The aim of this paper is analyse the impact of the intellectual capital on the company’s competitiveness through new trends of human capital. Take stock of the challenges ahead for business and human resource leaders in a changing digital, economic, demographic, and social world. The pace of change driven by global competition forces companies to adapt quickly to emerging changes and adapt to new situations. This workforce is changing, business expectations, needs, and demands are evolving faster than ever before. I propose an approach of study of literature, materials and documents; develops theoretical construct to find the most relevant factors influencing the competitiveness of the organization. The outcomes of the application are positive effects of intellectual capital and its management in companies that contribute to the competitive advantage of organizations.

This paper aims at investing the role and the relevance of Project Stakeholder Management (PSM) in Granted International Cooperation Projects (GICPs). It presents and analyzes the case of an international cooperation project, granted by the EU, aimed at developing an innovative business model with related managerial tools, for cultural and artistic organizations. The lack of a PSM processes and principles, by one performing organization, originated an opposing coalition whose power and interests allowed it to downsize budget and role of the faulting organization. In order to investigate the role of PSM in GICP we carried out a case study analysis. The Project was selected within the population of EU granted projects. This paper puts in evidence that PSM process acts as a switch for two cycles, the stakeholders’ contrasting cycle and the stakeholders’ supporting cycle. The outcomes of the case study research put the basis for a systematic management of stakeholders in the EU cooperation granted projects, thus increasing the success ratio of the EU’s cooperation programs.

Along with the recent rise of the knowledge economy, intellectual capital (IC) has become the key elements for value creation (F-Jardon and Martos, 2012; Sharabati et al., 2010; Cabrita and Bontis, 2008). As intellectual capital includes different types of knowledge dispersed across different levels and repositories in an organization, it is logical to assume that practices for managing knowledge would positively contribute to the development of IC. Discourses of intellectual capital and knowledge management have been developing for many years independently from each other, but it is clear that the synergy of these two disciplines will help to answer the question of how to manage IC. The findings of this study might inform managers in their decision-making about allocation of resources to different KM practices, aimed to enhance intellectual capital and ultimately, organizational performance of Russian companies. The data for the research was collected in January-March 2015. The sample comprises 240 Russian companies. The data is collected by a survey using the scales already validated in the international context. We use a two-step analysis – factor and regression analyses – to answer the research questions. The findings of the paper show which knowledge management practices enhance development of different intellectual capital elements. As managing IC becomes a crucial task in the economy of the XXI century (Andreeva, Garanina, 2016; Dumay, Garanina, 2013) the findings have very important implications for managers as they can focus on developing those knowledge management practices that are the most important in development of IC elements. The findings contribute to further development of IC theory by providing a more fine-grained understanding of how different KM practices contribute to development of various IC elements which on their turn enhance financial performance in the emerging economy context. This paper might be the first step towards better understanding of how knowledge management practices and intellectual capital enhance competitive advantage on Russian market. From the practical point of view, the paper helps to formulate the practical and applied recommendations on how to improve the management of intellectual capital and knowledge in Russian companies.

This paper evaluates the alignment between firm’s knowledge and knowledge management tools and practices adopted and provides a decision-making tool for both SMEs and policy makers. A field analysis was conducted in a sample of sixty-one small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in high tech industries. The results identify a taxonomy of different typologies of SME behaviour in relation to the alignment of the enterprise’s knowledge with knowledge management tools and practices. Four typologies of behaviour are identified: Guidepost SMEs, Practice Laggard SMEs, Tool Laggard SMEs and Latecomer SMEs. From the enterprise point of view, the proposed taxonomy supports the decision-making aimed to suggest appropriate changes to improve the degree of alignment. From the policy maker point of view, the proposed taxonomy allows SMEs to improve the processes of management and circulation of knowledge among enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the adaption of the DEMOLA Innovation Model, developed in Finland, to the South African and African context, supported by an interrogation of tacit knowledge through an adaption of Holsapple and Joshi’s (2002) Threefold Knowledge Management Framework’s Knowledge Resource component. The mHealth and Wellness Innovation Ecosystem building (Botha, Herselman, & Kotz, 2016) is an initiative embarked on in 2015 and entails the exploration, mapping, description and stimulation of mHealth and Wellness Innovations in the South African National Innovation System. The outcome was envisioned as a stimulus in the South African mHealth and Wellness Domain and as supporting the National Innovation System of South Africa. The DEMOLA Model was the chosen innovation mechanism that would be used to stimulate and catalyse the mHealth and Innovation Ecosystem as it facilitates youth involvement, industry co-creation, and network formation and has a reported high percentage of global licencing. The execution in South Africa would be the initial implementation envisaged to guide further implementations into the rest of the African continent. Transferring models from Europe to Africa would necessitate a significant amount of contextualisation. Much of the DEMOLA model has been lived by their facilitators and the resulting complex multifaceted knowledge have become entrenched in the Model. Site visits were supplemented with semi structured interviews in two sites, DEMOLA Tampere and Oulu. The interviews and visits were used towards explicitly describing the tacit knowledge resources that would need to be evaluated for contextualisation and how the South African environment can absorb this learning. The identified knowledge resources would position the local African implementers to effectively adapt the Innovation model and provide a common language and understanding between the stakeholders. Towards further adoption into Africa the same procedure can be followed. The clear presentation of knowledge resources entangled as explicit and well as tacit components would enable stakeholders to manage knowledge resources more effectively and provide the potential for full deliberate, systematic knowledge management and transfer.

We see knowledge managed in an era of greater globalization, higher levels of technology, and rapid obsolescence of prior knowledge. One subset of the knowledge management literature describes the impact of learning communities where community participants stimulate one another to higher levels of knowledge. Learning communities and the associated knowledge transfer that occurs within them have transformed. A common historic form of an external learning community is the trade association. In most trade associations, members receive highly mediated distilled communication on topics of interest for consumption by its members. The information brokered to members is nearly always in an explicit form that can be readily transferred across members. Quite different are the convivial communities that exist in highly interactive and web enabled networks. These communities are often unmediated and contain real-time information; the information supplied can be both tacit and explicit. The individuals sharing the information have direct expertise. The exchanges are often completely voluntary. Because the communities are virtual, members are not physically proximate and are often serving different markets. As a result, there may be greater member freedom to share knowledge that might otherwise be considered proprietary or secret. Much of the literature on knowledge management and learning communities was created prior to the development of these highly interactive virtual communities. As a result, there is little research on the role of highly interactive virtual communities in knowledge transfer and management. This paper seeks to fill that gap. The authors create a comparative framework through the analysis of six contrasting mini-cases, three cases each from traditional trade associations and three highly interactive virtual communities. Comparing and contrasting these examples provides a rich framework toward the development of theoretical and practitioner models in knowledge management. This paper contributes to the knowledge management literature by updating the knowledge management literature to include these new convivial, technology-enabled, and highly interactive communities as sources of and transmitters of knowledge. The research indicates ways in which highly interactive communities can accelerate both the depth and speed of knowledge acquisition. Additionally, the paper identifies specific methods and techniques used by these communities to accelerate resilience, creativity, and co-creation.

Purpose of the paper is to study if there are any differences in perceived work productivity based on how the knowledge worker perceives the level of information flow and knowledge transfer within the organization. Furthermore, if there are some differences between, how much the positively experienced information flow and knowledge transfer impact on experienced work productivity. Through the survey method, data were collected from 998 knowledge workers from Finland in various sizes of organizations representing mainly public sector or public owned corporations. The quantitative data were analysed using SPSS software descriptive statistics, correlations and U-test. The value of this study bases in analyzing the relation between the perceived level of information flow/knowledge transfer and the perceived work productivity in the context of knowledge work through a rather large empirical data set. Limitation is, however, that the empirical study has been carried out only in one country, Finland, thus generalizations of the study results need to be carefully considered. Nevertheless, the results of the study will add some more empirical insights on the body of literature of knowledge transfer and work productivity. The practical value of the study lays on the analysis results. The paper presents the value of information flows and knowledge transfer to knowledge work productivity. This increased understanding will help managers to evaluate the effects of investing in supporting information flow and knowledge transfer within the organization. The study will also give initial ideas of the tools and techniques that are perceived affecting positively in information flow and knowledge transfer in knowledge work context.

The paper is dedicated to researching the influence of work experience of the higher educational institutions’ administrative employees on the perception of knowledge sharing barriers by these employees. Especially interesting, regarding such employees’ work experience, seems to be the difference in barriers perception between the respondents with work experience of less or more than a full academic year. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to analyze the differences in perception of the most significant knowledge sharing barriers between the administrative employees in higher education sphere working less or more than an academic year. We propose an approach of analysing the abovementioned relationship via series of linear regression equations with a binary variable of work experience of less or more than a year as an independent variable and subjective perceptions of knowledge sharing barriers’ strength as dependent variables. The research sample includes employees of administrative subdivisions of one of the Russian universities, involved in managing Bachelor, Master, PhD and MBA level educational programs in all the university’s faculties. The question regarding the independent variable has been asked as a binary response question, while the questions regarding the dependent variables included the 7-point Likert-type scales as the answer frames, asking to grade the perceived strength of various knowledge sharing barriers. This methodology puts in evidence several interdependencies between the work experience of the respondents and the perception of barriers by these respondents. Namely, most of the researched barriers are perceived by the employees working for more than an academic year as more powerful, than by employees working for less than a year (supposedly due to greater experience, allowing interfering with a greater number of such barriers), except for several barriers related to the absence of specific material and immaterial motivation for sharing knowledge (supposedly due to the greater ability of more experienced employees to effectively communicate with their colleagues and, thus, convincing them to share necessary knowledge). The outcomes of the application have practical implications for development of knowledge sharing friendly environment in the administrative subdivisions and processes in higher educational institutions. The recommendations regarding such development can consider both organizational management mechanisms improvement (e.g., job duties clearer formulation and better differentiation) and supporting IT infrastructure adjustment (e.g., increasing the compatibility of document management systems used by different administrative subdivisions).

Consultants and technological and management consultancy are a part of systemic relationships between invention, innovation and in particular the institutions which are present in a geographical or sectoral space which support and moderate the behavior of innovation actors. The purpose of this paper is to examine how companies use the help of consultancy as part of the knowledge transfer process in an innovation ecosystem. We investigate empirically how companies use consultancy companies in their innovation ecosystems, and what is their role in the systemic innovation, and how they help to co-create new value. This paper is a qualitative study, conducted as semi-structured interviews in Finland (n=69) and Estonia (n=80). The qualitative approach provides a design that enables us to examine in rich detail the reciprocity in the consultant-client relationship in knowledge transfer and value co-creation. This study shows how outside experts and knowledge brokers (Hargadon 1998) connect to a company’s innovation ecosystem. The study adds to previous understanding about the role of intermediaries in innovation ecosystems (Iansiti and Levien, 2004; Adner and Kapoor, 2010; Tether and Tajar 2008; Hargadon (1998, 2002). The proposed results of the analysis provides a framework, which allows the clients of consultants better understand the capabilities and potential of the consultancy they acquire, and to improve the design, briefing and guiding their innovation processes. From the consultant’s perspective, the results of this study contribute to a view which encourages to design facilitation methods, which strengthen the involvement of the client’s intellectual capacity in co-creation of knowledge, and hence, in successful delivery of consulting services.

Despite the great interest in Open Innovation approach (Chesbrough, 2003, 2012), few contributions relate to healthcare industry including both public and private organizations (hospitals, companies, universities), as well as “untraditional” players like doctors, nurses and patients. Even if recently some scholars started to propose a Network model to encourage innovation in a unique ecosystem (Lee et al., 2010; Estrin & Sim, 2010), the key role of all the other actors is not well addressed. With the aim to cover this gap, the study develops a unique classification framework able to represent the interactions among all the actors involved in the healthcare ecosystems, highlighting knowledge and information flows within them. The final result is to improve their innovation potentialities of Healthcare Ecosystem according to an open approach. Starting from a literature review in the fields of Open Innovation and Networks, with a particular attention to the peculiarities of healthcare industry, a theoretical framework is designed based on three main building blocks (players operating in healthcare system; network’s structure depending on the exploration and exploitation stages; player’s relations and positions along the Open Innovation process). In the framework, four different scenarios emerged, depending on the influence degree of the main players and on their motivations, describing a set of organizational structures pertinent with the relative ecosystems. Despite healthcare systems have been experiencing a radical change in their organizational model, few literature on Open Innovation and Networks relates to analyse it according to an open approach where also patients can contribute to their own wellbeing. The framework could represent a new proposal in the fields of Open Innovation and Networks, as well as a new organizational model for contexts where a variety of players with a wide range of interests coexist. It will support policy makers to adopt more relevant organizational structures depending on the mission to achieve.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of an understanding of how to foster creativity in networks of collaborative organisations by identifing causal factors that are relevant for supporting creativity in such networks as well as by explicating the operative activities that can help to shape positive organizational and economic outcomes, especially via the influence of innovations. The paper, therefore, studies the practice of lived creativity management within a special interorganizational network in the domain of construction and civil engineering consisting of a parent company and its subsidiary companies. In our research we concentrated on the question of what kind of activities and factors do support creativity within a specific interorganizational context. The studied interorganizational network consisted of a parent company on the one side and of its subsidiary companies on the other. Three main dimensions proved to be important for the management of creativity in such networks: common goals, network organizational culture and project diversity based upon but also cultivating different kinds of expertise and social ties among firms within a network. In order to elucidate what factors and activities support creativity and innovativeness of the interorganizational network, we carried out semi-structured, in-depth interviews with managers of parent as well as subsidiary companies. This was of vital importance to an understanding of the causal factors and activities in use to support and manage creativity and produce innovation in the network. As a follow-up to these interviews, certain selected interviewees were further asked to broaden our understanding of what was relevant but probably not yet well discussed during the first interviews. Further, interviewees remained in close dialogue with the team of academic researchers. This methodology puts in evidence how creativity generating positive organizational and economic results can occur in multiple kinds of collaboration across diverse firms in an interorganizational network. The outcomes of the application provide some new insights into how a multiplicity of firms connected within a network can effectively collaborate towards instantiating and supporting creativity and innovation. These insights have implications for the literature on collaboration, creativity and innovation in and by interorganizational networks. Perhaps even more importantly, these outcomes are useful for developing practices within a network of multiple firms to achieve better results while considering the relevant factors and activities forming a successful network, and thus influencing the levels of performance in interfirm networks.

This study aims to analyze relationships between large companies and start-ups, in terms of new knowledge exchange. A start-up can have collaborations with large companies in different phases of its life cycle. This study focuses on a firm-level approach that considers new knowledge acquisition from collaborations in different stages of the start-up life cycle. What kind of relationship can influence the development of a start-up? In what way new knowledge acquired may change the start-up performance? The methodological procedures of the research were predominantly qualitative. This paper analyzes a typology of relationships between large companies and start-ups in different phases of their life cycle, examining the role of knowledge management and learning mechanisms in inter-organizational contexts. A questionnaire was distributed to a sample of start-ups. The questionnaire focused on collaborations with large companies and how this collaboration changes knowledge exchange. This paper reports a descriptive analysis of the obtained results. This study focuses on knowledge exchanges in the context of the relationships between large companies and start-ups. This paper examines collaboration in different stages of the start-up life cycle investigating, in particular, how these relationships influence knowledge exchange. Furthermore, the questionnaire allowed to gain information about the start-up and its entrepreneurial network. The analysis allows a deeper understanding of relationships in inter-organizational context on start-ups’ knowledge exchange processes. These results can contribute to the development of tools, indicators and methods aimed to better manage knowledge in new, high-tech firms. Such tools are useful both for entrepreneurs and managers and for consultants. Start-ups should improve their networking attitude and the propensity to meta-goals configuration to sustain long term relationships.

This study is aimed at analysing the impact of consulting firms’ intervention in business continuity and survival, particularly, in the case of SMEs. Along these lines, the main objective of this research is to measure such an impact in a set of Basque SMEs. It is hypothesized that an output of a successful consulting intervention is the improvement of company’s performance. Therefore, this is considered as the dependent variable. For the purpose of this study, company’s performance encompasses three different dimensions: 1) growth (i.e. number of employees, operating revenue); 2) economic performance (i.e. EBITDA, ROA); 3) financial performance (i.e. liquidity, debt ratio). The economic and financial information of 75 SMEs that have participated in an emergency plan for SMEs in a situation of vulnerability for the years 2014 and 2015 has been collected exploiting SABI database, which contains economic and financial information of Spanish and Portuguese companies. The variation from year to year regarding economic and financial results of this group of firms has also been analysed and compared to the results of a control group of companies. The impact of consulting firms within organizations is not clear (Wright and Kitay, 2002) and the emergency plan for SMEs in situation of vulnerability implemented in the Basque Country (Spain) offers an unique possibility to examine in depth the impact of consultants’ intervention in business continuity and survival. The practical implications concern to managers of SMEs and consultants, who might know better which is the degree of efficacy of consulting intervention and its impact on companies’ continuity. Public administrators and policy makers might also find it useful to promote the effective use of public funds.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the phenomenon of recuperated factories in Argentine, i.e. Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores (ERT), especially for what concerns their relationship with the university and with local communities. ERT were born after the crisis that hit Argentine in 2001, and have become important players in their local communities, representing an example of resilience. We will answer the following research question: given the relationships between ERT, local communities and universities, what are their consequences in terms of innovative ways of creating and sharing knowledge? We propose an approach based on the following steps. First, we will review the literature on ERT and understand why they are an example of resilience. Secondly, we will describe the economic and political context that led to the emergence of ERT. Then, we will adopt a methodology based on descriptive case studies, each concerning a single ERT. The case design will investigate the relationship between ERT and (i) the local community (ii) universities, in terms of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. This methodology puts in evidence the new emerging relationships between different actors in the Argentinian society, and it highlights how they influence the process of knowledge creation and dissemination, and how they contribute to innovate it. The outcome of the analysis identifies the importance of collaborative relationships and solidarity between the worker-managed factories, the local communities and the university. The neighbourhoods are key allies of ERT, which in turn provide the neighbourhood with affordable products, and open their spaces to the community. This open and collaborative relationship encourages the creation of knowledge, both in favour of the factory and of the community. The same happens with the university, whose interest in the phenomenon of ERT has led to a close relationship with them.

Technologies such as smart advisors, smart factories and the “Internet of things” have again sparked large interest in IT-enabled knowledge management. Although there have been numerous case studies and empirical studies on how the management of knowledge in large organizations has benefitted from these technologies, we have only scarce information on how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can manage the corresponding digital transformation necessary. In line with the emerging paradigm of physical-cyber-social computing (Sheth, Anantharam & Henson, 2013), we intend to foster the digital transformation that might boost SMEs’ resilience concerning the increasing demands of hypercompetitive environments. The research question discussed in this paper is how enterprise knowledge infrastructure services that are available publicly can support SMEs in building knowledge capabilities that strengthen their organizational resilience. The methodology used for this discussion consists of (1) a review of related work on the knowledge-based view, resilience and enterprise knowledge infrastructures plus (2) case examples taken from exploratory interviews with representatives of six German SMEs. As we study the relationships between IT, activities and outcomes, we build our research on the input-process-output model (McGrath, 1964) or, more specifically, an integrative framework for studying knowledge management enablers, processes, and organizational performance (Lee & Choi, 2003). Our contributions are two-fold: (1) we propose to employ capabilities in order to detail the concept of organizational resilience and (2) we present a model to illustrate how services of an enterprise knowledge infrastructure can support organizational resilience with the help of knowledge activities. The application of our approach to decompose organizational resilience into capabilities and to weave enterprise knowledge infrastructure services together with cloud service models to support such capabilities provides the basis for SMEs to benefit from comprehensive cloud-based offerings to build organizational resilience. By using such cloud offerings, SMEs can avoid issues with the development of own services. Cloud providers can use our decomposition of organizational resilience to design cloud-based IT services in a way that these services help to build capabilities for such resilience.

An SME is a place where the innovation easily appears, knowledge accumulates, and intellectual capital develops and is used. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), enterprises with less than 500 employees are 99.7 % of all companies in the USA that use hired labor; they produce more than 50 % of GDP except agricultural products. SMEs represent 99% of all businesses in the EU. In the past five years, they have created around 85% of new jobs and made a decisive contribution to GDP. The contribution of SMEs to economic fundamentals nonetheless varies substantially across countries: from 16% of GDP in low-income countries (whereas the sector is typically large but informal) to 51% of GDP in high-income countries (Edinburgh Group, 2013). SMEs and entrepreneurs are engines in creating new workplaces and implementing technology and innovations. When the economic growth becomes greater, SMEs increasingly adopt a key role in industrial development and restructuring. They can satisfy the increasing local demand for services, which allows increasing specialisation, and furthermore support larger enterprises with services and inputs (Fjose et al. 2010). Purpose is to determine the specific features and characteristics of SMEs that lead to economic welfare in different countries. The authors of the paper propose an approach of study of several countries with different economic developments during the last year and identify the role of SMEs in this process. The research theory and methodology is based on the scientific papers and World Bank’s, EU and Organization of United Nations reports devoted to the question of SMEs. The methods of research are: analysis and synthesis of the scientific literature discussing the problems that SMEs are facing and the environmental changes; the systematic secondary statistical data analysis of SMEs. This methodology helps us to establish the model of economic growth and provide the required actions based on the expansion of SMEs. The outcomes of the application may encourage individuals and governments to (active) take actions. It opens ways to be successful in a micro and macro level. For an individual, it’s important to think about long-term strategy for his or her life and SME is a preferable way during the working time. For countries, it’s also determinative because SMEs are more open to new knowledge, faster to satisfy new demands and ready for international trade and investment.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the concept of “university third mission”, whose growing importance has led institutions and researchers to look for indicators to assess this dimension. The need to evaluate these activities not only comes from the recognition that indicators could allow universities to understand their performance and foster accountability and improvement of management practices, providing effective value to society, but also from the greater emphasis put by governments on quality assurance in universities. However, while commonly accepted evaluation and ranking systems for the two traditional missions of the university now exist, the third mission lacks any cohesive methodology. Despite several initiatives in this direction, the collection of data and the development of indicators on third mission activities still keep many limitations. Starting from these considerations, we will try to answer the following research questions: Which are current indicators and methods to measure and evaluate the university third mission? What are the perspectives of development for the evaluation system of third mission activities at international level? We propose an approach based on the following steps. We will start from an analysis of the main international ranking systems, examining the extent to which they include an assessment of third mission activities; we will then investigate the main international research projects aimed at identifying comprehensive indicators for these activities; finally, we will conduct a case study analysis based on the Italian evaluation system, which recently included third mission as a dimension to be measured and evaluated in higher education institutions. This methodology puts in evidence the importance of finding adequate indicators to assess and evaluate the university third mission. The aim of our work is to map the main approaches to these topics at the international level, as well as to systematize the theoretical contributions, which are currently fragmented and lacking a systemic vision. The outcome of the application of appropriate indicators and methods to measure and evaluate the contribution of universities to social and economic value, is the improvement of quality assurance, which could allow universities to understand how they perform, to develop best practices and to provide efficient and effective value for society.

The role of intellectual capital has become increasingly important in the modern competitive system. The main objective of this study is to analyze the role and the relationship between intellectual capital and academic entrepreneurship. The intellectual capital created or existent in the universities is not capable by itself to generate new entrepreneurship. For this reason, it is necessary to understand all the changes that the intellectual capital undertakes to become entrepreneurship. The final aim of this research is to understand how intellectual capital is transformed and developed within the process of creation of new academic entrepreneurship: spin-offs. We propose a first critical approach on a longitudinal study of literature on intellectual capital in academic entrepreneurship process. In particular, we want to understand the main theory linked to the intellectual capital in the university and the spin-off creation processes. The methodology used consists of two phases. In a first step, we proceed to an analysis of the literature. In the second phase, we will attempt to theorize the main aspects of the relationship between IC and academic entrepreneurship This methodology puts in evidence the relationship between intellectual capital present in the universities and the forms of academic entrepreneurship. The process of creating a spinoff generates profound changes on intellectual capital present in the universities. This study highlights these changes. The outcomes of this study have different applications. First of all the outcomes will help the university to better manager the process of exploitation of the intellectual capital produced through the creation of spin-off. At the same time, the results can help the external actors of the university to understand the business opportunities based on intellectual capital and competitive advantage in the market.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the strategic role of relational capital for the achievement of sustainable development in Italian micro and small tourist businesses run by women. The paper focuses on the tourism enterprises because that sector constitute 10 % of the Italian GDP. The qualitative research methodology that has been used is that of case study research (Yin, 2009). Such process consisted in a survey with an ad-hoc questionnaire developed to analyze the distinctive features of a woman-owned micro and small enterprise that can be identified with the CAOS model (Paoloni, 2011). The paper applies the CAOS model examining the personal characteristics of the female entrepreneur (C); the environment in which the in SMEs operates (A); organizational and managerial aspects (O); and the motivations for manage a new business (S). This model is able to link these factors and classify different types of connections, it is possible to identify the kind of existing relations. The paper intends to help address a gap in the existing literature regarding the management and governance of tourism firms run by women. The paper can contribute to improving the competitiveness Italian enterprises studying how women entrepreneurs manage her business..

As stated by economic literature, Female entrepreneurship creates economic value, whether it is mainly considered a factor of production or a business function. The goal of the paper is to put in evidence that even if business economics establishes that Female entrepreneurship creates value, political economics – via applied economics and national accounting – usually cancels this contribution by means of the variation of the purchasing power of money. This is due to the theoretical framework which characterises the procedure of deflating economic aggregates and determines that a change in one price can’t represent a variation of an overall economic value. On the basis of an our previous work, in which we have found that in economic literature Female entrepreneurship is mainly considered a production function, we first discuss the theoretical reasons why current economics recommend to express the value of an economic aggregate in constant prices; second, we discuss the way current National Accounting determines the underestimation of the Female entrepreneurship contribution to value creation. The work specifies the differences between business economics and political economics theoretical frameworks, in relation to the measure of Female entrepreneurship value creation. The article puts in evidence that even if Female entrepreneurship is considered a variable that creates value, its contribution can’t be measured at an aggregate level since we won’t be able to adequately separate a change in price from a change in wealth. This work puts in evidence that Female entrepreneurship value creation which results in a higher market price of the output, at present, is measurable only at corporate level, because at macroeconomic level it can’t be identified if a change in one price is not related, or, to a change in wealth, not to be deflated. This could stimulate scholars to create different procedures in order to distinguish if an entire economy is merely redistributing economic resources by means of a changing in relative prices, or if a price variation indicates a buying and selling of an increased economic value, created by Female entrepreneurship.