To What Extent Are Young Italian Scholars of Economia Aziendale Interested in CSR? An Overview of 2012 13/B1 Associate Professorship Candidates’ Publications

Former research suggests that Italian Economia Aziendale scholars are interested in CSR. However, pre-existing literature disregards the generational dimension, preventing projections on the evolution of this interest in the Italian academia. Thus, applying a totally different viewpoint (the generational one), we investigate the status of CSR research through young Italian scholars’ contributions. We examine publications by Italian scholars aiming to qualify as associate professorships within the first national session (2012) in the ministerial sector named Economia Aziendale. This sector—labeled “13/B1” for competitive aims and “SECS-P/07” for scientific and didactic ones—encompasses both Italian areas of investigation related to Accounting and Business Economics. To carry out the study, we transformed our basic research question (“To what extent are young Italian Economia Aziendale scholars interested in CSR?”) into the following operational detailed research questions: Do 13/B1 candidates publish in CSR? How much and how do 13/B1 candidates publish in CSR? What kind of CSR topics are 13/B1 candidates interested in? Our findings show that more than half of young Italian scholars applying for 13/B1 associate professor publish on CSR, prefer co-authorship patterns for CSR research and are mainly interested in social issues (instead of ethic, environmental and other issues). Most of the contributions focus on reporting topics. Since many candidates interested in CSR were deemed to have the qualification requirements for professorship, these results could provide useful indications on CSR interest for the future generations of scholars and on prospective CSR diffusion in the Italian Economia Aziendale community. The study includes suggestions for further researches on similar topics.