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

Former researches suggest that Italian Economia Aziendale scholars are interested in CSR. However these researches ignore the generational dimension preventing forecasts on future evolution of the interest in the theme inside Italian academia. Thus, applying a totally different viewpoint (the generational one), we deem it is relevant to investigate the status of CSR research through young Italian scholars’ contributions. We examined publications by Italian scholars aiming to qualify as associate professor 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 Administration. 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 and which contents are they interested to? Our findings show that more than the majority of young Italian scholars applying for 13/B1 associate professor publish on CSR, prefer co-authorship patterns for CSR researches 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 qualified, these results could provide useful hints about CSR in future generations of scholars and related forecasts on CSR diffusion in the Italian Economia Aziendale community. Moreover the study shows limitations and suggestions for further researches.