The European Microfinance Research Award to a team of the School of Management

The award for a study on the positive social impact of fintech.

 

A team of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano won the European Microfinance Research Award 2022 with paper “FinTech for Good: unveiling social value creation in the fintech sector”. The award was given by European Microfinance Network (EMN), a not-for-profit organisation which promotes microfinance as a tool to fight social and financial exclusion in Europe through self-employment and the creation of microenterprises.

The study carried out by Federico Bartolomucci, PhD candidate, Veronica Chiodo, professor of Social Entrepreneurship, and Andrea Petrolati, Junior Project Manager at Fintech District, investigates the FinTech world, aiming to understand if and how technological innovation generates impact in the financial sector and which is the role played by technology in the value creation process. Results show that FinTechs, operating in underserved markets and combining technological innovation with the intentionality to generate positive social impact, can generate social value both in developed and emerging economies. Results challenge traditional financial players, institutions and social economy actors to re-imagine their relation with them.

 

JSCM’s Best Paper Award to Claudia Colicchia

Journal of Supply Chain Management awards our Professor’s study amongst all publications of 2019.

 

The paper “The Impact of Supplier Sustainability Risk on Shareholder Value“, authored by Claudia Colicchia, School of Management Politecnico di Milano, Seongtae Kim, Aalto University School of Business, Stephan M. Wagner ETH Zurich, received the Best Paper Award of the Journal of Supply Chain Management (JSCM) during the annual Conference of the Academy of Management. The paper was chosen by JSCM among all those published in the year 2019.

Claudia Colicchia is Associate Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests include Supply Chain Sustainability, Supply Chain Risk Management, Industry 4.0 and Logistics 4.0, and Citation Network Analysis.

The paper examines the magnitude of the consequences of what are termed as supplier sustainability risks (SSRs). Business scandals like sweatshop labour have received growing attention in the field of supply management. Yet little is known about how detrimental such scandals are to buying firms. To this end, an event study analysis was conducted, followed by regression modelling based on a sample of 196 U.S. publicly traded firms’ SSRs.

The results reveal that SSRs are associated with a 1.00 percent reduction in shareholder wealth. The market reacts negatively but not differently to the two types of SSR: process-related risks and product-related risks. Finally, a firm’s moral capital does play a mitigating role for SSRs and process-related risks; however, it does not provide insurance-like protection for product-related risks.

The Journal of Supply Chain Management is in its 55th year of publication. The Journal has made rapid advances in recent years, as evidenced by a quadrupling of submissions since 2007, and an ever-increasing number of high quality, unsolicited submissions. More tangibly, JSCM has been ranked either first or second for the past seven years among supply chain and operations management journals, based on its Thomson-Reuters ISI Impact Factor and received multiple Emerald Citations of Excellence Awards, which are given to the 50 most outstanding and highest impact articles out of the 15,000 articles published in the top 300 management journals.

For more information:
Kim, S., Wagner, S.M. and Colicchia, C.
The Impact of Supplier Sustainability Risk on Shareholder Value
J Supply Chain Manag, 55: 71-87 (2020)
The study online

Amazon Innovation Award 2020 – PrimePeerz, an innovative and sustainable project

Five students in their second year of the Master’s Degree in Management Engineering have won first prize in the Amazon Innovation Award 2020, with the PrimePeerz project.
Giorgio Damuzzo, Nicola De Giusti, Simona Esposito, Fulvio Gargiulo and Romain Lerouge faced the competition as an integrative project during the Logistics Management course held by Professors Alessandro Perego and Riccardo Mangiaracina, going up against 300 other students from Italian and French universities.

They decided to work on sustainability: they were tasked with devising an innovative solution for the processes of product pick-up, packaging, shipping and returns, which would be as efficient as possible and at the same time would result in a reduction of CO2 emissions, an issue which is very important for Amazon at the moment.

The team’s idea focuses on “last mile” delivery, the core concept is the relational economy of human beings, with the intention of exploiting the existing social ties between Amazon’s large customer base in order to reduce the company’s environmental impact.
PrimePeerz aims to establish further consolidation points in the downstream logistics network, by aggregating orders from customers that are linked to each other, thereby reducing the number of shipments, the resulting transport costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

We are very pleased with the victory, because it shows that we have managed to capture both academic interest and recognition from Amazon, and for us this means we have reasoned in the right way.”

The award, postponed due to the current epidemic, includes a trip to Seattle, where our students will present their idea to managers at Amazon’s headquarters.

Amazon has selected their project to represent the Politecnico di Milano at the national finals, in competition with the Politecnico di Torino and Rome Tor Vergata. In the final, which took place remotely on April 17, Amazon then decreed their project as the winner of the contest.

It was a shame for us not to be able to celebrate the victory all together physically and to be able to meet Amazon’s representatives in person. We hope to make our dream come true and visit Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle once the health containment measures are completed.”