Copy Number Variants (CNV) are modifications affecting the genome sequence of DNA, for instance, they can be duplications or deletions of a considerable number of base pairs (i.e., greater than 1000 ...bp and up to millions of bp). Their impact on the variation of the phenotypic traits has been widely demonstrated. In addition, CNVs are a class of markers useful to identify the genetic biodiversity among populations related to adaptation to the environment. The aim of this study was to detect CNVs in more than four thousand Holstein cows, using information derived by a genotyping done with the GGP (GeneSeek Genomic Profiler) bovine 100K SNP chip. To detect CNV the SVS 8.9 software was used, then CNV regions (CNVRs) were detected. A total of 123,814 CNVs (4,150 non redundant) were called and aggregated into 1,397 CNVRs. The PCA results obtained using the CNVs information, showed that there is some variability among animals. For many genes annotated within the CNVRs, the role in immune response is well known, as well as their association with important and economic traits object of selection in Holstein, such as milk production and quality, udder conformation and body morphology. Comparison with reference revealed unique CNVRs of the Holstein breed, and others in common with Jersey and Brown. The information regarding CNVs represents a valuable resource to understand how this class of markers may improve the accuracy in prediction of genomic value, nowadays solely based on SNPs markers.
Purpose
This study aims to explore how the economic recession and some corporate governance (CG) provisions can affect the performance of Italian gambling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) ...across different business segments.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a panel sample of 2,135 observations before and during the global financial crisis. Specifically, the roles of ownership, boards of directors, chief executive officer gender and gambling business segments are investigated in the Italian gambling market.
Findings
Ownership concentration has a negative relationship with the performance of foreigner- and financial-owned firms, while boards exert a positive role on performance. Interestingly, the financial crisis does not impact the performance of Italian gambling SMEs and some business segments, such as bingo, perform even better during the crisis.
Research limitations/implications
Further investigations should analyze the role of single games on firm performance. The consumer- and firm-level examinations offer very different perspectives and scholars should be aware of this when investigating the gambling industry.
Practical implications
This study might help both policymakers and other gambling firms, such as casinos, to better understand which appropriate CG model should be adopted and how it can positively influence performance, especially in recessionary times.
Originality/value
This study contributes to studies on hospitality and tourism by focusing on the complementary role of gambling SMEs with respect to casinos. It also increases knowledge on the role of CG in privately owned gambling firms, which thus far has been scantly investigated by scholars.
In this study we investigated the genetic variability, the inbreeding and allele frequencies of monogenic traits in seven herds of Holstein breed and provided insight to farmers on the value of ...genomic management of reproduction in their herds. A total of 3,953 Holstein cows were sampled and genotyped with the Neogen GGP Bovine 100K SNP chip within the activities of the Regione Lombardia funded GO-PEI project ‘GENOmic tool for the management of reproduction in dairy cattle and for the control of inbreeding – GENORIP’. Principal component analysis was applied for analysing the genetic variability within and among farms using the SVS software of Golden Helix. Run of Homozygosity (ROH) and the genomic inbreeding were obtained with the detectRUNS package of the R software. Genotype frequencies for mendelian disease, fertility and production traits were also obtained. A total of 458,267 ROH were identified and ROH were distributed on all autosomes with an average length of 2,703,811 bp covering 12.7% of the genome. Several genomic regions appear under selection, while a specific region on BTA4 was identified in one herd, harbouring genes mainly related to the specific selection strategy of the farmer. The FROH values obtained considering ROH greater than 16 Mb, varied from 0.004 to 0.325, with the highest FROH average value of 0.136. Among mendelian heritable diseases, the Haplotype Cholesterol Deficiency was the one with the largest proportion of carrier animals, i.e. 5.6%. A herd-tailored process to assist farmers in genomic management of reproduction was released. The ROH distribution within herd, together with the genotype frequencies for disease, fertility and production mendelian traits, suggest that similar directional selection is occurring across herds. This study released to each farmer the genomic make-up of their herd used jointly with the gEBV estimated by their national breeders’ association (ANAFIBJ) for herd reproductive management.
Mastitis is one of the most significant diseases affecting dairy cattle profitability. A genome wide association study (GWAS) was performed using the selective genotyping approach to identify ...Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) associated with mastitis susceptibility. According to the received antibiotic treatments in all their productive life, 52 lactating cows have been classified in resistant (no therapy and low SCC) and susceptible (more than one treatment and high SCC) to mastitis. Genotyping of animals was performed using the NEOGEN's GGP Bovine 100K SNP chip and QTL were identified comparing the SNPs allelic frequencies between the two groups. 26 SNPs related to mastitis susceptibility were identified in 9 chromosomes. The use of treatment data, coupled with SCC from milk recording, improved cow's classification accuracy in resistant and susceptible individuals. For this reason, the mandatory recording of treatments active from January 2022, could be a new source of information to improve the genetic selection for mastitis resistance.
Italian autochthonous turkey breeds are an important reservoir of genetic biodiversity that should be maintained with an in vivo approach. The aim of this study, part of the TuBAvI national project ...on biodiversity, was to use run of homozygosity (ROH), together with others statistical approaches (e.g., Wright's F-statistics, principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE analysis), to investigate the genomic diversity in several heritage turkey breeds. We performed a genome-wide characterization of ROH-rich regions in seven autochthonous turkey breeds, i.e., Brianzolo (Brzl), Bronzato Comune Italiano (BrCI), Bronzato dei Colli Euganei (CoEu), Parma e Piacenza (PrPc), Nero d'Italia (NeIt), Ermellinato di Rovigo (ErRo) and Romagnolo (Roma). ROHs were detected based on a 650K SNP genotyping. ROH_islands were identified as homozygous ROH regions shared by at least 75% of birds (within breed). Annotation of genes was performed with DAVID. The admixture analyses revealed that six breeds are unique populations while the Roma breed consists in an admixture of founder populations. Effective population size estimated on genomic data shows a numeric contraction. ROH_islands harbour genes that may be interesting for target selection in commercial populations also. Among them the
and
genes on chr10 were related to reproduction efficiency. This is the first study mapping genetic variation in autochthonous turkey populations. Breeds were genetically different among them, with the Roma breed proving to be a mixture of the other breeds. The ROH_islands identified harboured genes peculiar to the selection that occurred in heritage breeds. Finally, this study releases previously undisclosed information on existing genetic variation in the turkey species.
The Aosta cattle breeds have a key role in the economy of the Aosta Valley. In addition to the meat and milk production these autochthonous breeds are important for their cultural value, and for ...their role in the maintenance of the mountain environment. The knowledge of their genetic makeup represents a fundamental asset to managing the reproduction of the population in order to maintain the existing genetic diversity and, as a possible input, to apply genomic selection in a small population. A total of 3195 Aosta cows were genotyped with the GeneSeek Genomic Profiler® (GGP) Bovine 100K by Neogen in the framework of the DUALBREEDING-2 project. The Aosta Black-Chestnut and Chestnut-Herèn resulted to be a unique population. The Aosta female population had shorter ROH than bulls and shared ROH_islands that harbour adaptative and functional genes. Allele frequencies of major genes highlight the possibility for selection for both milk and meat quality variants and that the Aosta cattle population is free from the known Mendelian inheritance diseases found in cosmopolitan breeds (e.g. BLAD, CVM, HCD).
In
A Treatise on Virtues and Rewards
, Dragonetti (1769) advances a theory of action based on rewards for virtues. The idea of rewards, especially of awards, relies on the hypothesis that intrinsic ...motivations drive the actions of good or virtuous citizens. We apply this theory to virtuous entrepreneurs who voluntarily adopt ethical principles as promoted by a recent Italian law. These firms receive an ethical rating (ER) by the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) and can access a set of economic and non-economic benefits (i.e. rewards). We survey a sample of 152 private companies with an ER and examine their views on the economic and social motivations and benefits as well as the perceived usefulness of the ER for improving ethical behaviour. An exploratory factor analysis detects four categories of motivation (economic, competitive, social, and responsiveness) and two categories of benefits (economic and competitive), which we use in regression models to test Dragonetti’s theory. Overall, respondents see the ER as an effective tool, except in terms of improving economic performance. We also find that entrepreneurs with lower economic and higher responsiveness motivations attain higher ERs. However, in the respondents’ opinions, the ER is (still) not producing any concrete benefits since we find no relationship between the ER and economic or competitive rewards. These findings have implications for the ICA as well as for private companies.
This paper aims to define a theoretical background for investigating greenwashing from a business economic perspective. We consider possible research questions in the relevant field of study, which ...is business economics studies. The first research step proposes a path that will orient scholars to the multifaceted perspectives of greenwashing. The second step analyzes the main theories that can support researchers and might motivate the possible greenwashing strategies. The third step highlights the potential link between greenwashing, reputational and relational capital, and a broad concept of value that includes the social dimension. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework that highlights some emerging research issues and anticipates the effects of greenwashing. Considering that self-regulation is not effective in reducing the gap between substantive and symbolic behaviors, the main practical implication of this study lies in addressing the need for stronger regulation and effective legal enforcement, not only to improve mandatory environmental disclosure but also to develop an audit process of such disclosure. Our analysis offers a number of suggestions for future research. Considering the centrality of disclosure in the theoretical framework we defined for greenwashing, future research could adopt the legitimacy theory perspective to focus on the role of mandatory environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) disclosure as well. Further, our conceptual framework highlights a possible research issue that investigates how a social value destruction resulting from inconsistent environmental strategies, may impact shareholders’ economic value.
By combining upper echelon theory with meso theory of management, this study investigates the relationship between both corporate and country corruption risk and the performance of CEOs, while ...controlling for a set of individual-level variables. We used a sample of 455 observations related to 249 listed companies from a list published by the Harvard Business Review of the world's best-performing CEOs, in both developed and emerging countries, over the 5-year period between 2013 and 2017. We implemented hierarchical linear models in a three-level approach based on country- (macro), firm- (meso), and individual-level (micro) variables. We found that corporate corruption risk negatively impacts CEO performance, although this relationship is also significantly moderated by the corruption risk at the country level. Our results support the view that corporate corruption prevention devices play a strong governance role in countries with high corruption risk. By exploring the interplay between these macro- and meso-factors in explaining the micro-level of CEO performance, our paper aims to build a contextualized meso-theory of corruption risk.
As Legality Rating (LR) for Italian companies was only recently introduced, it is an under-investigated phenomenon that is difficult to univocally interpret or structure within a well-defined ...theoretical framework. Given that certain governance characteristics can drive strategic decisions and have a crucial role to play in the legitimacy process, this paper sets out to explore how governance can influence a firm’s attitude and signal its socially responsible behaviour, in terms of legality. We investigated both corporate and regional governance antecedents using a sample of 1049 private Italian firms with a listed LR in 2016. We analysed hierarchical linear models with the LR score as a dependent variable, ranging from one to seven points. As a first in governance studies, we adopted the European Quality of Government Index to investigate differences in regional-level governance. We found that board size, ownership concentration, foreign ownership and being a cooperative were positively related to LR. Our results show that, where governance features make firms more inclined to safeguard their reputation, the LR is higher. Thus, rather than encouraging changes oriented to greater respect for the principles of legality, the LR primarily highlights companies that already behave honourably. Finally, a battery of robustness tests and further analyses on the role of regional governance quality reveal a substitution effect between regional and corporate governance.
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