Financial Systems between conflictuality and territorial coexistence. Islamic Finance and the United Kingdom case. – Recent years are characterized by the increasing spread of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) in the Western countries. This could be explained, on the one hand, because the Islamic communities are even more numerous, becoming an important interlocutor and an opportunity for the western economies. On the other hand, Islamic finance Islamic finance has several ethical characteristics that could identify them as a more stable financial model.
The present contribution aims to address the particular issue of Islamic finance, looking at the global diffusion of the phenomenon, in order to understand its differences and conflicts with the traditional financial model.
To this end, it will be treated the case study of the United Kindom where the phenomenon seems to have had more success than in other countries.
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Perceived Risk Effect and Nimby Syndrome. Analysis of the "No-Tap" Conflict in Puglia. – In the first half of 2017, a series of protests and clashes in the Salento region of Puglia attracted media attention. At the origin of such clashes, there is a desire to counter an infrastructure project with an international scope for environmental, landscaping, economic and social reasons. This is the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which involves the construction of a natural gas pipeline from the Shah Denizinin fields in Azerbaijan to the Italian coast, and then distributed to Europe. Beyond the underlying motivations of mobilization, what emerges as relevant is the phenomenon associated with the environmental conflict, defined in literature as NIMBY syndrome.
The purpose of the paper is to analyze the nature of environmental conflicts, how they emerge, what characteristics they assume and how they can be managed and contained. To this end, will be addressed the issue of risk, perceived risk and probabilistic statistic risk, clarifying the difference, as it is closely related to the theme of environmental conflicts. A review of the literature on the NIMBY and LULU phenomena will be presented, and finally, the case-study of the NO TAP movement in Puglia will be treated.
New Synergies Between Territories and Enterprises: The Benefit Corporation as Potential Actors of Sustainable Development. – Recently, in Italy, have been introduced the Benefit Corporation (BC), ie a new legal form once a formal recognition of those companies intending to pursue a different business model: the “for benefit”. These companies, in fact, are placed in a limbo between non-profit and for-profit, associating profit targets with requirements of transparency and accountability to a wider number of stakeholders such as employees and citizens, reaching the interest for the natural environment and the territory. The challenge launched by the BC is that to get a rapprochement between doing business and society that goes beyond a simple and residual integration of social concerns, introducing into the reasons of being of the company's one or more purposes turned to the common benefit. In this sense, the classical concept of corporate social responsibility undergoes a transformation and becomes more strong.
This study has two objectives, firstly to clarify the nature, the struc-ture and the geographic distribution of those enterprises, on the other hand it aims to check as this modern way of understanding the business may affect on the territory and the extent to which the context where the companies are placed can to contribute on their functioning. To achieve the ultimate goal will be analyzed recent experiences in the Italian system, taking into account some of the existing realities.