Lean and digital strategies are increasingly being applied to the healthcare context. To explore the potential of using lean principles to improve healthcare management, this paper defines two frameworks for applying lean and digital strategies to improve healthcare organizations. The chosen research methodology for deriving these frameworks is the literature review, carried out on the Scopus database. Furthermore, given the critical role of knowledge management in healthcare organizations, this paper can help improve knowledge about the way hospitals can be managed in pandemic periods and more in general, on how to improve efficiency of healthcare facilities. Propositions for future research directions are suggested.

Inventory management represents one of the main criticalities that companies have to deal with, since it contributes to determine the match between supply and demand; an efficient and optimal system surely represents a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic market. This issue, however, is further complicated when products to be managed are perishable (e.g., food, beverages, medicines, flowers etc.), meaning they can be deteriorated or become obsolete. This peculiarity generates a niche segment of inventory management research, which is that of inventory management for perishable products, characterized by a limited period during which the products can be sold or consumed with profit, which corresponds to their shelf-life. This is the topic of the present manuscript, whose aim is to provide a literature review of 164 scientific documents published between 2017 and 2020 and targeting this issue. Both descriptive (i.e., temporal and geographical distributions and type of research) and contents-related (i.e., keywords analysis) parameters are investigated for this sample of papers, showing a growing trend with a prevalence of analytic models developed. Issues related to sustainability turned out to be emergent topics.

In recent years, sustainability has become a priority on governments’ agendas due to the need to reconcile economic growth with environmental and social sustainability objectives. The United Nations has identified 17 fundamental objectives to be achieved by 2030 to orient the action of governments and society. Regarding the role of the private sector in achieving sustainability goals, scientific literature suggests that through Open Innovation and Sustainability Oriented Innovation practices, companies can successfully develop sustainable innovations. Despite the efforts of researchers, however, the contribution that the private sector can play in achieving these goals remains unclear. Referring to the 17 UN goals, this study aims to help to bridge this research gap, analyzing how OI and SOI practices implemented by companies are utilized to achieve sustainability objectives. Furthermore, this study aims to identify the themes and areas on which companies’ efforts are concentrated and to analyze how the involvement of different stakeholders leads to the achievement of multiple sustainability objectives. To summarize the contributions of different disciplines and provide comprehensive results, a thorough literature review has been performed. Results show that business efforts are focused on a few key areas. In terms of the 17 UN development goals, the contribution of businesses is mainly about goal no. 7,8,9,12 and revolves around three main themes. The first concerns economic sustainability and includes investments in R&D activities, the development of new products, and better management of energy resources. OI and SOI practices are used to involve supply chain partners and users and reduce the risks and costs of such projects. The second theme concerns environmental sustainability, in terms of waste and emissions reduction through the use of recyclable materials and renewable energy sources. Engaging government entities and research organizations through OI practices can help businesses comply with laws and regulations. The third theme concern social sustainability: through the involvement of external actors’ companies can help define more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Ultimately, this study advances the understanding of how OI and SOI practices are used by companies to pursue sustainability objectives. From a practical perspective, it is suggested that companies could play a more central role and achieve better results by adopting a broader and long-term perspective, including sustainability objectives in their strategy.

This paper contributes to the academic literature on the platform society in two ways: Theoretically, we bridge the literature on the platform society with the literature on sensemaking. In particular, we take a processual approach to platform resilience as the outcome of sensemaking processes. Empirically we look at the process whereby platforms generate self-sustained users’ interest and self-promoting content in the long run. Thus, platform resilience is understood as the outcome of a sensemaking process. We frame this outcome strategically as market-place persistence and durability (attracting/maintaining users and complementors) and socially as persistence and replication of generated content, social outcomes and the narratives that platform participants may promote. New social structures in turn may reshape the platform. Such a dual sensemaking outcome shapes platform market strategy and re-shapes social structures. The two outcomes are connected but not necessarily convergent. A platform might not be strategically resilient but the narratives that platform participants may promote might resist and shape the societal debate in the long run and vice versa. We set out our argument by assessing evidence from two case studies, namely Facebook and Airbnb.

The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) and knowledge workers play a fundamental role in setting and implementing the university’s knowledge agenda, but they are not a relevant subject for discussion in the scientific community. In order to try to reduce this gap, the aim of the research was to verify the existence or not within the Italian universities of the CKO figure. The purpose, specifically, is to examine, through a survey through the institutional sites of a sample of Italian universities, the existence or otherwise of the CKO figure and how it carries out its activities. The survey was carried out through the acquisition of documentary information found on the internet. The activities carried out by the various universities were taken into consideration through the analysis of their websites. The analysis, in particular, was conducted by examining the first no. 39 state universities present in the Censis ranking of Italian universities. The main results showed that the figure of the Chief Knowledge Officer is not present in the survey sample studied, consisting of 39 universities. Although it was possible to find, within these analyzed universities, the presence of two offices in two different universities that deal with knowledge management, it is not well understood, specifically, whether their activities are attributable or not to those of the CKO.

Innovation has significantly contributed to the growth and development of society in the 20th century. In addition to innovation, sustainability is another topic widely recognized as fundamental for a company’s competitiveness, regardless of the industry it belongs to. Even if sustainability has often focused on environmental concerns, it is a three dimensions concept, namely: environmental, economic and social (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). Thus, also in developing innovation, companies have to take into account the three above-mentioned dimensions. Moreover, innovation is often considered a comprehensive system that interacts closely with the surrounding environment, and the literature refers to this system with the term “innovation ecosystem”. A new challenge for innovation ecosystems is represented by the demands for sustainable development in environmental, economic and social dimensions. Notwithstanding the growing interest in these topics, the extant literature is still fragmented, and a comprehensive analysis is missed. To address this gap, this paper aims to propose a conceptual framework. In order to reach this objective, we adopted a two-steps methodology (i.e., a literature review based on a bibliometric and a keywords analysis approach, and exploratory case studies). The results of the first phase showed that companies’ investments in R&D, the type of innovation developed, the issue of sustainability and the degree of “openness” are closed linked elements. These theoretic findings have been validated by a multiple case study conducted on a sample of 26 companies operating in different industries. As a further result, several research avenues are reported as distilled from the analysis.

This paper explores how business consultants play a role as knowledge drivers and gatekeepers in Green Business Model innovation processes and how they facilitate and helps sustain knowledge networks in these processes. It contributes to the literature on knowledge networks by unveiling the benefits and challenges of using intermediaries in projects such as Greenbizz to recruit businesses. With an outset in the EU Interreg Kask project, Greenbizz, we investigate how business consultants connect businesses and researchers, creating new knowledge networks that involved parties benefit from in the form of resources and information. Analysing data from particularly semi-structured interviews, the paper looks into the benefits and challenges that follow this particular setup and what experiences can be derived to support Green Business Model Innovation processes. Our findings suggest that business consultants play a double role as intermediaries since they, on the one hand, guide the businesses towards relevant networks that can support them in innovating their business models in this project to become greener. On the other hand, they expand the researchers’ access to a larger pool of potentially relevant actors to include in their research on green business model innovation processes. However, the findings also unveil some of the challenges of using intermediaries in projects like Greenbizz to recruit businesses.

COVID-19 quickly pushed organizations towards challenges they could never have imagined. However, the crisis should represent a period of substantial business building and innovation. The immediate signs of this are already visible, including overnight digital transformation, making the most of data, and virtual customer engagement. In this current socio-economic context, in which organizations face growing innovation challenges, the ability of resilience is even more required, and it becomes more and more linked to the open collaborative innovation process, above all in digital platforms. In particular, organizations should leverage the ability to observe any change in the consumers’ collaborative attitude caused by the pandemic and to proceed with an adaptation of the platforms accordingly. This work aims to contribute to this literature gap. After reviewing existent literature developed in open innovation and digital platforms domains, a conceptual framework is elaborated. The proposed model suggests that any organization should monitor the impact that Covid-19 has had on the collaborative attitude of consumers, in order to foster open innovation process. In particular, it creates a link between the effects of the pandemic on the main reasons that push towards consumer participation and collaboration in digital platforms and the consequent and necessary remodelling of the platforms themselves.

Healthcare Organizations can be identified as contexts that can be defined as highly “knowledge-intensive”, both because of the peculiar characteristics of the personnel working in them, who are highly specialized, and because of the quality of the services provided. When we talk about Intellectual Capital within the Public Administration, the health sector proves to be among the least investigated, with the consequent lack of a reference model for the presentation of variables and a clear awareness of the criticalities found in the representation of this concept in such complex organizations. For this reason, the following research focuses on the content analysis of the Corporate Acts of the Lazio Region Local Health Units (ASLs) to analyse the impact of Intellectual Capital on Organization performance, specifically by resorting to key indicators identified concerning the three dimensions of Intellectual Capital (relational-individual-internal). The study aims to propose insights on IC for all public settings, both health and non-health, to integrate better the Intellectual Capital employed and help stakeholders understand the topic better.

This research explores the role of IC management in Italian Red Cross Organization to face Covid19 crisis and support community well-being, according to the fourth stage of IC research (Dumay, 2013; Massaro et al., 2018). A case study has been adopted (Yin, 2003;2004) developing questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and reports’ content analysis, using Nvivo12 software. The results identify a proactive role of IC action (Mouritsen,2006; Dumay,2009; Guthrie et al., 2012), through an improvement of its components (Johanson et al., 2001) and its ability to influence the ecosystem, supporting social impact, providing activities and services to community. The study offers theoretical and practical contributions: It contributes to IC literature about NPOs, that is still unexplored and dominated by studies focused, mainly, on theoretical framework and that needs to discover possible challenges or insights in managing the IC (Dumay,2009); contributing to fourth stage of IC literature, this study explores the relationship between IC in action and the value creation for the ecosystem.

As an environmentally friendly type of farm management and food production system, organic agriculture has experienced spectacular growth during the last 20 years, with Spain being the sixth largest producer in the world. However, organic farming faces important challenges that may jeopardize its future. First, yields per hectare may be significantly lower than in conventional farming, and second, in some contexts (as is the case for Spain), production growth is not matched by consumption growth. Therefore, significant innovation efforts should be made to solve these problems. Given the very small size of many organic farms, this paper analyses the specific types of relational capital that foster technological (both product/service and process-related) and non-technological innovativeness in Spanish organic farms. To address this research goal, survey data from a sample of 358 organically certified Spanish farmers with primary crop production has been analyzed by means of structural equation modelling (SEM) based on partial least squares (PLS). Three models have been run (one per type of innovativeness under study: product/service, process, and managerial) in which four types of external relational capital have been considered: knowledge generated through and embedded in vertical relationships, knowledge generated through and embedded in horizontal relationships, knowledge generated through and embedded in relationships with government institutions, and knowledge generated through and embedded in relationships with knowledge-intensive institutions. The results obtained show that even though external relational capital and innovativeness are clearly underdeveloped among Spanish organic farmers, knowledge generated through and embedded in relationships plays a substantial role in the promotion of innovativeness in organic agriculture. Moreover, depending on the type of innovation to be pursued, the type of external relational capital that plays a relevant role differs. In the case of product/service innovativeness, vertical relationships are the key, and more precisely, relationships with customers and consumers. In the case of process innovativeness, even though vertical relationships keep being extremely relevant (especially, relationships with suppliers), relationships with knowledge-intensive institutions also become very relevant (more precisely, relationships with advisory and consulting firms, as well as with research centers), followed by horizontal relationships (i.e., relationships with other producers, unions, and sectoral associations). Finally, in the case of managerial innovativeness (i.e., innovativeness regarding marketing and strategy), vertical relationships with customers and consumers play a leading role, followed by relationships with government institutions.

Today the locus of innovation is not anymore in the single company but, it has moved to the relationship network as companies face the contemporary volatile, unstable, complex, and ambiguous scenario finding shelter in new relationship with other actors and leveraging them to become more effective at innovation processes creating a collective and open endeavour. These innovation networks are becoming more and more used even in the rural areas as the economic actors in these areas cooperates with the other actors, both economic and social ones to help reduce the so-called urban-rural digital divide. The convenors have become some of the main actors in these networks as they help these network to become more effective in creating a coherent, while diffused, innovation process in the whole area. At the same time these local convenors will get their social license to operate from the other local area actors according to their ability to read the local area needs and to create effective policies to answer to these needs according to the specific requests of the network. In this paper we present the first result of a research project on the perception of the convenor in an area composed by 9 villages in Southern Italy, and more precisely in the Salerno province. In this are the role of the convenor has been taken by a Local Action Group (LAG or GAL in Italian), GAL Terra à Vita (Land is life). In particular, we study how the other actors in the local area do perceive the LAG activities, and their effectiveness in several areas, will impact on its ability to be an effective convenor and help the local area entrepreneurs in their development processes.

DIKEDOC (DIspersed KnowledgE: Describe, Organise, Communicate) is the acronym of a knowledge-based methodology that is applied to a confused set of knowledge pieces, from different sources, that risk vanishing, in order to pass from this state of dispersed knowledge to a dynamic synthesis, which is then translated into analytical models. The stimulus of this methodological proposal was generated from a question posed by one of the stakeholders involved in the long and complex decision process that resulted in the inclusion of the “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century” site in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018. The enhancement of the site is a complex process because buildings, urban areas and infrastructures in the site need important interventions, as well as the site inclusion in the WHL represents a great opportunity to reactivate the fragile socio- economic context of Ivrea and its surrounding municipalities. This process is latent and its activation requires a new decision aid perspective to guide an incremental development of knowledge, to identify and control uncertainties and to foster relationships that can produce decisions. A synthetic description of DIKEDOC is proposed in the paper. The dispersed knowledge to be used in the site enhancement process is presented, together with the conducted pilot study, which proposed a logical and analytical “description” of the space of action and its uncertainties, in relation to different policies and enhancement projects. Some comments on the pilot study and its results are synthesised in the conclusions.

Nowadays companies collect a lot of data about their customers, competitors, supply chains and everything. However, the most challenging task is to unlock the value of the data collected. The role of business analysts in completing this task is extremely important. The number of MSc programs on analytics at universities is growing, however, only at business schools data science curriculum incorporates the concepts, tools, and techniques to guide organizational transformation. Then graduate of a business school is capable to make decisions using the mathematical apparatus and tools to organize the data, develop, and apply the processing algorithms. By mastering a combination of advanced analytical skills with business and management skills, students will be able to become business analysts for a wide range of businesses. The paper describes an ontological approach to the re-orchestration and re-design of the master’s program in business analysis and big data at the Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University (GSOM SPbU). Ontological framework is chosen as a conceptual structure of a domain. The paper examines a methodological ontology to describe the association of skill and knowledge within a competency statement.

In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop a better understanding of the challenges of knowledge integration (KI) within the innovation process in knowledge- based SMEs. Using four case studies, we investigated how knowledge integration may be managed within the context of innovation in technology firms. Four distinct tasks emerged in the knowledge integration process, namely team building capability, capturing tacit knowledge, role of KM systems and technological systemic integration. We suggest that managing KI in knowledge-based SMEs can be best managed by focusing on these four tasks, which in turn will lead to innovation. We have placed particular focus on identifying the challenges of knowledge integration in technology firms in relation to three aspects of knowledge management activities, namely knowledge identification, knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing. We provide evidence to show a rather complex interaction of factors which are both internal and external to the firm. The four tasks of knowledge integration offer practical insights of how knowledge can be integrated within innovation process.

Information privacy has been called one of the most important ethical issues of the information age. In this context, companies need to be able to address the concerns of their stakeholders about how they collect, handle, and process this data. The literature leads to hypothesize that when organisations take explicit actions to address the privacy concerns of their customers, they are successful in improving the perception of the company’s integrity and thus, in contributing to a company’s good reputation. Furthermore, the availability of consumers’ personal data provide companies with a better understanding of consumers’ needs and preferences for environmental products/services, allowing for eco-innovation. The literature also shows that eco-innovation can facilitate the development of green skills of employees that contribute to meeting customer and market expectations. Thus, the purpose of this article is to examine the direct effect of data privacy management on organisational reputation but also its indirect effect through eco-innovation and green skills. A conceptual model was proposed and tested by utilising data collected through a survey instrument. The data were provided by 208 SMEs based in the textile sector of Valencia that has been considered one of the most relevant in the Spanish economy. Partial Least Squares (PLS) using the SmartPLS software allowed for the analysis of the data collected from practitioners. The theoretical model explains 46.1 per cent of the variance in the organisational reputation variable. This study fills the gap in empirical evidence that ethical data privacy management by an SME has a positive impact on its overall reputation. In addition, data privacy management supports organisational reputation indirectly through eco-innovation and green skills. These results should encourage SMEs to invest in data privacy management to satisfy increasingly digitally literate and environmentally conscious customers and thereby improve their reputation.

The objective of this study is to advance understanding on the future knowledge management research directions through collective academic creativity. Specifically, drawing from collective creativity research and futures research, we developed an online workshop method and implemented it among Knowledge Management Team members at Lappeenranta Lahti University of Technology (LUT University). While the online workshop was a tentative and experimental one, scholars involved experienced it as a welcome initiative for common dialogue concerning a mutually important topic. The workshop revealed a clear need for collaboration and integration of knowledge and debate about the role of knowledge management in the fast changing and ambiguous global environment even within a single research institute. This paper contributes to knowledge management research by paving the way for the future knowledge management research agenda by providing both methods to foster collective creativity among scholars and reporting ideas for future knowledge management research directions developed by the LUT University’s Knowledge Management Team.

In the Industry 4.0 context, an effective knowledge management becomes fundamental for companies in order to exploit potentials of automation technologies (AI, IOT, Cloud computing, new robotics, etc.). While in the operational and management processes the role of ICTs has been long explored in literature, the specific contest of Human Resource Management has not been fully explored yet. In other words, since Machine Learning-based AI can create new knowledge, that can learn through socialization, an interesting question is to what extend new technologies can support the acquisition and dissemination of “living knowledge” throughout the organizational structure. Our study contributes to the debate about this important topic by means of an original research methodology that has been able to reach three results First, to point out which organizational variables of HRM are most affected by the introduction of Industry4.0 technologies and practices. Second, to highlight the qualitative impact that companies could expect from the technological transition towards industry4.0 in the HRM practices. Third, to give practical evidence about which results the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies can give in effectively supporting the knowledge acquisition and dissemination.

The youth segment represents a consumer group of the future. The understanding of its preferences presents a platform for the creation of innovative accommodation products that merge remote work and tourism stays in foreign destinations. The youth consumers profile under the new situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic changes and technological innovations enable a higher level of productivity and support creative processes that produce new products and new competitiveness. The “new normal” adopts remote work for a large number of scientific and professional occupations, as well as educational processes as a widely acceptable model of work and study. The methodology includes scientific analysis of the potential for affirmation of the youth consumer segment and its preferences. The research was conducted using questionnaires with combined questions put into three groups, using demographics, preferences, Likert based questions and open-ended questions that directly explored the values of the respondents. The Chi-squared test explored the predicted importance of the institutional support for the formation of innovative offer competitiveness as well as pricing strategies, namely the readiness of consumers to pay more for the accommodation facilities that provide workspitality offer. The methodology, supported by creative thinking techniques, impacts the formation of conclusions, which point to new scientific knowledge. The research results in a scientific and practical understanding of the organisation and innovation of receptive offer, namely in accommodation offer in tourist destinations. The adjustment to the new demand preferences targets competitive advantage and business results for providers as well as satisfaction and further development of consumer preferences. The research results of tourism demand preferences impact the formation of scientific knowledge in the area of organisation of accommodation offer by recognising the key elements that present competitive advantage. The findings point to the conclusion that the youth segment of tourism demand should learn about new travel & work possibilities, “workspitality” offer, so education related to both demand and offer organisation is important for the success of innovative solutions and organisational contexts.

To stay abreast of the dynamic market and technological environment, firms should improve their innovation and economic performance continuously. To cope with such requirements, companies often adopt an Open Innovation (OI) strategy. Among several possible OI strategies, co-patenting is a tool to develop innovation with more actors. Thus, companies leverage time by time their innovation network in which each actor represents a node and the knowledge between the companies the link existing between the nodes. The work aims to investigate if and how different innovation networks, foster the innovation and economic performance of firms. An agent-based model and simulator have been developed to investigate the emergence of hubs and the impact on firm performance. The economic and innovation performances are evaluated respectively using turnover and the Innovation Patent Index (IPI). Results show that the presence of hubs in the network helps firms to increase their performance.