Modern Modern markets can be seen as a complex system embedding the various stakeholders in a mutually influencing network of relationship that is able to influence their decision-making processes and their value creation processes. As a consequence, modern businesses have been called to adopt a broader perspective in order to not focus their actions only on trying to maximize their economic performance, but to design them taking into account even the social and environmental impacts they have on the system as a whole; according to Zimmerman and Zeits (2002) firms have to respond to the expectations of the various social actors operating in the same systems they are embedded into as a way to obtain the legitimacy needed to create a beneficial environment that will help them in creating a positive effect out of the system of relations the companies are part of without violating the social contract tying together all the actors in a given system (Donaldson and Dunfee, 2002). It follows that, when companies can effectively communicate to their systems’ actors how they are following the principles of sustainability and somehow prove that their actions are Socially Responsible, they can get several advantages. One of the way companies have to accomplish this feat is to ask third parties to certify their actions in order to be able to print on their products one of the various Ethical Labels. Using these labels to mark their products can be used as a tool to influence the consumer in buying the company’s over the competitors’ one leveraging on a higher legitimacy. In this paper, we have studied the evolution of the practice of non-financial disclosure trough ethical labels that 14 coffee brands, both in Italy and in England, as a way to understand how, in different markets they have changed over a 5 year time span.

Over the last decade, the retail sector had trouble due to the economic crisis and the growing complexity of the environment. In this context, the banking system becomes a relevant actor for accessing a critical resource such as credit. The objective of this work is to investigate the role of the legality rating, introduced by the Italian Law 62/2012 as an award-winning instrument for “virtuous” companies, in managing the relationships with bank. With this aim, this paper benefits of the systems theories and the literature on ecosystems. Primary data have been collected from 123 retailers and analysed using a qualitative approach based on the frequency distributions of the variables. Results show the main benefits provided by the legality rating that retailers claim they have had in the relationship with the banks. This paper offers an original contribution for the study of legality ratings by the business perspective and for the understanding of the retail ecosystems emersion.

Starting from the theoretical framework of ecosystem in Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic) perspective, this conceptual study aims to understand the role of private label in the modern retail. The assumption of the work is that the literature about service ecosystem could support the analysis of retail dynamics helping to explain the relationships and interactions between manufacturer companies, copackers, retail companies, logistics, and customers; in this sense, it is possible to explain how actors’ relationships in the retail ecosystem are affected by specific institutions that define actors behaviour. The role of the private label in modern retail is analysed as institution of the retail ecosystem, in order to understand if the private label actually represents a shared language and code that affects production, retailers, customers and other actors who should recognize the growing value of private labels and could contribute to value co-creation. The main managerial implications of the paper concern the marketing and management competences and knowledge necessary for retailers to manage an institution of increasing importance for the entire retail ecosystem, which generates economic, social and environmental value.

The evolution of the modern retail concept involves many actors and stimulates several dynamics in markets that cannot be represented only by traditional economic sectors. Retail industry is emerging as a meta-sector where production companies, agriculture, logistics, and retail are integrating their strategies and resources to have fast reaction to markets complexity and variability. Retailers stimulate the integration of many actors in the market from the production of raw material to services. Innovation in retail industry involves companies in production, distribution channels and stimulates change and evolution in consumption and demand. Actors in retail industry are influencing, generating and using rules, languages, cultural norms, values, codes – institutions – that cause effects on the same actors involved, on markets and on the complex emerging system. Within this entangled context of actors’ interaction, sharing of institutions and behaviours, following a service perspective, retail industry seems to configure a service ecosystem – retail ecosystem -. The work contributes in explaining the emerging of retail ecosystem, the relevant institutions involved and the contribution of the customer as influencer of institutions dynamics within retail context. The relevance of ecosystem approach emerges and, although the customer represents a relevant actor, the success of the wide system comes by co-evolution of involved actors and institutions dynamics. The survival – final purpose – of the whole retail ecosystem is generated by the resource integration and mutual dependence of every involved actor.

Nowadays the retail industry is changing so fast by means of digitalization processes. Digital and interactive technologies are mediating relationships and strategies among actors and modifying the way through retailers manage their value propositions. This paper applies an ecosystem perspective and represents a preliminary study about the contribution of technology to the workability, management, and survival of retail ecosystem. In particular the work compares service ecosystem features with retail industry dynamics focusing on the role of technology. A qualitative methodology has been adopted emphasizing specific focus useful to further academic research and to practitioners in order to consider retail sector as an ecosystem. Specifically, findings achieved are threefold. Firstly, this paper presents the technology as a key actor able to give a ‘soul’ to the ecosystem multiplying the relationships and improving the resource integration. Secondly, the work considers the relationship management as a key feature to deal with complexity and to help the retail ecosystem to survive during the time. Finally, considers the retailer as the actor able to balance the equilibrium among actors in a retail ecosystem, due to the multiplicity of actors involved and directly connected and the mutual influence they play.

This paper aims to shed light on the link between digitization processes and market strategies in Italian museums. It is also addressed to understand how digital skills, held or accessible by the museum, do affect the organization’s capability to match technological innovation and strategy. We have adopted the multi-case study approach. A sample of Italian museums has been investigated through semi-structured interviews addressed to their managers. Cases show how digitization processes are mainly driven by museums’ accessibility to technical skills, as well as mimetic and normative isomorphism processes seem having a non-secondary role. This often brings to underestimate the required alignment between digital contents, digital skills held by the cultural organizations, and types of users. Some early managerial implications may derive from this study. In fact, managers’ awareness about the positioning of the museum can raise, as they reflect on the consistency between implemented market strategies, technologies in use, and digital skills held or accessible by the museum itself.

During the last years, economies and societies have seen a continuous change inside all their aspects. In this scenario, tourism has always played an increasing crucial role in the growth of many countries and the adoption of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) has led to several transformations in the core of this sector. Specifically, tourism has registered a tremendous growth in the diffusion of technologies which tourists interact with for searching information, communicating, generating content, transaction, and has seen the use of tools like mobile apps, social media platforms, virtual tourism communities, able to transform the tourist’s travel experiences and to support tourists in discovering new attractive destinations, scheduling activities, personalizing their travel, and, more in general, making smart decisions. Moreover, the use of ICTs has culminated with the notion of Smart Tourism Destinations (STDs), where ICT is a driver for a smart growth and for the competitiveness of a destination. Further studies have enlarged this idea, highlighting that the fundamental constructs of a STD are human capital and social capital constructs, supported and enabled by advanced ICT infrastructures. In order to work toward the development of a smart and sustainable tourism destination, it is necessary to assess the “state of the art” of a tourism destination under different perspectives and evaluate its promptness to adopt a smart configuration. In literature several authors have considered many aspects of smart tourism and STD. Nevertheless, there is the need of investigative and holistic frameworks able to integrate all the perspectives of a STD. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is setting up a conceptual methodological framework that integrates different levels of analysis using several dimensions characterizing a tourism destination. Such framework attempts to assess and evaluate the state of the art of a tourism destination in terms of smartness, to provide hints among the tourist actors toward the development of a sustainable tourism destination and to improve the customer perception of a destination.

Hospitality is one of the sectors that are nowadays most heavily characterized by consumers’ tendency to share online reviews on dedicated digital platforms. While most past work has focused on understanding the effect of online reviews and ratings on consumers’ evaluation and purchase decisions, this research tackles the issue of what drives the sharing of certain types of online content. Specifically, we investigate the sharing of user-generated content characterized by negative emotional valence, and study the effect of two factors on the extent to which user-generated content contains negative emotions. One such factor is reviewer’s expertise, while the other is hotel quality. Our analysis of 1,200 TripAdvisor reviews on Italian hotels located in three major Italian cities confirm our hypothesis that expert reviewers might share reviews containing less intense negative emotional content compared to less expert reviewers especially when the hotel is of high quality. To support our hypothesis, we build on the research on psychological antecedents of word-of-mouth behavior suggesting that expert consumers are particularly reluctant to share negative word-of-mouth to avoid projecting a negative image of themselves in social contexts, thus possibly damaging their reputation.

This paper draws on the literature on innovation in tourism industry to investigate how the promotional tools developed by destinations – websites for information and booking, apps, e-commerce websites, tourist cards, BI and CRM software – may contribute to long-term development of accommodations in the territory. It is assessed by analysing impacts on booking channels, direct and intermediated (both online and offline), and revenue. Hypotheses are tested with a generalized linear model and an ordered logistic regression on data retrieved from 1,226 accommodations distributed in the Italian territory. Empirical results evidence the contribution of smart destinations in increasing the competitiveness of the tourism firms in the same area.

Using the dynamic capabilities and absorptive capacity as theoretical lenses, this paper investigates the capabilities required to exploit digital technologies in products and/or in processes. We propose that the capabilities to acquire knowledge from external sources, internal sources and manufacturing operations drive the assimilation and transformation capabilities through the formulation of a digital manufacturing strategy, which in turn determine the capability to exploit digital technologies in products and/or in processes. This paper has adopted a quantitative survey. The respondents are from a sample of innovative SMEs of the Piedmont region, a high innovative region with a historical industrial tradition that represent a fruitful context to investigate how SMEs approach Industry 4.0. Employing the factor analysis and structural equation modelling we found that: (1) the use of multiple external knowledge sources supports SMEs both in the introduction of product and process innovation using both operational and informational technologies; (2) the use of multiple internal knowledge sources support SMEs in the introduction of process innovation using information technologies; (3) multiple manufacturing capabilities are positively related with the introduction of digital product innovation strategies. The sample of SMEs is limited to the Piedmont region (North Italy) which limits the generalizability to other contexts. Future research should enlarge this study in other empirical settings.

The process of digitalization has enhanced opportunities for exchanging economical and reliable information, consequently it has become a priority in many fields. Particularly in cultural sector digitalization can considered a key challenge in the process of modernizing. The European Commission has studied the best ways to preserve, enrich and make available the cultural heritage for the benefit of present and future generations. On this basis was created an European platform for the management of cultural heritage called Europeana. This paper aims to analyse and assess the impact of this cultural platform through the study of digitalization process. The results show that Europeana is a tool able to create new knowledge and consolidate value chains. Moreover, from the economic perspective Europeana is able to generate welfare effects of digital cultural heritage, among them there are usage value on the one hand and indirect effects economic and social on the other hand.

Digitalisation is leading to massive change processes in organisations, which increasingly intensify the relevance of knowledge management for companies. Especially, knowledge creation and transfer are central processes for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage in a knowledge-intensive environment. Researchers identified that enablers (culture, structure, people and IT) are increasing the efficiency of these processes. Here, the people element is one of the most important factors. However, current empirical studies have focused on knowledge enablers on the organisational level. But there are no concepts for the operationalisation of knowledge enablers on individual level. The present study is addressed to fill this gap. The concept of T-shaped skills seems to be suitable for the operationalisation of the knowledge enablers. Therefore, we analysed 489 job advertisements of Scrum Masters by using a mixed-method approach (qualitative and quantitative content analysis as well as variance analysis) to shed light on the explicit T-Shaped skills. With regard to his role we assume that the Scrum Master covers and portrays the needed skills in knowledge-intensive environments. It can be stated that he fills up the key role on knowledge transfer and knowledge creation in companies. Thus, he can be seen as a knowledge enabler on individual level. The results of the analysis were tested for group differences by using an ANOVA. There are no significant major effect for industry sectors and the company size. Thus, suggests that the T-shaped concept is static. As an implication for practitioners the present study could give an important indication for the search and selection for personalized T-shaped knowledge enablers. Further, the results can be used by companies for orientation, in particular in the development of personnel development concepts.

The current surge of new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and internet of things have revitalized the interest in the effects of technological changes on organizations and individuals. Linked to this interest is also the potential for efficiency gains from automation, growth through scalability and connectivity in ecosystems offered by these technologies. Some researchers suggest that digitalization might play out differently contingent on the context in which the digitalization occurs. However, to date we have limited understanding of how the digital technologies are used and utilized and what effect they have in different knowledge domains. Consequently, there is a pressing need for more insights into the contingency factors associated with the digitalization in different industries. This paper focuses on servitization where digitization plays a crucial role in traditional manufacturing transformation from offering physical products to offering services. The transition from product- to service-oriented business models is very challenging because companies need to develop new services that are not yet in the marketplace. The utilization of digital technologies is of increasing interest as this type of manufacturing firms seek service-based strategies.

Unlearning has been one of the interesting and debatable construct emerged in studies of organizational behaviour. Discussion on this phenomenon precedes from interdisciplinary realms ranging from psychology to pedagogy approaching towards arena of business studies. Studies often question the applicability of its existence and practical applications. Starting from the base of unlearning this paper attempts to enfolds the multi-foci perspectives associated with unlearning. Aiming to analyse the construct, this paper provides an insight to definitional notions, account of existing stream of work, its unit of analysis at individual and organizational level and finally discussion of routines structured on unlearning perspective. A systematic review is proposed in order to study streams of literature existing on phenomenon existing on unlearning. This systematic review will help in stating various definitional notions of unlearning, identifying the theoretical lenses applied, processes underlying the unlearning mechanism and extent of quantitative and qualitative studies carried out. As the study is conceptual in its nature, therefore it aims to contribute towards identifying and enhancing the literature of unlearning by identifying gaps and future avenues. Enlightening the applicability of unlearning in multiple sectors it enhances its dimensionality. Study can be helpful for managers and organizations, as unlearning is rooting from change management which would provide new revelations for organization as useful tools.

The question of knowledge has long occupied philosophers and sociologists of science before attracting organisational researchers’ attention. Knowledge creation has become a central concern in organisations and research interest in theories on knowledge-based organisations has accelerated. Many scholars concur that organisational theorists have restricted their contributions within a Cartesian epistemology that ignores the fundamental debate around the complex nature of human knowledge. Considering the current state of research on knowledge management and its positivist prism, introducing a novel perspective is timely. Instead of furthering the prevailing positivist consensus on the treatment of human knowledge in organisations, this paper invites to a reflection on its ontological and epistemological foundations. More specifically, a Marxian approach is introduced with a view to challenging the positivist philosophical underpinning of organisational knowledge. The Marxian approach developed in this paper draws on development psychology and neurophysiology and underscores the benefits of adopting these lenses for an alternative interpretation of human knowledge in organisations. Accordingly, a view has been developed that knowledge resides in action downplaying the phrase knowledge in favour of knowing. While an epistemology of possession embodied by a static view on knowledge has been widely studied in literature, its pendant, an epistemology of practice or knowing is more challenging. Consequently, this paper opens a discussion on the benefits of integrating a psychological dimension to the study of organisational knowledge and provides new insights on knowing. The philosophical discussion of this conceptual paper concentrates on contrasting the positivist perspective that underpins human organisational knowledge as it is developed in literature, to a Marxian philosophy supported by developmental psychology and neurophysiology. The paper starts the discussion on positivism and its limitations before introducing alternative views drawing on Wittgenstein, Luria, Engeström and Vygoskty. Possible methodological perspectives that can improve our understanding of organisational knowledge are also introduced. The theories and frameworks that are used to fathom organisational knowledge are often grounded in a way of thinking from two decades ago. The research designs that are traditionally retained are bounded by an area of interest and the progress made are incremental improvement of past gold standards. This paper endeavours to stimulate the on-going debate on organisational knowledge to consider alternative theoretical positions, assumptions and frameworks. It is believed that developing partnerships between organisations studies and other disciplines such as developmental psychology provides an impetus to engage in meaningful partnerships with researchers of other disciplines to advance our understanding of organisational knowledge. This paper calls for exploring the opportunities that lie in the partnership between researchers from management studies and developmental psychology to further the field of organisational knowledge. Preliminary ontological and epistemological reflections on the treatment of human knowledge in organisations can lead to the development, extension, or adoption of new frameworks and perspectives that will help make sense of organisational knowledge and its management.

The aim of this paper is to explore and map the role and characteristics of narratives in the learning process for “organic cyber farmers” using the internet as a learning ecology. Though the economy of today gives much more autonomous freedom and possibility for personal projects and activity, it is impossible to experience everything one would need directly. Rather, one must leverage connections and use the tools of information technology to find new knowledge, experience. Our species has, as far as we know, always used narratives, stories and myths to make sense of the world and to organize and transfer information The first-hand experiential stories identified through the knowledge acquisition process were modelled with a Knowledge Based Expert System. Using Case Based Reasoning followed by Reductive Reasoning functionality, the most defining and informative learner expectations can be identified with the help of the KBS algorithms. Patterns can be built using ‘if…then’ rules, which become a model of the reasoning process of the organic cyber farmer when validating relevant knowledge. The presented case study provides an insight to the validation process of the relevant knowledge from narratological aspect by identifying, based on cases gathered, those attributes which make a narrative and knowledge element relevant. Further research by engaging several organic cyber farmers or potentially other DIYers in the study is suggested to test the robustness of the model built with the KBS. The DIY economy means that more and more people are turning back to their local communities, sourcing goods and services locally, which opens-up potential for today’s organic cyber farmers. The presented model highlights those attributes that are the most informative in a narrative and knowledge element accessed over the internet when looking for organic farming practices. Research in ecological economics argue the need of reinforcing transdisciplinary research in organic agriculture, they highlight the interdependency of knowledge in science and society, the co-production of knowledge between the actors of this area of agriculture: science- society and policy. The learning from this initial model can be leveraged in the design and delivery of content by professionals or farmers regarding organic farming practices, thus re-enabling the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge between science, practitioners and policy makers in organic agriculture.

Information Technology (hereafter IT) assimilation refers to the use of modern telemedicine technologies to meet the needs of patients and healthcare providers, as well as carers. The most common barriers to the effective use of technologies encompass: lack of trust, cultural differences, lack of training, bureaucracy and hierarchy, and incoherent paradigms and understandings. One way people may overcome knowledge barriers is by continuous learning (i.e. assessing the situation, consulting experts, seeking feedback and tracking progress). This study investigates how a continuous learning environment can counteract the presence of knowledge barriers, along with how this environment can, in turn, results in the creation of IT assimilation. The study uses PLS-Graph software version 3.2.6 and it involves the collection and analysis of data provided by 252 healthcare end users. Results support that continuous learning not only may help healthcare end users to create IT assimilation, but may also contribute to overcome knowledge barriers (e.g. misunderstandings and wrong statements learned from badly informed sources). The paper contributes to a better understanding of continuous learning. Although previous studies in the field of knowledge management have shown that knowledge management structures support IT assimilation, few studies, if any, have explored the relationship between continuous learning and knowledge barriers in the healthcare domain. The study provides useful insights into the possible KM approaches in the healthcare domain. This can be of use to hospitals for the implementation of telemedicine technologies and, more generally, for developing awareness of knowledge barriers and possible solutions. A limitation of the study is the relatively simple statistical method that has been used for the analysis. However, the results provided here will serve as a preliminary basis for more sophisticated analysis which is currently underway.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence about the effects of microlearning as a Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) approach that can help take a step forward towards technological and methodological change in the field of workplace learning. This paper contributes with a case study framed in the context of a large company in the automotive industry (SEAT, S.A.). It also aims to advance the state of the art in this area by adding evidence about the possibilities and limitations of microlearning to support employees training. The case study research methodology is used to frame the research in the particular context of a large company in the automotive industry. 51 employees participated in microlearning experience that lasted a period of two weeks. The case study is valuable because it sheds light about the effectiveness, potential for adoption, and limitations of microlearning as a TEL methodology applicable to the workplace in the automotive industry. Enhancing professional development and training processes is critical for companies, as the lack of updating current knowledge can be fateful for the competitiveness of a company in the markets. The originality of the study has to do with the evidence added to the currently limited body of knowledge regarding the effects of microlearning in workplace learning. Its originality is also related to the characteristics of the case, considering a context of a large company in the automotive sector. We believe that this study will have significant implication in training in large enterprises. The study contributes to understand what factors are necessary to improve the training structure of multidisciplinary companies.

The Netherlands is facing a number of societal developments: an ageing population, increasing life expectation, and an increasing number of seniors suffering from dementia (CBS, 2017; Alzheimer Nederland, 2017). Seniors suffering from dementia in a late stage are not able to live at home anymore, and have to move to an inpatient residential health care facility (nursing home). However, due the shifting health care concept in the Netherlands from just the focus on caregiving to housing with care (care merely as a service) and the fact that many of these inpatient residential health care facilities were built just before this shift, resulted that many of these facilities have become obsolete and do not meet the requirement of the resident anymore (Mens & Wagenaar, 2009; Stateline CBS, 2016). These inpatient residential health care facilities need to be designed in a way that the quality of life of these seniors will be improved. In order to improve these facilities, this study focusses on the spaces which are important for the resident in such a facility: the entrance, the corridor, the meeting area, the bathroom, and individual room of the resident (van Liempd et al., 2009; Nilisen & Optiz, 2013). The aim of this study is the assessment of floorplans of best practices of fourteen inpatient residential health care facilities based on seven criteria that stimulate orientation and wayfinding for seniors suffering from dementia in a late stage, in order to identify which criteria need special attention in future developments, and to determine the optimal design (typology). This study was conducted by a comparative floorplan analysis of fourteen best practices, assessed on seven criteria. The originality can be found in the overall approach of the aim and methodology by the integral approach of three research fields: architectural principles and methods, technological innovation theories, and socio-gerontological theories (Mohammadi, 2017). Based on the seven criteria, the result of this study shows that the floorplan with the typology of a corridor formed by a wall and interior elements (‘t Loug, Delfzijl) was assessed best. Furthermore, within the fourteen cases, the criteria of the sequence of spaces, the location of the entrance door and the location of the living room were applied often, and within the criteria of the length of the route, a wide range was visible. In future developments, besides these criteria, special attention needs to be given to daylight, the shape, and the activity on the route, in order to improve the orientation of its residents.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual design of a virtual knowledge space for use by digital humanists. Digital humanists’ work lies at the crossroads of computer science and the humanities (Stanford Humanities Center, 2017). Moving traditional humanistic material into digital forms brings new challenges for scholars of the humanities. The proposed virtual knowledge space is intended to help users make humanistic knowledge in digital media more manageable and usable. A knowledge management (KM) approach suggested by Handzic (2004) was used as a theoretical basis for designing the structure of the proposed knowledge space. According to KM, a virtual knowledge space should provide support for knowledge codification and personalisation. It should also support knowledge exploration and exploitation. Following these KM principles, the proposed design incorporates the ability to build and access knowledge repositories (e.g. digital documents, images, metadata), tools for knowledge discovery and presentation (e.g. data mining, topic modelling, visualisation), support for knowledge sharing and collaboration with other researchers (e.g. email, wikis, virtual meeting rooms), as well as for new knowledge creation (e.g. simulation games, mind mapping, brainstorming). This paper contributes a novel conceptual design of a virtual knowledge space that pushes forward the current state-of-the art in digital humanities. It integrates all relevant digital assets, services and tools that support the user experience. It is envisaged as a one-stop shop for humanities scholars in the digital production and usage of relevant humanistic knowledge. The current conceptual work implies that KM technology may change the way humanities scholars interact with their data and share their insights. In particular, the paper suggests that the proposed virtual knowledge space may serve as reference for implementing various digital humanities projects relevant to a wide range of humanities disciplines. However, these implications need to be interpreted with caution due to the current lack of empirical evidence. Future study is recommended to address this research gap.