Purpose – The task of reverse logistics is to retrieve (diverse kind of) value from so-called reverse flows such as returned products, products scraps, production waste, packaging, etc. To assure the effectiveness of reverse logistics the companies often need to apply tailor-made solutions; this requires innovativeness from logistics specialists as well as from executive management. The paper explores the links between perceived effectiveness of reverse logistics and selected variables – factors – that are related to managerial approaches (to reverse logistics and to corporate management in general). The investigated factors are the level of formal planning, the intensity of coordination with 1-tier supply chain members, knowledge management, and quality management (defined as one aspect of organizational culture). In the second step, we investigate the link between RL- effectiveness and one aspect of organizational culture – the managerial approach to programs. Design/methodology/approach – The causal and correlation models are proposed and tested on data that were collected through interviews with representatives of 149 Czech companies. The majority of presented findings are based on subjective statements of informants due to the fact that many questions asked for the data that companies don’t measure, collect and reprocess. The items utilized in the paper were reprocessed by means of bi- and multivariate statistics. Originality/value – The originality stems from the fact that the paper tests empirically a structural model of factors for effective reverse logistics. Second, it test link between the reverse logistics effectiveness and organizational culture. The knowledge management, the extent of planning and external integration/coordination with both suppliers and customers can be considered to be factors of effective reverse logistics. The factor of external coordination speaks in favour of supply chain management in reverse flows: higher value from reverse flows can be recovered if the reverse logistics activities are coordinated on supply chain level, not on the company level solely. Next, the empirical study confirms that effort in application of knowledge management brings also benefits for companies in the field of reverse logistics. Thirdly, the effective reverse logistics is related to an organizational culture that put emphasis on formalization (work standardization) as well as TQM principles.

Purpose – The raison d’etre of entrepreneurship is to create value which ordinarily results from forward activities and processes. The goal is to create value that would provide long-term existence of business, support on keep-going and maintain the running of operations and contribute to the development and growth. All those terms can be replaced by modern concept serving as synonym, i. e. to sustain. Competence or ability to sustain in business stands for still more frequently used term of sustainability. From rather narrow original understanding of term meaning focusing attention and effort of managers on financial or economic aspects of entrepreneurial activities prevalently, its contemporary comprehension has been broadened to other horizons. Even though they can be named differently, it is possible to include them in the so called Tripple Bottom Line where except the economic part of the needed entrepreneurial thinking and behaviour also two other parts belong, namely social and environmental matters. However, firms have to engage also to more or less backward operations. Such operations can be initiated either by external stakeholders (in most cases by customers) or by internal stakeholders (employees and/or managers on the grounds of several reasons), can be solved and managed within the boundaries of individual firm, but usually are under way among the members of some supply chains or networks within the reverse logistics or reverse supply chain processes. Their occurrence and dealing with can have significant impact on all three parts (or pillars) of Triple Bottom Line aspects of business itself and the society, both negative and positive. Sustainability orientation of entrepreneurs and managers is the core to make use of these backward (or reverse) flows to be sustainable in business and to be able to create sustainable value and competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to gain more knowledge of the complex area of sustainable oriented entrepreneurship from the point of view of reverse logistics management. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework based on literature review was developed to determine variables of sustainability orientation of entrepreneurs and reverse logistics practices related to sustainable entrepreneurship. Statistical analysis (multiple regression) of empirical data gathered by means of questionnaire was applied to test the relationship among employed independent and dependent variables. Originality/value – To our best knowledge this paper is among just few existing, which investigate a combination of several Triple Bottom Line conceptualization of sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability orientation of reverse logistics management. The paper and presented findings can serve as a spring board for future research on the topic. Practical implications – The outcomes of the analysis stress the need for understanding of reverse flows management impact and relation to sustainability performance criteria of entrepreneurial activities.

Purpose – Nutrition have a significant impact on people’s daily lives. Food and beverages have a central role above all in this actual era. Companies from different sectors have been pushed towards a renewal of production models, also due to new global consumption behaviour, not only, but for the worsening crisis of the ecological balance, the persistent social inequalities and processes of economic growth with characteristics and induced effects progressively disputable. Recently the goal of value creation in different companies was value for shareholders: now, this approach is widely obsolete. In this way of renovation, companies must be open to dialogue with its stakeholders, in order to generate a cooperation that allows to obtain consent, trust, legitimacy. If this behavior goes towards the stakeholder satisfaction, the result is a good CR (corporate reputation): the base for a long time competitivity. Design/methodology/approach – The aim of this research are as the follow: 1. a sintetic description of the concept of sustainability according to the literature; 2. show the behaviours of a company (case study) that tries to combine tradition and innovation and the process of building of CR: relationship. Originality/value – This methodology puts in evidence that a good management, the correct corporate policy leads to the assumption of favorable behavior by stakeholders thereby improving the performance and the market value (Fombrun and van Riel, 2004), finally the value of CR. The outcomes of the application is to show the first step to study towards an alignment between environmental-social interests and shareholder-CFO interests. The challenge is to invest “correctly” in order to achieve best results. Technological innovations combined with the reduction of use of resources or waste decrease and the environment safety is the real strategy to secure the future and to improve quality level in own CR. Food and nutrition is the content of EXPO 2015: this is another demonstration of industry evolution, with particularly attention to production techniques, respect for biodiversity, increased safety for consumers. Practical implications – It is important to invest in new management models, adopting new strategies and corporate policies: from production (reducing the environmental impact, worker safety, care and quality of products, …) marketing (consumer satisfaction, …) human resource management (training, updates, employee satisfaction, …) and the financial aspects (investment evaluation, …).

Purpose – This research analyzes the emergence of general purpose technologies. Specifically, we examine the relationship between how broadly organizations search across diverse knowledge domains in the invention process (i.e., their search breadth) and the technological generality of resulting inventive outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – We use patent data in order to identify inventions developed in the green energy sector. In particular, we refer to the IPC Green Inventory for patent collection. For the purpose of this study, we pose our attention to the “Alternative Energy Production” and “Energy Conservation” classes. Hence, we collected all the patents successfully filed at the U.S.PTO. from 1971 to 2009 that refer to the two green technological classes above mentioned. Since our aim is to assess the influence of an organization’s breadth of search on the level of an invention’s technological generality, the single patent is used as the unit of analysis. Our dependent variable assumes values that range from zero to one. In this case, a Tobit regression model is more appropriate for hypothesis testing. Originality/value – We reveal that search breadth is curvilinearly related to an invention’s technological generality. Furthermore, we assess if a geographically dispersed inventive team moderates the costs and benefits of searching broadly, showing that it makes organizations more able to benefit from a wider search breadth Practical implications – Managers are advised of the double-edge word of a wide search breadth for the development of GPTs. Thereby, we suggest balancing the search efforts toward a wide range of knowledge domains, in order to avoid the risks to incur in the inability to gain returns from those efforts. Second, establishing dispersed teams may reduce the problems organizations face when they search broadly, being these useful to support the acquisition and integration of a diversified body of knowledge. Third, given the ever increasing need to develop more green general solutions, our findings guide organizations to focus on the conditions that are most critical for creating green GPTs in the energy field.

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to report findings from an exploratory quantitative survey concerning the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and ICT support of reverse logistics (RL) processes. This study focuses on which processes of RL are supported by ICT, in what extent are the processes supported, and what role KM plays in RL. Besides, barriers of ICT implementation and benefit evaluation approaches of ICT are revealed. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on explorative statistical analysis of results of quantitative survey gathered from 55 Czech and Slovak companies. The companies vary in size, type of industry and reverse logistics processes. Due to insufficient knowledge of studied phenomenon, cross-sectional sampling was utilized in order to gather the most various answers. Originality/value – Although the research of RL is quite developed in aspects such as: reverse supply chain design, RL process characteristics, decision problems; other aspects such as ICT support, knowledge management, and performance evaluation are less developed. This study tries to enhance the scattered knowledge about these aspects and simultaneously provide suggestions for further (qualitative) research by exploring the reasons, why companies in the RL field do not know or not employ evaluation methods, why they do not focus on knowledge management and how they are measuring the performance of RL. Practical implications – Several interesting outcomes were revealed by this study. First, the data confirmed that the larger the company is the more developed ICT support it has. Second, evaluation of ICT support of RL processes was reported in less than half of the cases. Third, most companies do not perceive significant barriers regarding implementation of ICT support of RL processes. Fourth, companies that have implemented ERP systems report the support of ERPs as effective. Fifth, some approaches to ICT evaluation positively correlate with the level of KM development. These outcomes draw an important implication. Although the companies do not perceive the barriers of ICT support implementation, the effectiveness of such support is perceived positively. This can be caused by low penetration of ICT evaluation. Therefore, the practical implication of these findings for the companies involved in reverse supply chain is to implement knowledge management and ICT evaluation methods in order to gather the knowledge about RL and to be able to make decisions about investment in RL ICT support with proper information.

Purpose – In contemporary conditions, strategic advantage built by enterprises on the basis of innovativeness takes the form of open innovations, which ensue not only from R&D sector’s activity but constitute a result of cooperation of external entities (Chesbrough, 2003; Gassman, Enkel, 2004; Sopińska, 2013). Greater openness to external cooperation, together with uncertainty that accompanies every innovation directs the attention to the social context of this process (Baregheh et al., 2009) and the role of managers in creating conditions conducive to innovativeness (Terziovski, Morgan, 2006; Drucker, 2008; Hueske, Guenther, 2015). The article corresponds with two research streams concerning innovativeness. The former regards the evaluation of enterprises’ openness to innovativeness; the latter refers to the role of managers in creating conditions conducive to innovativeness. The paper aims to evaluate the openness of the surveyed enterprises to innovations and their innovativeness, and also to identify the factors conducive to the openness of enterprises in the area of management. The paper serves to fill the gap that ensues from lack of research on the determinants of innovativeness of Polish enterprises with reference to openness to innovations. Design/methodology/approach – The presented research constitutes a part of a larger research project, the aim of which was to identify the decision-making determinants in the process of implementing RFID system in Polish enterprises (Radio Frequency IDentification with autonomous semi-passive RFID tag (API)). The study uses the results of the analysis of the research conducted in 202 Polish companies. The data used in the analysis were gathered by means of a questionnaire completed in a direct or an electronic form by companies’ owners, medium and high-level managers making decisions concerning investments or responsible for them. There were applied the statistical methods of analysing the data, the sampling of which ensued from the specific objectives of the research (Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA test, factor analysis). Originality/value – The research indicates that the innovativeness of an enterprise is ambiguous as far as its openness to innovations is concerned, which constituted the basis for distinguishing four types of companies. The article presents the characteristics of innovative enterprises which are open to innovations (I/O) and non-innovative ones which are closed to innovations (N/C). It was proved that the three features of the managers of the surveyed companies, i.e., management style, work management skills and orientation towards organisation’s development influence their assignment to a certain type of enterprise. Practical implications – One can indicate two areas of practical implications of the conducted research. The former refers to the characteristics of non-innovative and closed to innovations companies, which indicates organisations that most frequently lack innovativeness. The latter comprises personal practices, i.e., sampling, training, evaluation, motivation, which can also include the tools for proper formation of managers’ skills, which enable them to build social conditions facilitating the innovativeness of enterprises.

Despite the popularity of the topic, social media research is still limited and focuses largely on the role of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) domains (Volpentesta and Felicetti, 2012; Michaelidou et al., 2011). In many aspects, B2C social media practices are not directly useful for inter-organizational and business-to-business (B2B) purposes. The main aim of this paper is to increase the understanding of the current applications of social media in external B2B transactions. This is carried out through an extensive survey of companies in the technology industry which are operating purely in B2B markets, having only other companies as customers. We wanted to understand how industrial B2B companies currently apply social media in their own inter-organizational applications, what potential they see for social media in this context, and what kind of support they need to better adopt social media together with their customers and partners. A population of 2488 Finnish decision makers from the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries were observed. Based on the answers of 143 different companies, 125 companies were found to wholly (100%) represent B2B markets, and these were chosen as the sample of this particular study. Studies on social media, especially survey-based studies, have not focused soley on B2B companies, particularly on the inter-organizational applications of social media in B2Bs, except for the B2B-marketing oriented study of Michaelidou et al. (2011) and the study of social media utilization in B2B relationships by Pettersson et al. (2014). This study extends these previous studies by creating new understanding of the maturity of social media integration in businesses, organizational business problems that companies perceive can be solved with social media, and approaches that can support social media adoption in B2B companies. Managerially, the results can be used, for instance, to better understand the various possibilities of applying social media for inter-organizational use in B2Bs, which are currently only superficially understood by a significant portion of managers. This can help support and facilitate external social media use in B2Bs.

Purpose – The present study investigates the factors that directly affect the use of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) among healthcare professionals. Findings will contribute to our understanding of which explanation (deterministic vs. institutional) might be the most relevant to directly predict adopters’ behaviour, and whether institutional and rational factors are correlated, or represent two separate entities. Design/methodology/approach – Our model incorporates constructs from the Technology Accepts Model, i.e. perceived usefulness and ease of use, along with constructs associated with institutional explanations, i.e. organizational expectations, technological culture and alignment of meaning systems. We surveyed the literature to identify valid measures for related constructs and adapted existing scales to measure the different constructs. We developed a questionnaire and collected data from four public hospitals in Northern Italy that are early adopters of EMRs. We have run a hierarchical regression to test our hypotheses. Originality/value – The results provide full support to the TAM model, and only partial support to the hypothesis that institutional factors have a direct and indirect (i.e. mediated by TAM) effect on technology use. Results reveal, in fact, significant direct and mediated relationships only for organizational expectations. Practical implications – Comprehensively, our results provide healthcare managers with new insights on how to trigger and facilitate the adoption and the continuative usage of EMR within their operations. On the one hand, they have to understand how professionals evaluate the benefits and shortcomings of the innovations and provide them with clear, evidence-based information about EMRs. On the other hand, they cannot mandate change easily by means of top-down, hierarchical actions, but they can create the premises and the organizational facilitations that are conducive of change by professionals.

This paper aims at discussing the service (eco)system perspectives to innovation (Akaka and Vargo, 2013) by considering the role of smart technologies in shaping social interactions in complex service systems. The research investigates a smart innovation project named DATABENC promoting smart innovation in heritage business in the regional area of Campania. By adopting sociomaterial approach in researching, the paper goes in depth in the analysis of how a smart service ecosystem is built and how the emerging interactions support and embed the changes it produces. The paper looks for an explanation of the much more complex interactions and negotiations that take place between human and non-human actors and considers the characteristics of smart service ecosystem as effects resulting from interactions in a social-physical word.

Purpose – The main tenet of this paper is to analyse the contribution given by urban socio-ecological systems (Ostrom & Cox, 2010), such as those created through of platforms of co-design and cooperation linked to public urban space life and transformations, effectively defined as urban living-labs (Concilio & Molinari, 2014) to knowledge-sharing processes and innovations in the city. Against this background, cities are developing collaborative open-innovative (Chesbrough & Appleyard, 2007) and digital environments to boost local competitiveness and prosperity by using knowledge networks and partnerships (Paskaleva, 2009). This paper will describe the process enacted within those initiatives, explaining their relevance in the perspective of urban policy and design. Design/methodology/approach – The authors will firstly identify the general framework of their research through a brief review of literature related to urban living labs, then they will focus on a relevant case-study in order to describe paths of knowledge and value creation process generated by cooperative and shared design projects in the public domain, with the effective support of technologies (Folke, Hahn, Olsson, & Norberg, 2005). They will analyse the Atenistas experience, an ongoing Greek experience, which experiments actions around public space, improving citizens involvement in city life. The conclusion will sketch some emerging tendencies and criticalities arising from the relation between space and organizations, also in comparison with other international mature cases. Originality/value – The absence of a strong frame and objective, the variability of the roles played by actors involved in the decision-making processes about urban environment, and the combination with virtual platform, as described in the cases study, are in our perspective some key factor to open up new paths and process for the design of collective spaces. To analyse existing local based experiences, can help to underline where and how innovative processes can concretize and become value co-creation process with concrete effects on the urban environment. Practical implications – The paper describes some possible outcomes for planning and policy design, identifying some starter device which generate unplanned chains or clusters of process-project that are developing in time. This reveal some eventual opportunities in the way technicians and institution may operate, learning form how the binomial “urban places-cyberspaces relations” is testing new practices. These experimentations can have some economical and governance impacts but make us reflect on the material result in terms of vision, projects and transformation of the space.

Purpose – This work aims at depicting the role of communication practices adopted by firms in taking into account the ecosystem (Iansiti and Levien, 2004). The literature on both ecosystem and practices is flourishing in recent years and a combination among these two topics can be useful to understand through an empirical context the ways in which firms address their approach in different ways and towards several actors. The focus on communication depends on its relation to the ‘micro-macro’ relationships (Schatzki et al., 2001) and it can lead to give evidence to the actors surrounding a firm in an innovation ecosystem context. Design/methodology/approach – We propose a qualitative research design as the most appropriate when dealing with new phenomenon. We adopt a content-analysis approach based on the study of different sources (Bazeley and Jackson, 2013), to give evidence to the actors highlighted by firms and to understand which are the ties emerging among the elements of communication practices (quantitative cluster analysis), with a specific focus on consumers (proximity query). Functional food industry is suitable as in line with the innovation ecosystem literature; the firms considered in this investigation have been selected through Euromonitor Passport platform in the European leading market, namely United Kingdom. Originality/value – This investigation tries to shed some more light on the emerging issue of ecosystem in order to understand how firms are perceiving the context around them and how they interact with actors around them when communicating. By considering firms’ approaches in the way described above, the results can be more reliable, as the analysis is based on what firms do in an innovation-based ecosystem instead of what they perceive in such a context. Practical implications – The first insights from the research approach underline the key role played by communication practices in depicting the ecosystem emerging around innovative firms (Kowalkowski et al., 2012). Scholars can benefit from this approach to deepen the topic of emerging ecosystem and to define practices useful to improve the knowledge about how ecosystems arise (Du Plessis, 2007); while firms can assess the way they approach to their surrounding context if they compare the evidences with their perceptions. Customers play a relevant role in the generation of knowledge and the creation of collaboration practices within innovation ecosystems.

Purpose – This paper contributes to our understanding of new product introduction in companies. More precisely the purpose of this study is to highlight a combination of external and internal variables that predicts whether Turkish companies (i.e. family and non-family companies) will introduce new products. The study highlights the importance of location, competition in the sector (external factors), educational level, new approaches to problem solutions and management´s commitment to support new product development both financially and emotionally (internal factors) in order to meet the aim of new product introduction. Design/methodology/approach – Taking the purpose of our study, our research was based on a quantitative research strategy. We collected data from 692 Turkish companies from Turkey and used binary logistic regression analysis to predict the introduction of new products using different predictors. Originality/value – This study provides fresh insights into external and internal factors that influence whether or not new products are introduced. The findings were obtained from Turkish companies, thus we expand our understanding of the topic in different parts of the world and at different levels of economic development respectively. Practical implications – Based on the study’s findings we propose a number of measures to better manage the process of new product introduction. These measures may be useful for companies operating in other industries and countries as well.

Purpose – This article is the result of a research that analyzes the contributions of Knowledge Management for stimulating creativity in organizationsThrough literature review was possible to highlight the importance of the environment, structure and organizational culture so that we can stimulate the creativity and consequently result in the Innovation. Design/methodology/approach – For this research the method used was qualitative, through a systematic literature review. As Creswell (2010), qualitative research is a research employing methods of collection, analysis and interpretation of data, but does not use strategies or uniform concepts. The review initially involved articles and works manually found on the three constructs. In the sequence, it was developed a systematic search in the databases: Scopus, Web of Science and SciELO, in order to map the scientific publications that deal with Creativity and Knowledge Management. Originality/value – The importance of this work is justified in view of the rapid changes in the organizational and social context, where more and more the creative capacity is needed to meet new demands, new needs, new management processes, development of technologies, among others. In this sense, given its characteristics, knowledge management is eligible to be an important vector in stimulating creativity in Innovative organizations. Practical implications – In the present study we sought to examine the connection between Knowledge Management, Creativity and Innovation to identify what are the contributions of Knowledge Management for stimulating creativity in organizations aimed at generating innovation. It was possible, through literature review, to highlight the importance of the environment, structure and organizational culture so that we can stimulate creativity and consequently result in Innovation. Future researches could explore how knowledge management can help in the creation of an Innovation culture in organizations. Further researches could also investigate the impact of each of the basic conditions mapped upon the creative capacity of employees.

Purpose – This work investigates the ‘managerialization’ process of the Italian cultural heritage. The work starts from the analysis of scientific and political debates of the governance’s dynamics of Italian state museums (in particular focusing on the recent reform of the Italian museums’ system – Franceschini’s Decree) from which emerges some recurring themes. In particular the research group focuses its attention on the necessity to ‘modernize’ the process of cultural heritage management, which means ‘managerialization’ and, so, ‘professionalization’ of specific roles in the strategic sectors of heritage’s protections, conservations, and valorization (‘cultural manager’ as directors/executives). Design/methodology/approach – The research group adopts the ‘situationist’ approach, focused on: the concrete context of human action and the role played by directors/executive; the institutional pressure able to orient the conducts of the latter; the activation of isomorphic processes by directors. In particular, this work investigates the presence of normative isomorphism, connected to the professionalization, and its role in the institutionalization of the rules. Based on the assumption that Universities have a crucial role in the development of new skills, we test our hypothesis on a sample of professionalizing master (first/second level) about the professionalization in the field of cultural heritage. Originality/value – The work links the governance of the artistic-cultural heritage with the ‘training process’ that universities make for professionalizing human resources. The current regulatory framework puts at the centre of every strategic board the need to start a training process in collaboration with specialized entities to this purpose: universities and training institutions are, in the opinion of the writes, appropriate as well as necessary. University nowadays are conducting projects training for ‘cultural manager’, sometimes anticipating the decision of Public Administration, trying to condition them (lobbying), sometimes following its strategic directions (conceding pressures). Practical implications – The adoption of this approach, trough the reconstruction of actions actually undertaken by experts for protection and valorization of artistic-cultural heritage (directors/executive), allow us to observe the following: the governance dynamics started by actors responsible for Italian cultural heritage seems, at best, informed at decoupling process, due to strong institutional pressures leading the organizations manager to ‘look like’. The latters, in fact, in an effort to gain social legitimation, decided to adopt strategic conducts of institutional isomorphism. The decoupling should create, for the benefits of those who adopt these conducts, a ‘legitimacy façade’, aimed at achieving results only apparently performing.

Purpose – This study has the objective to investigate the role of Islamic culture in marketing because of the large presence of Muslims in the world and, consequently, of the potentialities of this market. This research, considering this introduction, aims to: 1- underline the role of Halal certification in marketing decisions’; 2- identify the most relevant features of Muslims as consumers. Design/methodology/approach – This research is divided into two main parts. In the first one the authors have reviewed some of the most important studies relative to religion and marketing (in particular analysing the relationship between marketing and Islam principles) and those relative to Halal certification. In the second part, finally, this research shows the findings of a preliminary questionnaire administered to a sample of Muslim consumers in Bari, Italy: specifically this questionnaire explores the role and the knowledge of the Halal certification and how their religious principles influence their purchasing decisions. Originality/value – This methodology puts in evidence some important aspects to consider when the target group is represented by Muslim consumers. First of all a large percentage of the sample declared to consider the Islamic religious precepts during the purchasing process, showing that they are fundamental guidelines in their choices; moreover green is the colour they would prefer to identify Halal products. In reference to the Halal certification, data show that it is not much known by Muslims in Bari. The originality of this study lies in the fact that research on religion and marketing has been deepen only by a niche of scholars: religion represent an important cultural factor of peoples so it can have sociological implications also for marketing initiatives. In this perspective this study represents a contribution to understand better Muslims as consumers. Practical implications – The outcomes of the application show that it is essential to study the Islamic culture if marketers want to target Muslim consumers. This market, characterized by a large demand, represents an opportunity for companies in reference to Muslims who live in Western countries. From this point of view the Halal certification could represent an important marketing tool, on the condition that there is a marketing communication strategy, which has to become central to inform consumers, and a deeper survey on the profile of the Muslim consumer, in order to implement marketing initiatives more suitable for them.

Purpose – Knowledge Management (KM) in Innovation process (INNOV), is a powerful engine that drives the company towards competitiveness (INSEAD, 2014; WEF, 2014); however, many small and media enterprises (SMEs) in México, ignore it. So, the aim of the present study is to discover the key factors of KM that are involved in the INNOV, prevailing in the field of software sector SMEs in Guadalajara (SSG), Mexico. Design/methodology/approach – This research is a documental study about KM and how is related as driver on the INNOV; to achieve this, it was designed a questionnaire splitted in two parts: the first one, corresponding to KM that involved (5) factors: KM Leadership (KMLD); KM Capture and Acquisition (KMCA); KM Training and Mentoring (KMTM); KM Policies and Strategies (KMPS); KM Communications and Rewards (KMCR) with 23 total indicators as variables. The second one, INNOV that involved (6) factors: Innovation Value Added (IVADD); Innovation Input Items (IIIT); Innovation Process (INPROC); Innovation Output Items (IOIT); Innovation Performance (IPERF) and Innovation Feedback (IFEED) with 39 total indicators as variables. So, we designed a questionnaire (62 variables), as a measurement instrument based on Likert Scale (1to 5 interval) in order to determine the degree of agreement with well Cronbach’s Alpha confidence (0.8432). We proceeded to do a survey to the total 200 CEOs belonging to the SMEs from SSG. The results were analysed using Structural Equations Modelling (SEM) to find validity and reliability of the structure to discover by the system equations, the underlying variables and their interrelationships. Finally, we found most representative KM variables to drive the INNOV, were: KMCA (0.9095); KMCR (0.8845); KMTM (0.8815); KMLD (0.8780); KMPS (0.8235). Finally we solved the (5) hypotheses finding the relationship between the KM factors and INNOV have significant positive effects. Originality/value – It lies in the design of a construct that identify the underlying KM factors and variables sized according an exploratory and multi-correlational study to drive the INNOV. All the factors and variables were collected from the principal theories about both subjects and jointed in a solid set by SEM to find their respective correlations. Practical implications –This study, shall serve to the SSG to identify what variables and factors from KM, are able to drive the INNOV and get a better place for competitiveness.

Purpose – The globalization of business and education on the one hand, and constant technological development on the other hand, imposes the need for companies to continuously improve the knowledge and skills of their staff. The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) could significantly facilitate and accelerate the development and training of personnel. Using OER employees can gain new knowledge as well as improve their knowledge and skills and to apply them in their work more effectively. The paper aims to provide theoretical and practical insights for the development and implementation of an OER platform for management of academic and entrepreneurial knowledge. Particular attention is paid to the integration of OER with some solutions of the metadata publishing. Design/methodology/approach – Advances in information technology, and especially web technology, have offered many solutions for OER sharing. However, the biggest defect is the weak search ability of these resources on the internet. The amount of resources is increasing every day and users need much more time to find exactly what they are interested in. Because of that, drawing on theoretical studies and practical challenges, the paper deals with the integration of OER platform with some of the solutions for metadata publishing. Metadata should provide greater visibility and availability of resources on the internet. Originality/value – This paper seeks to shed more light on development and implementation of an OER platform intended primarily for academic education but suitable also for use in entrepreneurship. The development and implementation of an effective OER poses several challenges. First, it is necessary to define the objectives and target groups and, in turn the contents which will be published. Second, it is essential to define an appropriate set of metadata that should not be too exhaustive, but sufficient to adequately describe resources. Third it is necessary to explore the available platforms on the market and choose the solution that will largely meet our requirements. Finally it is crucial to adapt existing solutions to our needs. Practical implications – The paper offers a snapshot of some main platforms that are used for OER and point out their benefits and disadvantages. In doing that the study highlights how an OER platform intended primarily for academic education can be adapted for use in entrepreneurship. Moreover the papershows how it is possible to increase the visibility and searchability of resources on the Internet integrating platform for OER and metadata portal.

Purpose – In today’s globalized, networked and fast-changing environment, knowledge became invaluable asset for everyone – students, workers, and organizations. Life-long learning became crucial to the future of our society. In order to foster more effective and collaborative learning and knowledge exchange it is necessary to utilize modern information technologies and services. If used in the right way, information technology can transform and energize educational process, stimulate learning in anyplace and anytime, promote creative thinking, and make better use of existing individual and organizational resources. The rationale of this paper is to introduce the innovative open educational model and supporting software system which is capable to answer the major challenges of modern education. Design/methodology/approach – Although modern web technologies and open educational resources (OER) have great potential to bring new opportunities for learning and knowledge exchange, at the same time, developing successful OER systems is very challenging. Design of an innovative and open learning software environments needs a holistic approach, which comprises specific methodology, software architecture, and various services, applications and tools. This paper describes methodological approach, software architecture, services and features of the innovative software solution, which address important issues that face organizations when designing and implementing OER systems. The modular design and composite architecture enable flexibility in terms of the infrastructure and platform, available services, scalability, and integration. Originality/value – Traditional educational systems cannot completely meet current educational requirements. On the other hand, many of the existing OER and e-learning initiatives didn’t fulfil high expectations. The OER model proposed in this paper provides a novel approach to design and utilization of different cutting-edge technologies that are seamlessly combined to provide flexibility, scalability, personalization, collaboration, content management, searching, and social networking. The proposed OER model and software platform enables creation of agile and adaptable educational ecosystem that can transform the learning experience, and connect individuals, educational institutions and companies. Practical implications – The presented OER software architecture is multi-layered and seamlessly combines various services and technologies that enable creation of integrated and feature-rich open educational environments. It is a flexible, customizable, and extensible software environment that can support various OER scenarios. The new application model and software solution are architected and designed in such a way to provide the following advancements in terms of: alignment, agility, adaptivity, manageability, functionality, interoperability, performance, and security. This enables establishing flexible, adaptable, cost-effective and sustainable OER environment where individuals, educational institutions, companies and government collaborate, create, share and discover learning resources and knowledge.

Purpose – Acquiring of new knowledge is the core process not only in academic, but in entrepreneurial organizations as well. Information technology (IT) offers tools and resources for providing a knowledge acquisition continuum between them. Academic knowledge can be improved with best practice examples from enterprises, while entrepreneurial staff can keep pace with new academic knowledge within the lifelong learning paradigm. Open knowledge resources publicly available on the web play a pivotal role in this approach. In addition to that, Human language technology (HLT) has developed electronic tools and resources for supporting multilingualism in knowledge acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to offer an approach to quality assurance within a multilingual IT supported learning environment. Design/methodology/approach – Following the ‘Case study’ methodology, we used an ongoing project, BAEKTEL (Blending academic and entrepreneurial knowledge in technology enhanced learning) as a ‘polar type’ for the research. The project is aimed at developing a network, and its technology infrastructure, for collecting and sharing open access knowledge assets among various types of institutions, both academic and entrepreneurial, in different countries. For quality assessment of these knowledge assets metrics are needed, often obtained by a set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which express the periodic achievement of operational goals of particular activities in quantitative form. Originality/value – We propose a set of KPIs developed within BAEKTEL that can be used for quality assessment of multilingual open knowledge resources development, publishing and use. These KPIs can be modified and reused by other similar projects according to their specific needs. To make this adjustment easier we grouped the KPIs into several categories and discussed briefly each of them. In addition to that, we offer a template to be used as a guideline for KPI representation, including specific rules for their calculation. Practical implications – KPIs offer a framework for efficient and structured assessment and subsequent improvement of open knowledge resources. Using IT to support acquisition of knowledge assets can result in significant overhead cost related to technology infrastructure, staff time and expertise. While being a large cost driver, the latter is also of key importance for quality of IT supported knowledge acquisition. KPIs can be helpful in preventing inadequate resourcing and financial management, which can compromise the quality of knowledge assets within the knowledge acquisition process. They allow for precise assessment of cost drivers to the management as a means for their minimization.

Purpose – A generic knowledge management process of organization, storage and retrieval of knowledge can suitably be fitted in a digital library. In the digital and knowledge age digital libraries can be used in knowledge management to handle intellectual assets and support knowledge creation. A multilingual digital library either stores content in more than one language or provides multilingual query access to monolingual content. In Serbia 18 of 308 scientific journals regularly published are bi-lingual, with papers simultaneously being in English and Serbian. Bilingual publication of results of international projects is also an increasingly frequent practice. In this paper we present a publicly available multilingual digital library named Bibliša, developed for management, search and the browsing of aligned bilingual text collections. Design/methodology/approach – The approach to the development of the presented digital library was to store its content in a NoSQL-database, with a web tool to enable the use of rich information in the stored text collections. The library content originates from various bilingual sources, with all documents aligned at the sentence level and provided with metadata. In designing Bibliša special attention was given to its component that offers language support, based on bilingual lexical resources and tools, to various multilingual aspects of this library. Originality/value – Users have a high level of flexibility in searching the library content: they can search the library using metadata, or perform full-text search by keywords of their choice. Furthermore, the user’s original query, issued in Serbian or English, can be expanded to the other language, both morphologically and semantically. Thus it offers a novel access to digital content to its users. In addition to that, Bibliša presents an original approach to successful combining of several components: Lexical resources, Library content, Web services and Web interface. Practical implications– Digital library users often need to transform information access into knowledge creation. To that end, Bibliša offers numerous documents from several scientific journals and projects covering various domains. Metadata and full-text search are available within a user-friendly platform, with the possibility for a very high level of search refinement. Bibliša also supports the analysis of concepts and concept structures, identifying terms assigned to concepts, and establishing relations between terms in English and Serbian, which makes it a valuable tool for terminological research.