Suchergebnisse

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate resilience to extreme weather events (EWE) in a sample of Italian local councils (LCs), impacted by flood disasters. Whether resilience as a concept is adopted by the affected councils and factors that promote or inhibit LC resilience are explored.


Design/methodology/approach
– Using semi-structured interviews, the authors investigate seven Italian LCs that were severely impacted by the flood event. An interview protocol was developed and background information collected. A number of themes were drawn from the interview transcripts and relationships with the relevant literature were examined.


Findings
– The findings highlight that the adoption of the concept of resilience is at an early stage in the LCs decision and policy making. The authors find that the financial resources and the external relations management with other public entities, NGOs and local communities, promote the LCs resilience during and after an EWE. By contrast, bureaucratic constraints and poor urban planning restrain resilience. The findings suggest that LCs resilience needs to be distinguished from local community resilience.


Originality/value
– The paper contributes to the literature on public sector management and investigates the under-researched area of resilience within the context of the public sector, vis-à-vis, local government. In particular the realization that EWE are not the realm only of emergency personnel, but that local government managers have an integral role placed upon them during and especially after the EWE.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether intellectual capital affects the probability that a particular firm will default. The authors also test whether including intellectual capital performance in bankruptcy prediction models improves their predictive ability.


Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of US public companies from the period stretching from 1985 to 2015, the authors test whether intellectual capital performance reduces the probability of bankruptcy. The authors use the VAIC as an aggregate measure of corporate intellectual capital performance.


Findings
The findings show that the intellectual capital performance is negatively associated with the probability of default. The findings also indicate that the bankruptcy prediction models that include intellectual capital have a superior predictive ability over the standard models.


Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to prior research on intellectual capital and firm performance. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to show that the benefits of intellectual capital extend from superior performance to long-term financial stability. The research can also contribute to bankruptcy studies. By using a time frame covering decades, the findings suggest that intellectual capital performance measures can be included in bankruptcy prediction models and can effectively complement traditional performance measures.


Originality/value
This paper highlights that intellectual capital is associated with long-term financial stability and a lower bankruptcy risk. Firms realising the potential of their intellectual capital can produce a virtuous circle between higher performance and greater financial stability.