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 – 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.

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 – 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.

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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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.

So often the discussion centres around is KM working? Isn’t it time to ask that question? Evidence in Case studies can help not polarise discussions but create an empirical viewpoint that it needs repair, tweaking and perhaps rethink..This article provides an overview and attempts to provide evidence on the state of affairs of KM. objectives, goals attained with some benchmarking. There is hope in creating the context of organisations that have successfully implemented complex knowledge management programmes and lessons that have been learnt.. There was and still is the belief that knowledge is stored on hard drives, books, libraries, learned people and is piece meal shared to prevent an erosion of power! The Cases represent one in Disaster Management and the other in Real Estate. Disaster as always is unable to manage its damage control and several pieces that otherwise function seem to fall apart. Real Estate has its complexities in variables that are ever changing.A Model that is seamless and can be used in any business that sees itself as a service will amply summarise this in terms of representation. The success and failure factors show how the paradigms of links and being apart with evidence are a conjoint. Purpose The purpose is to help create acceptable parameters and a set of models that will determine the success and failure case studies in Knowledge Management and its governing principles. Design/methodology/approach We have conducted publication research, conduct interviews, used other research methods and included both present and historical information. We also chose ISO awarded firms to look at empirical data. We adopted some existing models that are used Originality/value This methodology puts in evidence models of predictability, assessment and evaluation to gauge the purpose, objectives and outcomes of KM action plans, research studies and Business strategies that would emerge accordingly Practical implications The outcomes of the application is to isolate intuitive factors and base decisions for KM best practices to determine the winning combination of success factors using case method approach and deriving roving factors, variable factors and fixed

Purpose – The article’s purpose is to review and classify the recent body of literature concerning the potentially beneficial effects of arts’ on management. We differentiate modalities of arts’ expected influence on management and build a typology of anticipated effects of exposing management to arts. By identifying the desired results of art and management merger, we pinpoint the pressing shortcomings of the latter. Methodology/Approach – It is a speculative paper based on the qualitative analysis of literature. The paper analyzes the explicit and implicit meanings of terms and the context of their usage. Paradoxes, equivocations and contradictions are being exposed and discussed. Originality / Value – The emerging field of art and management gathers a lot of valuable insights stemming both from academia and from business practitioners. The growing body of knowledge, however, lacks conceptual clarity; omnipresent equivocations prevent the development of the field and its move to the next level. We claim there are three modalities of influence that art is expected to exert on management. First, exposure of the realm of management to arts is believed to produce direct benefits. Art here is believed to be an „active ingredient”, which should by itself positively influence managerial process, managers or managed institutions. Second, art is believed to serve as an analogy that brings about insights about what management is (descriptive analogy) or should be (normative analogy). The third way of harnessing arts to managerial improvements is by treating it as a catalyst: art is added to an ongoing process in order to accelerate or facilitate it. Researchers and practitioners urge various expectations about art applied to management. We classify the main effects of exposing management to art and identify the assumptions about art connected with each effect respectively. Practical Implications – Deeper and subtler understanding of the art-management link will help business practitioners better respond to the uncertainties they face and chose the forms of Arts-Based Initiatives that better match the particularities of their situation.

Purpose In this study we discuss ‘learning through work’ in the context of the co-creative practices of arts-based initiatives (Schiuma, 2011) within a form of encounter called ‘Learning Jam’ in work based practice (Pässilä, & Oikarinen, 2014). This leads to the main research question; what are the ingredients of this creative, transformative learning space? Design/methodology/approach The discussion of polyphonic understanding is grounded in one of a series of Learning Jam events, which were co-created by practitioners and academics exploring the value of their own work based practice through the lenses of arts based initiatives (ABI’s). The unit of analysis in the study is the evaluation process undertaken through the frame of Schiuma´s (2011) Arts-Value Matrix. Originality/value The central idea of the matrix is that the potential effects of arts-based initiatives in an organization relate both to people and to organizational infrastructure. In this context learning as a part of knowledge management is conceptualised in the broad sense of collaborative action in which ABI’s are coupled with research-based theater (Pässilä, et al., 2013; Adams & Owens, forthcoming 2015) to create forms of work-based learning with transformative potential. Teaching in this context demands reflexive and dialogical capabilities for those who hold the role of organizing and facilitating spaces for learning and transformation. We discuss this by Rancierre´s critical theory. Practical implications When analyzing the Learning Jam we realised the need to question the relationship between ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ as traditionally configured, and the parallel relationship between ‘performer’ and ‘audience’. We take these questions further by discussing equality as a way to create a space when the main idea is to lean on to something which is not yet. Reflection and imagination are underlined as relevant elements of learning through work. In the conclusion the back story of this type of learning and the pedagogical philosophy on which it is based is framed.

This paper and the associate conference presentation review the initial findings of a PhD study in Professional Education, a mixed method, interdisciplinary project which aims to contribute to research on interdisciplinary pedagogy related to both teaching and enabling creativity. The research focuses on Creativity and the Creative Industries, the final module of City University London’s Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (MICL), an interdisciplinary Higher Education (HE) Masters designed for mature students with managerial experience. The module’s teaching includes collaborative, experiential arts workshops (eg drama, classical music, improvisation and art) to support the students’ group and individual artistic projects and final reflective journal and report. The paper outlines these theoretical propositions which inform the study’s data analysis (Yin, 2008, p.18): That the module’s learning processes are artistic, unfamiliar, disruptive, embodied experiences That the students create an applied understanding of their learning through reflection and personal narrative That critical incidents in the students’ personal narratives will be expressed through metaphors of personal and professional identity That both narrative (eg James and Brookfield, 2014, p.106, citing Kűbler-Ross’s (1997) Change Curve) and personal change models (eg Heron, 1992, p. 122) will usefully inform the analysis.

For decades, education has generally been viewed as an effective instrument for social mobility. Education has always taken different forms in time and space, chasing and pursuing goals and objectives, crossing human societies. Structured around their actors – the apprentice and the master; the student and the teacher; the trainee and the trainer – education as a socially constructed product is influenced by social changes, while its embodiments can influence directly in those mutations. Those changes are thus a consequence of ideological, material and social conditions in which education is produced and the role that society commits it in the construction of the society itself, defining it and giving it its own rationality, structuring and justifying even their existence: education as a form of acquisition, development and transmission of knowledge changes individual and collective thinking and acting, to the service of the development of individuals and societies. In the current “global and totalitarian society” (Ramonet, 1997), characterized by mass production and mass-enjoyment of the results of productive activity, the function of “school” has changed. Today it is expected that the school not only contributes to the development of citizenship but most particularly that “produces” socially useful citizens, i.e. citizens that are able to enter into the labour market and respond to requests that it imposes. Education must produce individuals able to be in a constant state of employability. However, in Portugal, since the late 2010s the situation is the reverse and the country faces an increasing number of university graduates who do not get any recognition by the market and which thickens the ranks of unemployed in the country. Simultaneously, many thousands of higher education graduates, including doctoral ones, seek emigration in the achievement of its objectives: have adequate work to their academic qualification, leading to an exodus of highly skilled labour. Based on official data on unemployment of graduates, including by scientific areas and ages, and the highly skilled emigration, this article questions the employability of different scientific areas of higher education and discuss the educational and economic policies that generate a real brain drain in Portugal in the last decade.