PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.Practical implicationsPublic agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.

The balanced scorecard (BSC) has received considerable attention, by companies and researchers, for its potentiality in mitigating the limitations of traditional management accounting tools and supporting strategic management. Despite this interest, there is still little empirical evidence on the levels of BSC implementation and the contingency factors influencing it. This study explores whether company size and type of industry affect the BSC use and focuses on motivations of the BSC use (or non-use). A survey was conducted in a highly productive region, Northeast Italy, and quantitative analysis was carried out to assess the statistical significance of the association between the contingency factors and the BSC use. The results confirm prior studies showing that BSC use is biased towards larger companies. However, this holds in every industry except in manufacturing, where also small firms are prone to adopt it. A qualitative analysis integrates these results highlighting that the BSC is mainly used to align objectives and improve business processes and communication within organizations.

Identificarsi con una squadra di calcio č un processo in grado di costruire una comunitŕ che unisce e distingue allo stesso tempo coloro che vi aderiscono. L'acquisizione di una comune identitŕ si manifesta anche nella proprietŕ di beni che sono un segno inequivocabile di appartenenza. La promozione di questi oggetti avviene attraverso l'adozione di pratiche di marketing tradizionale e di quelle forme di marketing non convenzionale che permettono al consumatore di assumere un ruolo attivo nei meccanismi di produzione. Il calcio č una parte di questa nuova dinamica che coinvolge produttori e consumatori nella vendita del prodotto-calcio e dell'intero universo di consumo che vi ruota intorno.

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