Luisa Varriale

In recent decades, the increasingly widespread diffusion of plastic contamination (plastamination) has attracted growing attention from both the scientific and public community due to its harmful effects on human health and environmental balance. Several studies have highlighted a link between exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics and the onset of central nervous system problems, impaired reproductive function, altered liver metabolism, dysbiosis and other chronic diseases. At the same time, research has highlighted how plastamination negatively impacts natural ecosystems, accelerating biodiversity loss and compromising the stability of the planet. Faced with these critical issues, scientific and professional debate has progressively shifted toward defining effective and sustainable strategies, often based on innovative technologies, aimed at limiting the overall impact of this global phenomenon. This study, consisting of a systematic literature review through a bibliometric analysis in the Web of Science database (1974–June 2025), aims to examine plastamination through a broad and integrated approach, combining biological, medical, engineering, managerial and cultural perspectives, to offer a systematic and multidimensional reading of the problem. Preliminary findings underscore the importance of an integrated vision that brings together technology, culture, society, and medicine, emphasizing the need for shared global policies and collective responsibility. The study thus aims to offer an innovative contribution to the understanding of plastamination and to the definition of multidimensional intervention strategies to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Corruption has been receiving an increasing attention by scholars and practitioners, also due to the growth of corrupt behaviors in both private and public organizations worldwide. Focusing the attention on public context, discretion is an unavoidable element of administrative action, which derives from the incompleteness of contracts and the information asymmetries that characterize every agency relationship. A further element of uncertainty within agency relationship is represented by subjective elements of those who commit fraudulent behaviors (rationalization) and by contextual elements that push for socialization and, therefore, acceptance by the group of such behaviors, by going to inhibit group control able to prevent its commission. Thus, the main problem arises of monitoring possible degenerations in administrative behavior. For this purpose, a combination of institutional and organizational strategies and ethical strategies could be interesting and desirable. This conceptual study provides an innovative and integrated reading of the corruption phenomenon through the lens of agency theory (AT) and organizational behavior (OB) approaches, where codes of ethics and codes of conduct play a crucial role as tools for guiding and controlling the behavior of public officials. The codes define a system of moral and reputational incentives, in addition to criminal and administrative sanctions, aimed at increasing the ethical capital of administrations and managing “gray areas” that are not adequately regulated. This chapter aims to provide an integrated framework, combining AT and OB approaches, to discuss such strategies related to ethical and social issues.

This paper aims to investigate the role and function of digital and smart technologies, including AI applications, within organizations in making them much more inclusive for people with disability (PWD) at the workplace starting from the recruitment process. Specifically, this conceptual study provides an indepth analysis of smart recruitment process for creating work environments much more inclusive and sustainable for PWD. In the last three decades, also because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital transformation, largely adopting digital and smart technologies, has significantly, both positively and negatively, affected any field and industry in the private and professional life. Indeed, our ways of working and quality of life have been improved by digital and smart technologies which are able to overcome geographical, physical, and social barriers. Likewise, some negative effects are related to this phenomenon, such as digital divide especially for some categories of people, like those with disabilities or special needs. This conceptual paper provides a systematic literature review; indeed, the phenomenon of smart recruitment is investigated providing an overview regarding its insights, challenges, and future developments. A bibliometric analysis is conducted using WoS and Scopus databases with manual selection through the VOSviewer software.

Universities, due to their main functions to perform, such as teaching and training, research, and collaboration with the external community, find themselves taking on a crucial role in promoting the development of human capabilities for a sustainable world, where they act to improve and promote a culture of total social inclusion and sustainability values inside and outside their organizations. Therefore, Universities play an elective role in the process of promoting and disseminating human capabilities in the sustainability perspective, providing the tools and practices, and the knowledge and enriching the skills needed to overcome any obstacle and/or barrier that prevents the acceptance and absolute domination of a culture of inclusion in any organizational context, especially in the workplace, the respect of the nature and environment in general, the research and application of sustainable business models according to effectiveness, efficiency and equity criteria. This exploratory study aims to investigate university organizations by adopting the multiple case study methodology and using secondary data. The study provides a portrait of Italian public and private universities by highlighting their strategies and initiatives for developing human capabilities in the sustainable world following two guidelines: university as a working environment which performs for employees engagement in sustainability initiatives (presence of sustainable policies, e.g., policies for supporting categories of workers with disabilities, environmental solutions, their own business organizational models, disability management policies, presence of women in governance bodies, work life balance policies, etc.); university as a higher education institution (dedicated training courses, active projects, courses on disability management, courses on sustainability issues, etc.).

This study aims to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding citizens’ intentions to engage in environmentally sustainable behavior, thus making cities more sustainable. This article investigates environmentally sustainable behavior by adopting the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Using Partial Least Square Path Modeling (PLS-PM), an analysis of survey data from 224 respondents in Italy revealed the salient role of attitudes, subjective norms, intentions, and urban sustainable policies in urban sustainable behavior. Our findings have important implications for theory and practice in this new area of inquiry.

This paper investigates the Italian football clubs adopting a double perspective: the point of view of sustainability and technology innovation. In the last decades, the increasing implementation and spread of digital technologies worldwide in any economic settings, including the sport industry, especially the football business, has been playing a crucial role in supporting managerial, work out and training processes and making them much more competitive and high performing. At the same time, sport organizations, including football clubs, must achieve the UN Agenda 2030 with its 17 SDGs trying to improve their performance in the sustainability perspective. This paper, through a multiple case study of the Italian football clubs in the Serie A for the year 2021/2022, provides a portrait of these sport organizations and their way to be sustainable and much more technologically advanced in one specific county, where football industry has high relevance for volume of affairs and impact on sustainability. Thus, we match the two perspectives especially considering the role and function of digital technologies in making football clubs much more sustainable. After a brief review of the literature on the topic, we investigate the Italian football clubs mapping them considering their degree of sustainability and technology orientation. Our qualitative research provides useful insights about specific technologies able to improve the overall performance of the sport organizations, as well as knowledge about best practices already adopted by organizations for being sustainable, creating a kind of guideline for operators in the football industry.

This paper investigates the role and function of digital technologies within firms, widely believed to make them much more sustainable and promote the social inclusion of people with disability (PWD) at the workplace, especially those with cognitive disability or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the last thirty years, and more recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological change related to digital transformation, hence the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies, has impacted every field and sector in private and professional life, both positively and negatively. Undoubtedly, our ways of working and quality of life have been improved by digital technologies which are able to overcome geographical, physical, and social barriers. Yet there are negative effects in some domains and for certain categories of people, like those with disabilities or special needs. Within the well-known phenomenon of digital divide, people may be totally excluded due to their limited digital skills or lack of access to technological tools. After a brief review of the literature on the topic, adopting a multiple case study method, we investigate several firms operating in different economic sectors in one specific country, namely Italy, where there is a significant presence of PWD, mostly with ASD, who face challenges in being recruited and working within organizations. Our qualitative research, investigating the role and function of digital technologies in supporting and promoting the inclusion of PWD at workplace, provides some stimulating insights for future studies.