Purpose: This systematic literature review analyzes and identifies research areas where researchers have already studied the role of intellectual capital (IC) in the healthcare sector. This review also analyzes how they carried out their work to understand future research directions.Design/methodology/approach: The analysis is conducted through a systematic literature review. Therefore, following systematic literature review protocol, it was possible to select 225 papers. An analysis of the content was done to identify the main topics debated and understand what components of IC are the most studied by scholars.Findings: The authors highlight how the components of IC (human capital, structural capital and relational capital) in the healthcare sector have not been discussed with the same frequency and intensity by researchers. The research shows that there are already widely discussed areas, such as structural capital, while other components of IC have remained on the shadow, such as relational capital. Human capital is the most undiscussed component.Research limitations/implications: The manual analysis of the articles can be considered a limitation of this work.Originality/value: This systematic literature review makes several useful contributions. First, it enables others to replicate scientific research, thanks to its clear and transparent process. Second, it identifies the main areas of research and the main research methods. It enables researchers to identify which issues their work should address and suggests possible areas for future research.

A worldwide debate on the effectiveness of business reporting information has engaged organizations, policy makers, regulators, and members of the capital market. The documents through which organizations disclose their annual performance are being questioned and criticized, as they appear inadequate for responding to stakeholder needs. In 2013, the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) launched a project with the aim of redesigning corporate reporting processes and outputs, introducing integrated reporting (IR). At the center of IR are the six capitals defined by the IIRC representing the basis for an innovative form of evaluating and presenting performance. New topics on the global sustainable development agenda are growing in importance, requiring companies to enrich their disclosure and connect business to environment. In this study, we examined how a group of leaders in IR, 134 European companies from the IIRC IR reporters list, are currently disclosing IR capital and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), developing three evaluation scores: Capital Disclosure Index, SDG Disclosure Index, and SDG Compliance Index.

This article aims to investigate the role of digital technologies for sustainable waste management in the cruise industry to meet the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda. These issues are analyzed through the sustainability disclosure of the major cruise corporations. Under the lens of the corporate social responsibility framework and legitimacy theory, this study construed sustainability reports of four major cruise corporations published from 2015 to 2019 and their website pages by using the Leximancer text-mining software to map the underlying main research topics with the visual concepts range and manual content analysis. The results highlight the increasing commitment of cruise corporations to reduce the environmental impact by meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs) included in the UN 2030 Agenda by investing in digital technologies on-board ships. Using a double level of sustainability reporting analysis, this study, compared to previous studies, seeks to determine best practices on operational processes on-board ships regarding waste issues, including the digital technologies as an enabler to sustainability, especially SDGs. This study opens the way to scholars about waste processes and financial investment in technology issues, as well as the role played by the regulatory framework. In addition, this study highlights the insufficiency of the theory of legitimacy alone to identify best practices related to broader waste issues. Likewise, the practitioners find in this study a key roadmap about the need to involve crew and cruisers in the waste digital process thanks sharing of programs to define the waste practices. Practitioners also find the address to the factors that will make them aware of the current weakness of nonfinancial disclosure in sustainability reporting. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first time an empirical analysis conducted through sustainability reporting and other non-financial documents allows to identify “best practices” adopted on-board cruise ships to meet sustainability goals in digital waste management. Moreover, the use of two levels of analysis, by Leximancer and manual content analysis about the text documents companies make available to stakeholders, allows for identifying the high-level concepts and key ideas without bias, well as being able to define the perimeter of good practices linked to the orientation of cruise corporations toward new technologies.

The topic of sustainable development has become increasingly central to the international community. In 2015, the UN approved the 2030 Agenda, an action plan aimed at pursuing sustainable development. The founding elements of the 2030 Agenda are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that refer to different areas of development. The objective of this study is to determine the state of implementation of the SDGs in Italy and to understand to what extent the country will be able to reach European standards in 2030 under current policies. To this end, a quantitative analysis was carried out which, thanks to the use of official statistics and the FORECAST.ETS function, made it possible to identify the value that the indicators will have in 2030. In addition, the dynamic index methodology was applied to measure the degree of implementation of the SDGs between two different historical periods: 2018 and 2030. The analyses carried out shows that Italy needs to take urgent measures to meet its commitment to the 2030 Agenda. The study offers one of the first insights into the implementation of the 2030 Agenda as, in addition to analyzing the country’s performance, it examines the pursuit of the SDGs within the country itself. It is therefore believed that the results may be of interest to governments, experts, and academics.

The present paper shows how, in the soccer clubs sector, where the average financial results are negative, the value of football clubs is not related to income, but to sales turnover and gives a theoretical explanation for that. The literature has shown that the profitability of the industry is generally negative already at the level of operating profit. However, the difference between market value and book value is broadly positive, showing that the market recognizes to these companies a quid pluris in terms of value, not explained by the most rational and generally accepted methods of business valuation. The present study aims to explain, through an empirical analysis, why the value of a football company can not be estimated only on the basis of expected financial results, but it requires considering the overall benefits for shareholders, represented also by private benefits of control and socio-emotional benefits.