BOOKS BY MARCO CASTELLANI

L’articolo presenta una ricerca sulle relazioni industriali di secondo livello nel distretto manifat-turiero bresciano, uno dei principali su scala nazionale. Lo studio analizza con una metodologia quantitativa multivariata il contenuto di 643 accordi aziendali, siglati da 319 imprese dal 2016 al 2019. Il fine principale della ricerca è costruire una prima tipizzazione delle imprese, che consideri in un unico quadro analitico sia le loro caratteristiche economico-organizzative, sia le relazioni industriali decentrate che esse tendono a generare nel tempo. Le analisi hanno fatto emergere quattro gruppi d’imprese con caratteristiche, assetti e strategie differenti. Nel com-plesso, oltre a discutere dell’elevato livello di eterogeneità delle relazioni industriali decentrate nel territorio in esame, gli Autori presentano le pratiche più virtuose e maggiormente meritevoli di attenzione a livello normativo.

Il volume intende fornire una fotografia di alcuni fra i principali percorsi di ricerca su temi legati alla contrattazione decentrata in Italia. I contributi sono caratterizzati da un taglio spiccatamente multidisciplinare, che include in un unico quadro analitico non solo gli approcci giuslavorista e sociologico, ma anche aree di ricerca più vicine agli studi di matrice aziendalista. Il testo presenta al contempo sia lavori di ricerca sul distretto manifatturiero bresciano sia riflessioni sulle future direzioni del sistema di relazioni industriali italiane.

In this paper, we focus on limited and joint-stock active companies operating between 2008 and 2016 within the Brescian manufacturing system (n=7,619). After processing data for 1,047 firm-level agreements, we examined the impact of economic and organisational features on companies’ decentralised bargaining activity. In a first probit model, the purely economic-financial variables included do not explain company bargaining behaviour. However, a second probit model with only organisational variables shows that the largest and longest lasting companies were more likely to sign new agreements. In addition, while firm bargaining history tended to increase the likelihood of an agreement being signed, family-type governance had the opposite effect. Potential explanations of these findings are discussed, mainly in consideration of the widespread diffusion of a decentralised bargaining model based on family-type ownership and medium-small corporate dimensional scale.

Anticipazione strategica e riposizionamento nella filiera distrettuale. Il caso Sabaf - Sabaf Group is a worldwide leading gas cooking appliance manufacturer. The firm, which has been playing since the fifties a major role in the metalworking industrial district of "Valli Bresciane", planned a re-organization during the late nineties. Drawing upon a clear separation between ownership and management, the firm started up an industrial restructuring focused on the insourcing of the pressure die casting process for the making of burners and the brand new production of aluminium alloys. The strategic anticipation took place as consequence to Sabaf’s forecast for the forthcoming decline of the district-area (2000-2004), and firm’s management decided to move from the "core" of the district (Lumezzane) to the border of it (Ospitaletto), a choice which meant to overcome some typical external economies of the marshallian district. The entire manufacturing department was replaced and a joint engineering (processes and products) method was also adopted with considerable results that allowed the firm in becoming one of the most innovative players in its sector. Corporate governance and social and environmental sustainability turned out to be the main drivers of the firm’s lead over other competitors and now represent also thecrucial keys for facing current crisis in a pro-active way, rather than simply in a reactive manner.

Starting from the main findings pointed out both by theoretical and empirical approaches of bounded rationality, the paper examines the influence of organizational context on attainment discrepancy as a driving factor for adapting individual aspiration levels. The methodology used is a non-standard experimental technique combining traditional cognitive psychology setting and a role playing scheme. A number of individuals, with the same risk attitude composition, was involved into an experiment in which each one had to face a simulated socio-organizational scenario and to take a three-steps choice to improve the initial troubled economic condition of the simulated firm. The paper, playing upon a mixed quantitative (statistical indicators) and qualitative (cognitive mapping) analysis, draws conclusions on how individuals react respectively to light and deep scenario failure. In the first case, individuals are extremely influenced by the organizational climate, simulated by a fictitious board of directors that listens to individuals’ reasons after each choice and addresses next firm’s strategy (a risk taking and a risk averse leadership style). This issue somehow opposes the original March and Simon’s major argument that aspiration levels decrease in case of unsuccessful outcomes. In the second case (deep failure), individuals increase their aspiration levels due to their risk seeking behaviour, and this takes place apart from any socio-organizational pressure or style. The latter experimental result is explained in terms of some cognitive mechanisms that are referable primarily to a sunk costs effect (people are urged to adopt a losing strategy instead of considering as definitively vanished the costs of the earlier period), and secondly to a selective attention process that supports subjective evaluation by which individuals consider a strategy good enough playing on specific reasonable criteria in their cognitive representation.

In this paper it is argued that a current dualism, concerning industrial districts’ supply chain, deals with wide networks on the one hand, and on short networks on the other. The work considers this territorial arrangement in its connection with the plans addressed by local governance institutions. After giving an overview of recent developments in various territorial approaches, the article seeks to establish whether the above opposition turns into an hybrid configuration of the supply chain or not, with respect to a specific case-study (the industrial district of Lumezzane). An affirmative reply is given, by playing upon variables which seem to be strictly related to the opening or closing degree of the intermediate stages of the supply chain. These aspects also allow to make confrontations with other similar local production systems.