WP 34 | 12 Innovative private-public partnerships

The crisis in global markets has severely affected the labor market, on the one hand, making it even more difficult for disadvantaged people to find new jobs and, on the other, creating new conditions of social fragility and thus new labor needs. While social cooperatives are a concrete way to respond to these emergencies, they often find themselves having to self-sustain in a highly competitive market with narrow profitability margins and restrictive spending policies. Read More

WP 33 | 12 Stakeholder orientation and capital structure: Social enterprises versus for-profit firms in the Italian social residential service sector

In this paper, we investigate whether capital structure differs between for-profit and nonprofit sectors by focusing on two key aspects of the latter: the non-distribution constraint and the stakeholder oriented governance system. We develop a theoretical model and show that the former negatively affects leverage, defined as the amount borrowed over the total investment, whilst the latter has a positive effect. Read More

WP 32 | 12 From mutual aid societies to mutual aid. Responses to the welfare crisis

Mutual aid societies appeared in Europe between the 19th and 20th centuries. This is one of the first forms of working class solidarity - anti-elitist, free from state control and self-managed - established to address the costs of illness, death and unemployment. Based on a study of the Italian situation, the paper deals with the role that mutuality can play today in response to the welfare crisis. Read More

WP 30 | 12 Evaluation of the economic and financial sustainability of the system of care services for non-self-sufficient elderly people: The case of the Province of Trento

This work aims to provide a first assessment of the economic and financial sustainability of the Trentino healthcare service system, with the main objective of identifying the drivers of profitability, both by examining the role and relevance of the new services that can be provided in terms of additional revenues, and by examining the characteristics of the different cost structures and the related methods of managing them. Read More

WP 28 | 12 The Stubai cooperative: using local roots for global competitiveness

The Stubai Co-operative, founded in 1897 by several craftsmen and steel manufacturing companies located in the Tyrolean Stubai Valley, has developed in one of the most successful distributors of small steel products in the high quality segment on a global scale. The proposed case study will discuss the reasons for this remarkable success, given that the comparably small Stubai Co-operative is able to challenge big players in the iron manufacturing industry. Read More