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The paper considers the business model focused on social innovation as a "system of activities" (Bolton and Hannon, 2016) and social innovation depends on the interdependence between these that crosses the company and goes beyond (Zott and Amit, 2010; Cajaiba-Santana, 2014; van Wijk et al., 2019). So, in the analysis framework social change can derive from the recognition of the interdependence and complementarity between company and territory activities, from which a co-creation model of social innovation can derive.

The aim of this study is to propose a method to measure the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) identity (Otubanjo, 2013) of a firm. Using this method, based on a fuzzy logic expert system, it is possible to generate a comprehensive rating for the assessment of the sustainability of a firm. In fact, to ensure that a firm is CSR-compliant, it is important to express CSR principles in terms of measurable variables. Up to now, measurement has been hampered by a lack of clarity in theoretical frameworks and empirical methods for the CSR construct.

The aim of this paper is to propose a model for the evaluation of the multidimensional performance of an inter-museum network. It is, in fact, already acknowledged that evaluating the management of a museum-type institution is not easy, as, in order to measure its social and cultural efficacy, qualitative-type indicators are required. For this reason, the use of a fuzzy logic expert system can prove extremely useful since, in the process of evaluating a given phenomenon, it takes account of input variables not only of a quantitative but also of a qualitative kind.

Purpose - The aim of this study is to propose a method to measure Intellectual Capital (IC) in firms involved in strategic alliances, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, as existing research is focused mainly on organizational level mainly and increasingly on macro-level unit such as regions or nations. There are very few works at the meso-level, (i.e. alliances, clusters), and the paper aims to fill this void, by providing researchers and practitioners with a tool capable of combining measurement and management aims, developed at organizational level with the active participation of the researchers. Design/methodology/approach – The method of analysis is based on a model formalized through a fuzzy expert system (FES). The FES are able to merge the capabilities of an expert system to simulate the decision-making process with the vagueness typical of human reasoning, maintaining the ability to still have a numeric value as a response. Its construction requires the participation of experts, whose knowledge of the problem is accumulated in the form of blocks of rules. These features make it possible to formalize the decision-making process related to the IC valuation, handling qualitative and quantitative variables, and exploring the cognitive mechanisms underlying this process. Originality/value – To the best of our knowledge, IC literature lacks methods expressly designed to measure the incremental value of IC originating from collaboration among firms. We think also that fuzzy logic methodology, recently applied in empirical work designed to evaluate IC, represents a reliable methodology because of the “fuzzy” nature of IC. This study contributes to the broadening of the research community’s understanding regarding the alternative measurement of IC created within strategic alliances. From a measurement perspective, the results may be regarded as valuable proof that IC performance within strategic alliances can be measured quantitatively. Practical implications – The outcome of the application is a system designed to measure the intangible performance deriving from participation in a strategic alliance. On the management side, the possibility of retracing the determinants of different IC intermediate indicators composing the final IC index allows strategic alliances managers to use this information for decision-making purposes.

This paper presents the development of two of the eight indicators to evaluate the Country Wellbeing. We start from the Stiglitz document (2009) that for the first time puts a fixed point on what are the indicators that, aggregated, produces a multidimensional description of wellbeing that goes beyond GDP. Following the document indications, we present a fuzzy approach for this measure as a proposal that overcome the deficiencies that the usual statistical methods produce. The country we have in mind is Italy, but the instrument we propose is not calibrate on this country, but may be useful for every country that share the Stiglitz document indications. The fuzzy instrument we propose is a fuzzy inference system that, by its rule-blocks, let the possibility to use verbal judgement about the importance of one input respect the others.

È da molto tempo che gli studiosi di scienze sociali segnalano la necessità di un indicatore economico che vada oltre il concetto di PIL. Da più parti si propone di pensare questo indicatore come frutto dell’aggregazione di più indicatori che non tengano conto solo di aspetti economici, ma anche di altri, al fine di valutare la piena sostenibilità di un sistema economico. Lo studio di cui presentiamo la fase iniziale, prende lo spunto dal lavoro promosso ed avviato nel 2009: il Progetto “Oltre il PIL” che ha come obiettivo la revisione della misurazione tradizionale del benessere individuando nuovi indicatori al fine di fornire un supporto analitico alle scelte strategiche degli attori economici e delle istituzioni, per formulare politiche sostenibili in tema sociale, economico, fiscale e ambientale.

The new impulse from European Commission’s “Beyond GDP” and the Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi’s report renewed the necessity to define new indicators of wellbeing that go beyond GDP, and increased the need of measuring complex dimensions of living not measurable with classical techniques. Concepts as quality of life, child well being, health are mediated by human perception and intangible evaluation. A fuzzy logic approach gives the opportunity to face these problems thanks to its capability to work in a framework of uncertainty, ambiguity and vague information, situations that are typical of social and human problems. This paper provides the results based on different socioeconomic surveys with the use of fuzzy logic.

Nell’economia attuale, la competitività delle imprese e, più in generale, di qualunque sistema organizzativo, non si fonda solo sui tradizionali beni tangibili e sui capitali finanziari, ma in via preponderante sulle risorse cognitive ed intangibili, in grado di garantire differenziali competitivi sostenibili e duraturi (Cañibano et al., 2000; Lev 2001; Donna, 1999; Zambon, 2003; Fabbrini e Ricciardi, 2007). Di conseguenza, la misurazione e gestione del capitale intellettuale (CI) è divenuta sempre più critica (Veltri, 2007; Comuzzi et al., 2009) . Sebbene il concetto di CI sia stato originariamente sviluppato come framework per analizzare il contributo delle risorse intellettuali nelle imprese, tale approccio ha dimostrato di avere validità generale in termini di applicabilità a diversi contesti organizzativi ed industriali, tra cui il settore pubblico e non profit (Agor, 1997; Mouritsen et al., 2004; Serrano Cinca et al., 2003; Carlin et al., 2005; Bueno Campos et al., 2006; Kong e Prior, 2008). Esiste un crescente interesse nell’applicare l’approccio basato sul CI per gestire le università, in quanto organizzazioni che investono soprattutto in ricerca e risorse umane, ed i cui principali obiettivi sono la produzione e diffusione della conoscenza (Leitner and Warden, 2004; Sanchez et al., 2009). In aggiunta, le università sono sempre più considerate attori chiave nel più ampio movimento verso un’economia sempre più globale e basata sulla conoscenza. Tale circostanza ha spinto alcuni organismi sopranazionali a promuovere la diffusione della gestione del CI nelle università. A livello europeo, nel 2002 la European Association of Research, Managers and Administrators (EARMA) in collaborazione con l’European Centre for Strategic Management of Universities (ESMU) ha lanciato l’iniziativa relativa alla gestione del CI nelle università e nei centri di tecnologia e ricerca (Leitner, 2005); nel 2006 il gruppo di esperti selezionati da gruppi di ricerca, aziende ed autorità pubblica dal Direttorato Generale della Commissione Europea al fine di promuovere la rendicontazione del CI nelle piccole e medie imprese tecnologiche, ha prodotto un report (Ricardis report, 2006) nel quale incoraggia le università, attori centrali nella attuale società della conoscenza, a prendere parte attiva al processo di sviluppo di una cultura di rendicontazione del CI. D’altro canto, le spinte ad una introduzione della gestione delle risorse intangibili arrivano anche “dal basso”: la crescente domanda degli stakeholder per una maggiore trasparenza degli atenei nell’utilizzo dei fondi, la crescente competizione tra le università e il riconoscimento a livello centrale di una loro maggiore autonomia, che si sono registrate negli ultimi anni a livello europeo, sono tutti fattori che spingono le università verso l’adozione di nuovi sistemi di gestione e rendicontazione, che dovranno necessariamente incorporare gli intangibili (Sanchez et al., 2009). Nella letteratura del CI, in linea generale due sono i principali filoni di ricerca emersi nelle scorse decadi, uno più orientato alla misurazione, l’altro più orientato alla gestione (Roos et al., 1999). L’approccio orientato alla misurazione si propone di valutare il CI sotto un profilo quantitativo. L’approccio gestionale si basa su modelli preferibilmente qualitativi di misurazione del CI e si focalizza sull’utilità dello stesso nei processi di decision making. L’articolo in oggetto si colloca nell’approccio misurazionale, che tuttavia integra con quello gestionale per la natura qualitativa degli indicatori utilizzati nel modello. Applicando un approccio fuzzy logic, l’articolo si propone di presentare una modalità differente per determinare un indice complessivo del CI. La logica fuzzy viene utilizzata come sistema logico sottostante il sistema esperto fuzzy (FES) elaborato ad hoc per la misurazione del CI delle università . Tale sistema, consente di tenere in considerazione la natura qualitativa della maggior parte degli indicatori del CI e le differenti categorie nelle quali lo stesso può essere articolato (capitale umano, relazionale e strutturale). Il modello FES elaborato per questo studio è stato applicato ai dati relativi alle università pubbliche austriache, le prime istituzioni pubbliche a livello mondiale ad essere state obbligate dalla legge (UG 2002) a pubblicare i report del CI, poiché era necessario testare il modello avendo a disposizione una massa critica di indicatori standardizzati. Lo studio contribuisce a stimolare il dibattito nell’ambito della comunità scientifica sull’utilizzo di misure alternative di misurazione del valore del CI di un’organizzazione. I risultati della ricerca offrono un contributo sia nell’ambito dell’approccio misurazionale, in quanto evidenziano come la performance in termini di CI di un’organizzazione possa essere misurata da valori tangibili, ossia quantitativamente, che nell’ambito dell’approccio gestionale, in quanto l’indice del CI è ottenuto applicando un FES in grado di tenere in considerazione le sinergie tra le diverse categorie di CI e la natura qualitativa degli indicatori intangibili.

This paper follows in the study of the building of children' social interaction with parents using the capability approach. Parents' role in child well being is well documented by evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis, here we will try to put in relation and to come to a measure of different factors that can affect its development. We propose a fuzzy expert system to measure this capability both at a theoretical and empirical level. The applied part of the paper use a data set based on a matched data source of ISTAT (Italian National Statistical Office 2008) multipurpose survey on family and on children condition in Italy to recover information on children’s education, the socio-demographic structure of their families, child care provided by relatives and parents according to the type of activities in which the children are involved, and Bank of Italy Survey on household income and wealth year 2008 (SHIW08) to control how family income may enter in the final evaluation This is one step of a more complex system allowing for a richer set of indicators and of dimension of child well being as well as for their interaction.

"In this paper we present the results of a research project promoted by Italian Ministry of Labour devoted to assign a formal certify to Italian private firms who respect Equal Opportunities (EO) between man and woman. The research project has been implemented in the framework of the 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All and has been co-financed by the European Commission. Italian Ministry made a public call, to choose a sample of private firms. The sample was formed by: 14 joint-stock companies, 2 Ltds, 3 cooperatives Ltd, 10 social cooperatives and 5 others form of enterprise. The group of researchers involved is maken by sociologists, mathematicians and economists. The project started in June 2007 when the experts set up the self-assessment questionnaire. The test was carried out from November 2007 until February 2008. The selected firms filled in the self-assessment questionnaires and the sociologists conducted in-depth interviews to the relevant union representatives. A Fuzzy Expert System (FES) is used. The scope for using FES is connected not only to the multidimensional nature of EO and to the need of providing a synthetic indicator of firm’s EO without losing the its complexity, but even with the composite group of experts involved. The presence of sociologists, economists trade unions members, not used to a mathematics language, carried us to propose an instrument more user friendly like a FES. "

Will mathematics be useful in overcoming the crisis in the Middle-East Area? The classical decisions methods are based only on numbers and do not include qualitative aspects which can add important and significant meanings to the subject. Furthermore, Mathematics is often reviled and considered unpleasant or difficult to be comprehended and so social researchers prefer to have nothing to do with it. The recent development of Fuzzy Logic has opened the possibility of new applications in situations in which both numbers and adjectives are important and have to be treated, simultaneously and on an equal standing; a mathematical theory where the traditional concept of true or false can be enriched by true and false. A Fuzzy Cognitive Map of the conflicts in the Middle-East has been realized and has been used to evaluate the failure of diplomatic and political efforts with the consequent onset of war and conflict. The paper is the result of the uncommon but joint effort between mathematicians, social researchers, sociologists and information experts.

ACS - CISIM 2005 June 30 - July 3 Elk, Poland Su invito

In this paper we present a first attempt to describe the present situation of the Middle East area by a fuzzy logic map. By it we design a fuzzy expert system that evaluate the level of destabilization in the same area. In this map are present the political and geographical "actors" that influence the level of destabilization. The connections between the "actors" are expressed in a linguistic framework, like "if the United States influence increases than the Israeli radicalism is fortified" and so on. Using this map, built by experts in International Policy and Terrorism, we have tried to translate it in a fuzzy expert system, with the idea to obtain a numerical level of destabilization of the area we have considered. Making a continuous monitoring of the situation, the system makes possible to understand the behaviour of this complex situation, and shows what are the actions that increase or decrease the destabilization. It suggests what are the actions useful to reduce this level.

This paper makes use of a fuzzy expert system to evaluate a strategic investment. In particular, the model proposed aims at replicating the actual decision process accomplished by Florim S.p.a., an Italian ceramic tile firm which recently had the opportunity of buying a firm in the USA. The model is perfectly consistent with the evaluation process conducted by Florim’s experts and on the basis of the same data available to the expert’s panel, our expert system provides the same investment value and therefore the same solution to the decision process.

This paper makes use of a fuzzy expert system for valuing a strategic investment. In particular, the model proposed aims at replicating the actual decision process accomplished by Florim S.p.a., an Italian ceramic tile firm which recently had the opportunity of buying a firm in the USA. The model is perfectly consistent with the evaluation process conducted by Florim’s experts and on the basis of the same data available to the expert’s panel our expert system provides the same investment value and therefore the same solution to the decision process.