposes a model of hybrid value creation from networks in digital retail. The model indicates that PPPs create spinoffs to explore showrooming and deliver substantial hybrid value (i.e. business and social) for physical retail shops, mainly because it influences the companies' growth, employee performance and customer satisfaction. This model expands the field of B2B marketing by identifying factors that enable spinoff creation from retail networks and proposes success factors and research propositions in retail networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary agriculture is increasingly oriented toward the synergistic adoption of technologies such as the Internet of Things, Internet of Farming, big data analytics, and blockchain to combine resource protection and economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In Italy, the market growth potential of "Agriculture 4.0" and "Farming 4.0" solutions is very high, but the adoption of the related technological innovations is still low. Italian companies are increasingly aware of the opportunities offered by the 4.0 paradigm, but there are still cultural and technological limits to the full development of the phenomenon. This research aims to contribute to knowledge that will improve the propensity of agricultural operators to adopt the digital solutions of "Agriculture 4.0" by demonstrating its potential, along with its limits. To this end, an integrated methodological approach was adopted, built with focus groups and multicriteria analysis, to define and assess the possible future scenarios resulting from the implementation of digital transformation. The results show an increased focus on solutions that allow the integration of new tools to support those already used in the business organization and at a sustainable cost. To enable the development of "Agriculture 4.0", we propose that it is necessary to invest in training operators in the supply chain, and above all, raising awareness among farmers, who it is essential fully appreciate the potential benefits of the 4.0 revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]