**8. Results, limits and further researches**

The work has proposed an examination of the "*Italian way"* to face Family SMEs financial distress situations. As described it is characterized by the introduction

of the Board of Statutory Auditors which has a central role in identifying possible hazards to business viability. Its control *ex-ante,* as a matter of fact, allows the independent professionals involved in this special Board to interact in time with Directors - which in Family SMEs are usually are Family members - detecting signal of crisis and helping them to become aware of their relevance and potential impact. It is therefore asked to family SMEs to walk through this new path albeit implementing tools proportionate to the company's complexity. The aim is the development of a full awareness of corporate risks, the construction of a map that identifies and explicitly represents them so that they can be brought to the Family members attention and can be better monitored.

The importance of a constant constructive dialogue between experienced independent professionals and family members involved in the management of the company has been highlighted. The more the dialogue takes place before and when the decisions are taken the more the possibility of a positive influence will be high and therefore the more the probability of taking risks unknowingly will be reduced. For this to be possible, however, it is necessary on one side that independent professionals are able to use a convincing language and on the other side that family members are willing to listen their voices without feeling subjected to their presence. Experts ability to bring value, by focusing attention to the critical issues of choices and therefore forcing deeper and more rational reflections by tracing the intuition to a more structured and complex decision-making grid need to be recognized in the field.

Another point which resulted here emphasized is the necessity, when different control roles are defined, to reduce areas of overlaps and systematically structure the methods of interaction between the various players involved. This is essential to be able to convey clear and consistent messages and finally to reach efficacy of controls themselves. It is a relevant consideration as the proper operation of the Internal Control (IC) and Risk Management System (IC and ERM) involves, as seen in details in the chapter, several entities of corporate governance and consequently a risk is structural due to the increase of the complexity to manage.

A first limit of the work can be considered the qualitative approach of the analysis. Indeed this is a descriptive work that aims to provide a first analysis of the new Italian legislation that will come into force on 1st September 2021. It will be possible in the very near future to verify whether what is here described will actually bring benefits to Family SMEs. It will be possible to collect data and to proceed with the measurement of the effects of the introduction of the mechanisms examined, in particular of the Statutory Board, on the ability to promptly intervene and avoid or at least to face situations of financial economic distress at an earlier stage.

A second limit could be considered the lack of explicit international comparisons. In this regard, however, it should be reported that the researches carried out has allowed to detect that no similar mechanisms have been introduced in other Western countries. It will be therefore interesting, in future researches, to widen and to go deeper with this part of the analysis. In particular it will be certainly necessary to consider, with reference to the European context, if the implementation of the EU Insolvency Directive, which emphasizes the need to provide early warning tools in national legislation, will lead in the near future to the introduction of corporate governance rules comparable to the Italian ones.

Moreover the work highlights that the "*Italian way*" introduced by the IC-Code provides some financial specific indexes to be monitored by both the Directors and the Statutory Board, but some non-financial information are also taken in consideration. Some of these can be considered forward-looking and can be traced back to

*Corporate Governance and ERM for SMEs Viability in Italy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96688*

the categories of Governance information. It is our opinion that monitoring a more complete ESG information dataset could have an effective assessment of business viability. Future research could explore the possible inclusion of non-financial indicators, including ESG, in the parameters to identify corporate crises for early-warning purposes provided for by the IC-Code.
