The COVID-19 pandemic forced knowledge workers to switch from company offices to working from home. This switch was abrupt and needed to be conducted without preparation making it potentially challenging particularly to those with little previous experience working from home. Against this backdrop, our study examines what kind of job crafting, i.e. proactive modification of one’s work practices without formal approval, can help in dealing with enforced working from home among knowledge workers. The results of the study illuminate different ways physical, relational, and cognitive crafting can be leveraged when adapting to such a situation. Findings also raise questions whether current rigid theoretical distinctions between job and leisure crafting are sensible in the remote work context as work-life boundaries blur both spatially and temporally.

Smart Working (SW) refers to new ways of working integrated in a way that enables spatial and temporal autonomy, favor cultural exchanges and trust, enable technological advances, and allow wider intellectual connections. SW is seen to be a way to “modernize” working practices by using ICT applications and new organizational settings, so that flexibility, creativity, engagement and, also, satisfaction of workers can be improved, for the benefit of employees, companies, and societies. However, the literature shows that SW requires the adoption of specific measures and levers, to fully exploit its potential benefits and reduce the risk of refusal by workers. During the COVID pandemic, many companies, schools, and public organizations all around the world asked their employees to start working from home (WFH). After the pandemic, some observers think that WFH can remain a common way of working especially for knowledge workers. So, it is necessary to understand to what extent this experience can really lead to SW – in other words, to investigate if WHF can be automatically a “smart” working modality for knowledge workers. The goal of this paper is, therefore, to explore if keeping workers at home can be a first important step towards SW, or if there can be some barriers or possible sources of inefficiency. The “forced” condition caused by the pandemic provides a unique opportunity to investigate what can happen when entire offices move to WFH. The paper reports the results of an online survey of WFH knowledge workers conducted in Italy during the first weeks of the lockdown (April and May 2020). The research provided some descriptive statistics and classifications, especially regarding the viewpoint of employees. Their real involvement and perception of usefulness of WFH was investigated. The data made it possible to analyse the potential points of strength and weakness of WFH, how a massive introduction of WFH can be seen as a really “smart” working modality for this elective category of employees, and what lessons can be drawn for work management.

This paper aims to understand factors and processes that leverage from tangible and intangible cultural heritage (i.e., local know-how, tacit and codified knowledge linked to arts masterpieces and cultural heritage assets but also to local crafts and tradition) to sustain citizens’ social, cultural and economic wealth. So far not enough attention has been paid about the regeneration of smaller cities which hold major artistic heritage but do not have adequate resources to leverage on it and bring positive societal impacts. The paper adopts a qualitative approach and we followed an abductive approach oriented to the generation of new concepts and the development of new explanatory lens, rather than the confirmation of existing theories. It focuses on the case of Urbino, a UNESCO world heritage site whose population and economic status is declining because citizens and businesses are attracted by the lure of higher revenues and better quality of life of nearby cities. Findings revealed that culture and artistic knowledge and capabilities that belong to the tradition of a city rich in heritage can be the lever of innovation and boost civic wealth. Searching the past for looking to the future is, however, a difficult task and divergences in vision, resistance and even political tensions are among the factors that hinder the city regeneration.

In recent years, the integration of sustainability principles in urban planning has become increasingly important. The growing attention to economic, social and environmental aspects is also influencing the practice and policy of urban regeneration. In particular, the search for new ways to regenerate cities in a sustainable way has led to the concept of sustainable urban regeneration. However, despite the relevance of this concept, only a few contributions have quantitatively examined the actual sustainability outcomes of different urban regeneration interventions. This study aims to fill this important gap by examining the level of sustainability of urban regeneration interventions in the Apulian context. The results of the multiple case study analysis show a high level of sustainability of the interventions in all three contexts examined. However, they show some weaknesses related mainly to the absence of strategies aimed at the inclusion of women in the labour market and to the low efficiency in the use of energy. The results offer important implications and guidelines for municipalities implementing urban regeneration projects.

Cultural mapping aims to capture and visualize tangible and intangible cultural assets. This extended abstract proposes the consequent extension of analogue forms of cultural mapping using digital technologies, and its contribution is two-fold. First, the necessary theoretical basis is provided by a literature review of the still-young field of cultural mapping and the complementary disciplines of participatory mapping and digital story-mapping. Second, we propose a digitally enhanced Cultural Mapping 4.0 vision based on a case study from an ongoing research project in the Lake Constance region. Digital participatory mapping approaches are applied to capture data, and to validate and disseminate the results, story-mapping – a spatial form of digital storytelling – is used.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship of stakeholder with the value flow of business model for sustainability. Specifically, it links the topic of stakeholder theory to the value flow perspective of a business model for sustainability, namely: value intention, value proposition, value creation, value delivery, and value capture. The research methodology is a multiple case study in three Italian B-corporations, where we analyse the stakeholder groups engaged by the company and how they relation with, interact or intervene in the value flow of business models for sustainability. Main findings are the following. The value intention of the entrepreneur is influenced by society and the environment. The stakeholder that influences value proposition are the employees that suggest innovations and the government by changing regulations. A sustainable value creation is a multi-stakeholder issue, whose aim is to stimulate the balanced exploitation of natural resources at the local level and to limit the social and environmental impacts. Other organizations as the members of the associations or networks to which the company belongs influence the promotional activities of the product or service that increase consumer awareness towards the company’s commitment to sustainable development. Companies are committed to having a positive impact on society and the natural environment, so that they as stakeholders could partially capture the value deriving from the business activity. The research aims at contributing to the knowledge on business models for sustainability by looking for relationships with stakeholders that could be replied by other companies. The paper contribution is a stakeholder value flow framework of business models for sustainability that categorizes the stakeholders in the specific value flow step. The framework can facilitate a systematic and deeper analysis of stakeholder influences. Moreover, the stakeholder value flow framework can be used to map from the company point of view the most significant relationship and to help companies to inspire and facilitate the stakeholder engagement for business models for sustainability in the future.

Social Innovation (SI) is a configuration of social practices prompted collectively and intentionally by multiple stakeholders in a specific ecosystem to solve problems that would be not effectively solvable through traditional approaches or practices by transforming the social and economic settings. Despite the literature around SI ecosystems has grown considerably in the latest years, what makes an ecosystem facilitator for transformative SI remains unexplored, especially in specific contexts and geographies, such as developing and emerging countries, where structural, cultural, relational, and power conditions differ from those of more powerful stakeholders enacting the SI initiative. Our research aims to fill such a gap by investigating the combination of characteristics – stemming from Stakeholder Theory and Knowledge Management – that enables local stakeholders’ autonomy in developing and emerging coffee-producing countries to increase the impacts of SI initiatives. We adopt a configurational approach through fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis on 18 projects of SI undertaken by coffee MNEs, NGOs, and institutions to favor an egalitarian value co-creation among local coffee farmers. That entails that farmers overcome being just the projects’ target to become the catalysts of local social, economic and environmental initiatives for change ultimately. We demonstrate that stakeholder empowerment, cooperative strategic posture, knowledge transfer, and local knowledge exchange are necessary conditions within the ecosystem for creating local autonomy as antecedent for transformative SI. Our novelty resides in suggesting a combination of characteristics that represents a virtuous process changing the rhetoric of firm-centric view based on stakeholder dependence to move to lower-power stakeholders’ interdependence and collaboration through a reconfiguration of relationships, advancing fresh perspectives on stakeholder and knowledge management thinking applied to SI literature. Eventually, we also propose practical ways to deal with the imbalance in stakeholder power, which the literature identifies as a factor that might limit the SI’s actual transformation and effectiveness locally.

The paper investigates structural shifts in an exemplary greentech sector, the value chain of semiconductors, between 1980 and 2018 with the aim in mind to uncover risks inherent in the configuration of the value chain. As this sector has seen an unprecedented transition from highly integrated device manufacturers to disintegrated modular value chains and is in the midst of a third wave of reintegration, it serves as a case in point to study potential risk sources based on patent data (WIPO’s Patentscope). Tentative conclusions on a governance of these types of value chains are drawn which take into account the conflicting developments of digitization of manufacturing (industry 4.0) and the large-scale sustainability transition underway in most industrialized countries.

This article aims to implement a systematic review of the literature on e-learning in the academic context that includes the period from 2001 to 2020. We have chosen the 2000s as a starting point to implement this review because they represent the historical moment in which we are witnessing to the diffusion and implementation of e-learning in universities. Although the flexible learning model via the Internet was introduced in the 1990s and only in the 2000s did these new technologies develop concretely within academic contexts. The methodological approach adopted was quantitative. The work took place in three different phases. (1) The articles were found by inserting some keywords in the Web of Science (WoS) platform and covered a period from 2001 to 2020. (2) The selection of the articles took place through Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) by Moher et al. (2009). (3) The final data have been reported and represented in special graphs. Furthermore, the 2001-2020 analysis period was divided into four five-year sub-periods (2001-2005, 2006-2010, 2011-2015, 2016-2020), to analyze and explore the evolution of the problems identified during every subperiod. From the first results found, using the WoS platform and the selection of articles implemented through PRISMA, two important issues emerged. First, it emerged that the number of publications on e-learning has increased significantly in the last five years (about 50% of the total number of documents analyzed that appeared in 2016-2020), exceeding the number of 100 documents per year. Secondly, from the in-depth analysis of the four five-year periods, a greater focus appears on the aspects related to technology during the first two sub-periods 2001-2005 and 2006-2021. On the contrary, in the subsequent two phases 2011-2015 and 2016-2020 there is greater attention to topics related to the learning content. All this was examined by comparing Fee’s model (2009) with the sankey diagram. This research could allow us to have a precise overview of the aspects studied and treated by researchers and academics in the field of e-learning in universities over the last twenty years.

This paper is focused on the concept of visualization as a potential tool to foster knowledge translation. We investigate how using ad-hoc visual tools supports knowledge translation and knowledge transfer. The empirical case under analysis concerns the setup of a multi criteria decision-making model to analyse and select alternatives related to the factors that upgrade the lean production process quality, at a FCA Plant. Knowledge visualization can be interpreted as the interactional process where different players translate their know-how, share a framework and develop common ground to support decision-making.

Knowledge Visualisation (KV) is a discipline that focuses on the collaborative use of interactive graphics to create, integrate and apply knowledge, to support the decision-making process, particularly in emergency contexts during the practice of People Management. This study is of an exploratory and confirmatory nature and helps us to understand how the use of KV has been implemented in complex organisations like university through an empirical analysis. Based on literature review and case study, it has been possible to highlight the role of KV in supporting the decision-making process, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision-maker that is interviewed displayed an awareness of the potential and importance of KV, which has been shown by their use of different tools and bodies with functions related to it.

In recent years, the European Commission (EC) has emphasized inclusive and sustainable governance policies, to offer solutions to the problems that arise in the relationship between science and society. With Horizon 2020’s and transversal programs like the Science with and for Society (SwafS) a new approach to research and innovation is born: Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). One of the most critical challenges of the SwafS is “modeling and better understanding the dynamics of complex networks of innovation value chains and the openings they provide for RRI.” The I AM RRI project responds to this call. In this paper we present an agent-based model in which innovation networks in the context of Additive Manufacturing are created, evolve, and interact to spread RRI knowledge and practices throughout the system. Agents are characterized by specific knowledge domains, depending on the industry sector in which they operate, and seek to participate in innovation networks to define better or support an innovative idea. Moreover, their decisions are not only economic-based but are constrained by aspects of RRI. In our model three RRI keys identified by the EC are implemented in the model: public engagement, open access, and ethical thinking. An initial set of experiments and analysis will be presented here to analyze the impact of agents’ RRI knowledge and inclinations on their interactions and the economic, strategic, and social performance of the whole innovation system.

The goal of the paper is to investigate about the impact of the crisis generated by Covid-19 on the Italian wine sector and how technological innovation has contributed to the going concern of Italian wineries. As is well known, the slowdown in the national economies and, particularly, the dramatic reduction in the tourist flows, has affected the “ho.Re.Ca.” industry, that is strictly connected to the agri-food sector; but nevertheless, the latter managed to maintain good level of profitability both for its characteristic of satisfying unavoidable basic need and for the change in the eating habits of people, who now prepare and consume meals at their own home. Some researches show that Italian wine sector suffered a drastic reduction in turnover growth rates during the months of lockdown (Paoloni, Cosentino, Dello Strologo, 2020), but they also argue that technological innovation has allowed to some wineries to overcome the crisis. In the wine sector, during the pandemic emergency, the e-commerce infrastructure has become the main success factor. The questions that then arise are the following: “How does Covid-19 impact on the main financial results of Italian wineries? Have digital sales allowed revenues not to decrease, causing a change in the sales channel, or have not been able to replace the traditional buying experience? Is the present emergency an opportunity, instead of a threat, to make Italian wineries’ economic performance boost through e-commerce?”. To test our thesis and to answer to the research questions, we set a data sample of Italian wineries and we collected, in addition to the main financial and economic ratios, before and after the pandemic emergency, some e-commerce indicators,. Applying descriptive statistical techniques to the data set, we found interesting results on the resilience of Italian wine sector and on its perspective growth.

The adoption of blockchain-based technologies for a sustainable agri-food sector is a recently developing area of inquiry. Blockchain technology promises to be a significant enabler of sustainability in the agri-food sector. However, there is still limited understanding on how the blockchain technology can promote agri-food sustainability, because its adoption is still in an early stage and the related literature is relatively limited. This paper reviews and critically evaluates the available research with the aim to understand 1) how it is developing, 2) what are the main research foci, and 3) what future research directions are needed. We analyzed a total of 31 studies extracted from the Scopus database using a structured literature review (SRL) methodology. We found evidence that the topic is attracting a growing research interest and identified two main research areas: studies that focus on the technological components of blockchain with the aim to provide operational frameworks for blockchain-based food traceability, and studies that deepen the potential benefits, the challenges and the boundary conditions for blockchain adoption in the agri-food sector. Additionally, the coding analysis reveals that much of the reviewed studies are from the USA, the UK and India, and tend rely on the case study methodology. To the best of our knowledge, there are very few review articles that describe the development of this research stream. The main limitations of this study are the sampling method (limited to a Scopus search) and the methodological approach employed to code and analyze the literature, which involves some degree of subjective interpretation.

This paper proposes an integrated framework that aims to support firms in the transition towards sustainable business models by identify factors favouring the development of green innovations. The aim of this paper is to investigate the several endogenous pushes as well as external solicitations that involving the managerial decisions related to the investments in green innovations. Through a conceptual analysis, the study reviews the literature on business models, sustainability strategies and green innovations. By examining sustainability issues ranging from theory to practical application, the paper provides new insights and critical points by enriching the fragmented literature on green innovations and supporting the managers’ commitment to implement successful sustainability strategies. Specifically, the integrated framework suggests implications for both academic and practitioners by shedding light on how firms could improve their ability to select the right strategic moves, at corporate and business level, in order to endorse sustainable investment in green innovation and therefore to improve sustainable paths of growth.

The decommissioning of offshore Oil & Gas platforms, at the end of their life cycle, has been a very controversial topic in recent years. Moreover, the decommissioning complexity increases if we consider a shift towards a linear economy to a circular one. The latter pushes to innovate business models and re-configure the value chain activities in a sustainable way. Starting from these considerations, this work aims to identify a cost-benefit model suitable for evaluating sustainable business models of offshore platforms. After a literature review of different models for analysing maintenance and decommissioning Real Options (ROs), the Life-Cycle Cost-Benefit (LCCB) analysis has been selected as the most adequate managerial tool for evaluating and comparing the Net Present Value (NPV) of platforms compared the maintenance and decommissioning costs. The LCCB tool could aid the managers in the oil and gas industry to quantify the decommissioning and maintenance costs including capital expenditure (CapEx) and risk expenditure (RiskEx). In the future steps, to test the LCCB model, an empirical analysis could be carried out on a sample of organizations interested in the sustainable decommissioning of offshore platforms.

In the digital age, organizations are built upon and rely on people and their technical skills, which are becoming an important source of competitive advantage. In this context, the role of Human Resources Management changes significantly, and this change has a direct impact on the governance of the company as well, thus configuring it as a Strategic Human Resource Management. It has the task of transmitting an innovative and cooperative corporate culture directly to the employees, helping them to develop a digital mind-set and new digital skills in line with the objectives of the business model. This research aims to provide a qualitative analysis of the impact of Digital Transformation on Human Resources processes, to address organizational change, and on the development of appropriate transversal skills of individuals to incorporate and capitalize on innovations in the digital environment. The research work was carried out using the methodology of the illustrative (and explanatory) case study, involving an Italian company that has witnessed a relevant digital transformation process in the last years. Results show that Human Resources Management can (and must) have a guiding role in driving the organizational change through digitalization, particularly by incubating and accelerating digital innovations, while at the same time fostering the development of Digital Leadership.

In the last decade, the introduction of digital technologies has completely transformed the supply chain. Digital technologies have made the supply chain more efficient, reliable, and responsive. As a result, Digital Supply Chain (DSC) is now a major source of competitive advantage for firms. Significant resources are dedicated to manage, operate and control DSC and its performance. Performance Measurement System (PMS) is an integral part of any operation. Over the years, the role of PMS has evolved from merely measuring and reporting performance gaps to support managers in strategic decision making. PMS rely on a set of KPIs that a firm adopts as per its goals and needs. Different streams of literature have debated for and against the need for newer KPIs for measuring DSC performance. With the help of industry and academic experts, this study investigated the usefulness of existing KPIs in measuring DSC performance by collecting survey responses. A different set of experts were also interviewed to gain meaningful insights to contribute to the debate. The analysis of the responses confirms that the need for newer KPIs is not imminent. Another contribution of the study is to present a definition for DSC based on insights from the experts.

How can firms leverage on digital technologies to improve their survival odds in an increasingly challenging and competitive environment? And what explains the differences observed in adoption timing and usage patterns? This paper resorts on the concept of resilience to justify the existence of different yet effective approaches to the digital transformation by contrasting the success stories of three Italian companies in the valves industry. The hypothesis underlying this study is that digital technologies aligned with the resilience level of the adopting organisation support an appropriate engagement with the external environment. The case studies of digital transformation examined in this paper point out three main findings. First, for all companies the digital transformation represents an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process. Second, resilience has a continuous nature that increases with the coherent intensification of its underlying components. In each company a unique blend of resources and cognitive tools enable the design and the enactment of consistent routines and meta-routines. Third, digital technologies adoption patterns align with the resilience level of each company and with the organisation engagement with the external environment. When the resilience model focuses on the shift to a new equilibrium the adoption process is centrally governed, and organisational change is limited. In contrast, when the resilience model focuses on coping with continuous and unpredictable change the digital transformation involves more decentralised decision making and significant organisational change.

With the diffusion of digitalization technologies that allow to analyze high volumes of operational data in real time, data-driven decision-making can now entail benefits on organizational performance not only at the strategic, but also at the operational level. However, little is known about the individual and organizational preconditions that make this approach possible on the shop-floor. Through a quantitative survey issued to 101 Italian auto supplier firms and regression models, this article investigates the antecedents of data-driven decision making at the micro- and meso-level, by analyzing the effect of involving production workers in continuous improvement, and moderating it with the skill gaps of Team Leaders and Supervisors. The results show that production workers’ involvement has a positive impact on the adoption of data-driven decision-making at the plant level; notwithstanding, when Team Leaders suffer skill gaps, the effect becomes negative. Therefore, the involvement of production workers for the sense-making of operational data might be ineffective because of skill gaps in those who are in charge of recombining their context-dependent knowledge with data analysis to create knowledge and make operational decisions. The same results were not confirmed for Supervisors, suggesting a possible delayering in favour of a central role of Team Leaders, yet to be tested with further qualitative empirical research. This study contributes to work organization and knowledge management literatures using the concept of organizational knowing cycle for operational decision-making, disentangling the roles of different organizational levels (production workers and first-line managers) in sense-making of, and knowledge creation from, the analysis of operational data. As such, this study positions the digital transformation as a “skill-biased technological and organizational change”. In this vein, the present study has relevant implications for practitioners, too, as it highlights that specific operational employees’ capabilities can limit the benefits of digitalization, hindering the diffusion of data-driven decision-making. Recommendations are offered to HR managers and education policymakers, who are called to foster the diffusion of high-involvement managerial practices and promote an urgent upskilling of first-line managerial roles through ad-hoc education and training paths.