Female Agri-Food Start-Ups: Mapping the Italian Context During the Coronavirus Era

Abstract

This is the official book series of SIDREA -the Italian Society of Accounting and Business Administration. This book series is provided with a wide Scientific Committee composed of Academics by SIDREA. It publishes contributions (monographs, edited volumes and proceedings) as a result of the double blind review process by the SIDREA's thematic research groups, operating at the national and international levels. Particularly, the series aims to disseminate specialized findings on several topicsclassical and cutting-edge alikethat are currently being discussed by the accounting and business administration communities. The series authors are respected researchers and professors in the fields of business valuation; governance and internal control; financial accounting; public accounting; management control; gender; turnaround predictive models; non-financial disclosure; intellectual capital, smart technologies, and digitalization; and university governance and performance measurement.More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16571

Intellectual capital's contribution to innovative female agri-start-ups: a multiple case study

“…However, as the multiple case study has confirmed, the trigger for new knowledge comes from the relationships the company has established with the external environment and thus the RC's composition. This implication theorized in the paper is also evident from the fact that the role of RC is observed in a sector that is currently very deficient in terms of innovation, namely agri-food (Modaffari and Manzo, 2023; Paoloni et al. , 2022a; Cosentino et al.…”

“…In 2022, women only led ten innovative agri-food start-ups. Namely, 11% of the agri-food sector and only 0.08% of the innovative Italian start-ups (Modaffari and Della Corte, 2021; Modaffari and Manzo, 2023).…”

“…Previous studies highlight the discriminations women experience in social, cultural and economic contexts (Tahir and Baradie, 2019; Armuña et al., 2020; Kuschel et al., 2020). This difficulty leads to an entrepreneurial gender gap in terms of female enterprises' number and structural limiting characteristics (Modaffari and Manzo, 2023; Paoloni, 2021). The literature agrees that the root of the entrepreneurial gender gap is often related to an educational gap (Paoloni and Manzo, 2022), resulting in not only women's entrepreneurial intentions (Gavurova et al., 2018), but also their low performance (Kuschel et al.…”

“…, 2019). The sector registers low research and innovativeness' levels as only 0.07% of innovative start-ups in Italy operate in agri-food (Modaffari and Manzo, 2023).…”

“…Previous studies that have analysed the firm's innovation capabilities in agri-food observed that the presence of women in corporate governance could positively impact the creation of efficient environmental policies and the promotion of proactive environmental innovation (García-Sánchez et al., 2021). Nevertheless, female entrepreneurship in the agri-food sector is still weak as only 15 innovative farms are led by women (14% of the industry) (Modaffari and Della Corte, 2021; Modaffari and Manzo, 2023).…”