Cost-benefit risk analysis modeling for corporate compliance: evidence from Italy obtained through investment and industry 4.0 tax credit data analysis

Modern industrial systems are typically characterised by their multiple elements (technological, communicational, physical, etc.). These elements are interconnected and structured in such a way as to make them “immune” to, or only marginally affected by, any harmful events. On the basis of this assertion, the traditional bimodal definition (which only considers functional and failure states) is inadequate for understanding the behaviour of complex systems. It is in this context that the concept of resilience has caught on in both the academic and corporate fields because it is capable of taking into account all the ways a system may behave following a harmful event, from the so-called “reaction and absorption” of shocks, to recovery and adaptation of the system to new operating conditions. In a previous paper (Ventura in Eur Bus Law Rev 34(2):239–268, 2023) introduced a model set within a wider system of corporate compliance management drawn up in accordance with the NIST and ISO international standards. This model is based on the joint use of Erik Hollnagel’s Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) and Saaty’s Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After defining its properties, from a purely methodological viewpoint, the proposed model was then applied to a very common case study in the Italian industrial context: the acquisition of a plant with features making it eligible for tax credit both for Investments in the South and for Industry 4.0. This paper sets out to go further by evaluating the validity of this model also from a cost-benefit analysis point of view. The three possible situations will be analysed (without any risk assessment, risk assessment using the FRAM method, risk assessment using the FRAM/AHP method), establishing which of the three is most useful for corporate management.