Purpose – One of the most common governance systems is the family business above all in industries with strong cultural traditions, such as the wine business, but the literature still disagrees on whether such a corporate structure increases performance.Our empirical survey aims to investigate the effect of a long term company culture in terms of a firm’s economic performance and intellectual capital. Design/methodology/approach–Using a quantitative research approach, the survey tests a panel dataset of Italian wine companies, developing the statistical model of parametric correlation to verify the relationship between some performance indicators with a set of variables, such as the year of foundation of the company, as well as single aspects of corporate governance. Originality/value –This methodology results in a deep analysis of the wine business, which is one of the most stable industries in Italy. We found some industry-specific peculiarities. One is the family buy out strategy implemented recently by several wine companies. That feature, often moving the companies out of the family business, could also be threatening the terroir inspiration. Secondly, we found a large presence of cooperatives within the main Italian wine companies, which are non-family entities, but are made of several family firms working in joint cooperation (a mixed family/non-family governance model). Practical implications – The survey represents an empirical support to fill the limited empirical evidence existing on wine industry value creation in relation to the corporate governance structure. The research findings support the hypothesis that a family firm could add value over the generations through generating an internal cumulative knowledge process and a strong brand image. The main implications are that a family firm is an efficient governance model. In addition, the presence of a CEO external to the founder’s family is positively correlated to performances, as well as a limited amount of board members.

Purpose – In the last few years scholars have focused on the topic of Intellectual Property. In this perspective, many international surveys show that the economic contribution of copyright-based industries is becoming increasingly important. In this way the study aims to analyse the methodology used in a many surveys on the evaluation of economic contributions of copyright-based industries in the national economy. Finally, the research proposes a new methodology that will support the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the Italian copyright industries in terms of their value added to the country’s Gross Domestic Product as well as their contribution to employment. The research question of this paper is the following: how is it possible to assess the impact of copyright-based industries in the Italian national economy? Design/methodology/approach – The research uses a multi-method approach based on a qualitative and quantitative investigation, with the aim of assessing the economic impact of copyright-based industries in Italy. On the first level we analyse the best international practice used for evaluation of the economic impact of intensive copyright industries. On the second level, using a quantitative method an attempt is made to measure the economic performance of intensive copyright industries with reference to Italy. The selected year for the survey is 2011. This study adopts WIPO’s guidelines “Wipo Guide on surveying the Economic Contribution of the Copyright-Based Industries” and the Ernest & Young study entitled: “1er Panorama des Industries Culturelles et Créatives. Au Couer du Rayonnement et de la Competitivité de la France”. The main source data is collected by statistic databases like Istat, Eurostat and United Nations Statistics Division. The industrial classification starts with the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) suggested in the WIPO Guide and, after the conversion, first in NACE and than in ATECO 2007, we identify the industries and their activities as relevant to copyright-based industries in Italy. Originality/value – This study aims to compare the classification and the methods used for determination of the economic impact of the intensive copyright industries. Moreover, this study attempts to propose an alternative method to assess the economic contribution of copyright-based industries in Italy. Practical implications – This study, presenting the value of the economic impact of this sector on Italian GDP, will make public opinion aware of the importance of this sector on the national economy.

Purpose – This paper reports an experimental application of network visualization to understand the value of visual expression for presenting complex knowledge assets to executive decision makers in order to develop culturally-relevant insights for program development. Design/methodology/approach – In pairs, decision makers used interactive network visualizations to explore complex multi-layer data about relationships among key executives, companies, and financing organizations in the region served by their network facilitation programs. Their experiences were documented using pre- and post- questionnaires, as well as observations and interviews conducted by research team members. Originality/value –The results provide novel evidence of the benefits of a relationship-based visual format to present knowledge assets for evidence-based decisions. Using interactive visualizations, the decision makers aligned views of the data with their individual cognitive mindsets. Working in pairs to complete a joint task, team members made their cultural interpretation and working explicit. Practical implications – The findings support the argument that the value of knowledge assets in problem-solving performance depends on both the format of the data and the nature of the task. Our results support the importance of continual involvement and interaction between data analysts and decision makers; they highlight the importance of considering knowledge assets as value drivers that can support knowledge-based innovation.

Purpose – The growing success of open innovation practices in many firms raises the question of whether such principles can be transferred for the reinventing of public sector organizations. In Schrage’s terms (2004), invention + adoption = innovation. A paradigm based on principles of integrated collaboration, co-created shared value, cultivated innovation ecosystems, unleashed exponential technologies, and extraordinarily rapid adoption is the so-called Open Innovation 2.0. The development of this approach reflects the perception that the innovation process has evolved. The present work explores new ways to study healthcare networks as key tool for innovation creation and spreading, by deploying the emergent paradigm of open innovation. Design/methodology/approach – The present work investigates the impact of clusters, or localized networks involving industrial, academic and institutional players, in the pharmaceutical setting; the aim is to enrich the line of inquiry into cluster-based innovation by applying a social network analysis (SNA) approach, providing new perspectives for recognizing how the set of interactions and relationships in the pharmaceutical context can bring to higher levels of knowledge transfer, organizational learning and innovation spreading. Originality/value – The OI2/SNA combination approach is well suited to be adopted by the “complex” pharmaceutical industry, that in the last decades witnessed the development of new organizational forms, called CROs (Contract Research Organizations), firstly arisen as companies specialized in providing services to support pharmaceutical companies, and become over time capable of providing different business models, characterized by high flexibility and quality of service, cost reduction, quick access to the market, to meet the needs of its customers and ensure an increased efficiency and productivity in the biopharmaceutical industry in constant evolution. Practical implications – In the transition from the early development phase to the more mature phase, firms must build ties to start-ups and new entrants, and/or connect to third-party firms, since the supporting investments made by these firms may determine which of the alternative configurations will become ‘the standard’. During this stage, the relationships across firms are defined and governed by modular interfaces that are, in turn, dictated by product interfaces. The outcomes of the present analysis mean to highlight: (i) a comprehensive perspective for understanding the dynamics of modularity and their implications for innovation networks; (ii) the presence of innovation networks as main mean to promote and support paths of knowledge creation and transfer

Purpose – The main idea of this explorative study is to investigate whether firms’ participation in industry events can explain its innovative performance. More specifically, we look at the series of events participation and account for the fact that firms can often co-participate at the event with their competitors. Moreover, event co-participation with the same competitors can take place at several events. We, thus, focus on embeddedness in the structure of co-participation networks as a factor of innovative performance. Design/methodology/approach – The study relies on archival data collected from several sources (i.e. Web of Science’s CPCI, Derwent Innovation Index, LexisNexis, Amadeus, SDC Platinum). The sample is represented by 470 SMEs operating in electronic industry during the period from 1991 to 2012. We calculated structural properties of each firm position in co-participation networks over time. Multiple models were tested using negative binominal regression. Originality/value – We propose an alternative view to look at the link between the events participation and innovative performance. This view suggest that events are places where firms get valuable knowledge, get signals about their competitors and their progress in patent races and also compete for limited resource of legitimacy. This represents a contribution to the recent discussions about the role and effects of events as temporary clusters on firm level innovation outcomes. Practical implications – Although a lot of money is spent every year on events little is still known on how to get maximum value from them in order to facilitate innovation on individual, regional and ecosystem levels and what are the most effective strategies for event participation. This study aims to help to answer some of these questions.

Purpose – to provide a review of recent literature in the field gender in different aspects because awareness of gender as a central feature of all aspects of everyday life and society is more and more widespread. Appropriately, social science research is reflecting this increasing concern with gender and the field of gender research is dynamic and constantly evolving. Therefore, it is beneficial to step back at times and observe the main themes and patterns that are emerging. Design/methodology/approach – To gather data for our study 629 articles were examined on gender taken from two key journals (Gender, Work and Organisation and Gender in Management) to outline leading issues and themes in recent research between 2005 and 2014. Originality/value – This article contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides a focused analysis of gender research published in these last ten years, allowing researchers to gain a better understanding of the direction of the contemporary women in work and management research. Second, it highlights the emergence of women presence in firm’s corporate governance as a major area of research. Third, it draws attention to key emerging research themes in the literature. Fourth, it notes a growing focus on applied research and signs of a narrowing of the gap between gender research and practice. Practical implications – The major implication is to advance knowledge and practice in the area of gender in management and leadership by focusing upon empirical research, theoretical developments, practice and current issues. The research addresses broad-ranging social issues, not limited to political and legislative decisions, social and educational policy and economic factors, in its consideration of gender in management and leadership. Finally our analysis highlights the emergence of women presence in firm’s corporate governance as a major area of research.

Purpose – We analyze streams of microblogs in terms of both contents and distribution network to create a model of people behavior to be used as an indication for future similar events. We present our methodology and some preliminary results of its application to new movie launches through the analysis of about 2 million downloaded in the US in 72 hours around the events in a 4 months period. Design/methodology/approach – We use a combination of semantic and topological analyses that demonstrated good results identifying conversational patterns to be used not only to assess how people feel about the event but also to develop a better understanding about what people say and how people talk about the event. To obtain the what people say, the methodology and the tools automatically analyze the conversations, with the support of visualization components. The how people talk is addressed detecting patterns in the conversations and evaluating the correlation of those patterns with performance indicators. Structure and contents are analyzed through a set of semantic and topological metrics to assess the content generated in different conversations. Metrics are then collected in a single dataset, which is later used to train and test a data mining model. Originality/value – Several commercial platforms are available to retrieve and assess to some extent this collective judgment through sentiment analysis. Sentiment, however, just measures how the “crowd” feels about a product, but does not offer insight on the structure and the determinants of the customers’ preferences nor provides indications about future behavior. Our challenge is instead to dig deeper into Twitter streams to capture and assess structured contents that are embedded in them through an analytical and quantitative approach. Practical implications – The elicitation of organized content from Twitter streams could support market analysts to achieve a better understanding of consumers’ perceptions and to better manage the reach-richness trade off between qualitative and quantitative market analyses. An additional practical use of our study can be to find a way to ascertain the presence of given semantic patterns in Twitter streams that can be predictive of early market success for a new product.

Purpose – The Internet of Things or, as John Chambers called it, the Internet of Everything represents the networked connection of people, process, data and things together in order to make connections more relevant and valuable than ever before. In order to understand further this intelligent infrastructure, our contribution aims to investigate the Internet of Things by a revised conceptualization of the topic. The investigation has been carried out on a scientific contribution produced in the last twenty years for economic and corporate purpose, in order to comprehend and manage the new opportunities offered to economic activity from Internet of Things . Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a qualitative approach with the inclusion of a single method approach. In this way, following an analysis of existing literature on the Internet of Things we have applied four keywords (Internet of Thing, Communication Internet, Energy Internet and Logistics Internet) in two databases (Google Scholar and Ebsco) to provide a range of scientific contributions to fill out the literature review. Research is developed according to the study of national and international literature. Originality/value – The Internet of Things will connect everything to everyone in a connected network made up of a Communications Internet, Logistics Internet and Energy Internet in a single integrated system. It has been estimated that in 2020 over 200 billion sensor devices will be connected, creating a market size that in 2025 will be between $2,7 trillion and $3 trillion per year. These devices promise efficiency, social and individual benefits through quantification and monitoring of previously immeasurable qualities. Therefore, the analysis of the literature on Internet of Things, in the time frame between 1995-2015, represents the method to fully appreciate the characteristics, opportunities, possible applications, risks and possible issues linked to the topic. Practical implications – The electronic sensors are now ubiquitous everywhere. The connected sensor-based devices create new types and quantities of high quality information, opening up new opportunities to create services that will provide the society, the environment, the economy and individuals with tangible benefits. Our conceptualization aim to contribute to the identification of the main features, application scenarios and correspondent potential applications of Internet of Things, offering new ideas for further analysis.

Purpose – The main objective of this system is to suggest the right and suitable resources, people, groups and activities within OPENNESS platform to the end users to personalize and recommend the right information[Resnick97], items and services to the end users, based on their implicit and explicit preferences. OPENNESS is the main outcome of the italian research project VINCENTE (A Virtual collective INtelligenCe ENvironment to develop sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship ecosystems) and is an Enteprise Social Software for knowledge workers whose aim is to connect users that share their knowledge creating and finding solutions and new services for young innovative entrepreneurs and already existing SMEs. As described in [Elia2014] the four pillars of the OPENNESS platform are people, activities, resources and actions. The actions represent the means to link the other three pillars among them and to connect the communities, the knowledge base, the achieved objectives and the completed/uncompleted activities. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper we present a new implicit personalization and recommendation approach, based on a hybrid system, built on top of an arithmetical model, a semantic network, a distributional semantics context and time aware recommender [Musto2012, Basile2015] and a goal-oriented model in order to infer relationships with other user groups and behavioural patterns. Originality/value – This methodology puts in evidence how the knowledge about interests, preferences and goals of a user is the basis of the concepts of recommendation and personalization. In a collective intelligence environment we can extend the user profile information for profiling system with additional data that comes with the collaborative environment, like the group the user belongs, what or who the users follow and like, what a user is talking about more. The audit log of the platform is the sensing feature of the recommender, is the sensor that listens to the resource social life and analysing it, the system in able to provide the most suitable resources, activities and groups to join. Practical implications – The hybrid system proposed in this paper, goes beyond the individual systems that deal only with recommendation or practical reasoning by exploiting the potential that their integration ensures. The system is able to work even on small data volumes or without any explicit input from the user (thanks to the configurable weights available for user actions) and on inferences made by exploiting the cascade of inferences triggered by the implicit profiling system. We need to consider that PRACTIONIST (a framework for developing agent systems according to the Belief-Desire-Intention model as described in Morreale2006), the semantic network and the recommendation algorithms CASPERI and STARS taken individually or even by their sub-components, can still be used in a modular way for working on their specific field of application.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze families’ role in women entrepreneurial experience and to describe different possible involvement of birth or marriage family in women entrepreneurs’ activities. The reason for this study stems from the fact that micro-enterprises are key drivers of economic growth, and that women entrepreneurs are key developers of these businesses. So it’s important to know factors affecting their existence and their success or failure. Our aim is to describe some typical woman-family relationship profiles, characterized by families playing a central role in influencing female firms’ choices, behaviors and activities, in positive or negative ways. Design/methodology/approach – We address the research question adopting a qualitative research approach based on multiple case studies (Yin, 2009). Case studies are particularly suited to look at the meaning of the experiences of people, as it is a research strategy particularly suitable to examine in depth current events of real life. Data collection is based on direct interviews (McKenzie, 2007) with Italian women entrepreneurs, through a semi-structured questionnaire (Qu & Dumay, 2011), guided by a checklist. Originality/value – This analysis help to better focus one of the key issue of women’s life when they try to balance family life with their work and their professional aspirations. This means that in order to support women entrepreneurship is essential to address this issue. Finally, it’s important to know and understand the role of family in women entrepreneurial experiences in order to clearly interpret the reasons of women-owned businesses success or failure, as family ties will inevitably have an impact on their performances. Practical implications – The analysis presented in this paper shows the existence of an unbreakable bound between female entrepreneurs and their families. Under a methodological profile, the main conclusion of our analysis is that female entrepreneurial experiences – women’s choice to become an entrepreneur and characteristics of their businesses – cannot be truly understood if attention is not paid also on family dimension. This latter aspect underlines a very profound difference between the entrepreneurial experiences of men and women, as it’s very difficult to find similar situations when men entrepreneurs are analyzed.

Purpose: The topic of gender diversity is assuming greater importance not only for regulatory reasons. In credit cooperative field, the presence of a gender diversity can qualify among the mutual aims and social sector should pursue. With reference to cooperative banks, the work aims to verify whether board gender diversity increases the creation of value for stakeholders, in terms of stakeholders global value added (shareholders, employees, customers, regulators, community and external environment). Design/methodology/approach – We propose an econometric approach based on OLS regression model; the econometric model adopted to test our research hypothesis take into account three dependent variables in order to measure the amount and the distribution of value created by each cooperative bank, like Global Value Added Index, HHI Index and GINI Index. Regarding the regressors in order to express the bank governance profile, the choice of variables is based on the results of the studies relating to bank governance-performance. Our model takes also into account other macro-economic control regressors. The model is tested on a sample of Italian cooperative banks. Originality/value – Previous studies on board gender diversity in cooperative banks are particularly limited as a result of limited information and opacity of this field. The existing studies are limited to analyses of the effects on performance of the separation between ownership and control or of the corporate and governance structures, neglecting the dynamics of gender diversity; recently, some authors have investigated the relationship between the composition of loan portfolios and the structure and membership of the boards of cooperative banks in Spain, without however considering the board gender diversity. Our work allows you to expand the knowledge on the issue of governance of cooperative banks. Our study proposes some indicators to assess the social and mutual performance of cooperative banks; it puts in evidence if board gender diversity may improve the amount and also the equity distribution of the value creation process to stakeholders’ cooperative banks. Practical implications – The outcomes of the paper may indicate possible best practices with respect to bank governance in bad economic times. So the gender diversity in board cooperative bank may contribute to support better business performance and, specifically, the bank’s ability to create and distribute finance customers characterized by a lower credit risk. Based on these results, some managerial implications are proposed.

Purpose – The aim of the research is to examine the extent and the quality of gender diversity disclosure and its impact on the firm’s financial performance. In the international arena some organizations have enacted several frameworks and guidelines in order to provide an operational guidance for the disclosure of non-financial information, in particular on social and governance issues, such as the gender diversity. Giving the growing interest on these issues, the main research objectives are: 1) an overview on the gender diversity disclosure both in terms of mandatory and voluntary reporting; 2) a comparison of the gender diversity information disclosed in Annual Reports (2009) and in Integrated Reports (2013) of a sample of South African listed companies. Design/methodology/approach –. We developed a Gender Diversity Index (GDI) based on the items required by the principles and guidelines issued by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI G3, 2006 and GRI G4, 2013). The items regarding gender diversity refers to employment, occupational health and safety, training and education, diversity and equal opportunity and equal remuneration for women and men. This disclosure index is used in some bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses, to investigate the following research question, i.e. whether and to what extent, GDI affects the firm growth and performance. Originality/value – This research may contribute to the existing literature in regard to three different fields: 1) the studies on the field of non-financial information disclosure, in particular on Social and Governance issues and their impact on the emerging financial markets (Cormier et al., 2011; De Klerk et al., 2012); 2) the studies on the field of corporate governance disclosure focused on compliance with the issues required by the Corporate Governance Codes (Nalikka, 2009; Colaco et al., 2011; Ntim et al., 2012; 3) the studies on the field of gender diversity focused on the role of women in the board of directors and senior managers and on their influence on firm’s financial performance. Practical implications –.The research could provide useful tips on how to disclose the non-financial information on gender diversity in corporate reporting and how these items can influence the financial performance. Limitations of the research carried out: 1) size of the sample and 2) analysis focused on only country, South Africa. In addition Integrated Reporting is at an early stage, in fact there is a lack of referral guidelines and the role of accountants in the preparation of this new report is difficult and crucial.

Purpose – Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are computer-based 3D virtual worlds where users can meet and interact with each other in order to perform effectively collaborative work [1]. CVEs are increasingly used in many areas: eLearning [2], eEntertainment [3], eMarketing [4], cultural heritage [5], eMeeting [6], and entrepreneurship [7]. Currently, the development of the 3D environment often lead designers to define action/interaction rules on the basis of the environment facilities offered by it. Then it is needed a design approach, supported by a suited architecture, that let the designers focus the attention over the goals that the collaborative session is aiming. Design/methodology/approach – We propose an ICT X3D compliant architecture that allows the design and automatic generation of collaborative session for multiple virtual environments. We have been driven by the need to capture all the relevant abstractions embodied in CVEs for several domains, particularly the entrepreneurial domain. .Domain experts can design 3D collaborative experience without any CVE and technological skill because of the choice to use the Theater Metaphor [8] to abstract the CVE concepts. We introduced the concept of modeling primitives, used by different authoring profiles, which are involved in distinct phases of the design process: training designer, trainer/domain expert, CVE engineer. Originality/value – Comparing our contribution with the state of the art, we can affirm that new is the proposal of a system to generate collaborative sessions compliant with different virtual environments. The many advantages that we can demonstrate are: expressiveness to capture all of the collaborative features needed to support the creative processes of the entrepreneurs of the feature; semi-formality to facilitate the establishment of a common ground between designers of entrepreneurship platforms and CVEs engineers, and guidance to enable non-experts to cope with all the relevant aspects of a 3D virtual world. Practical implications – The growth of CVEs for entrepreneurship (but also for other domains) calls for new concrete tools that enable domain experts and engineers to model and keep under control the design complexity unleashed by technologically heterogeneous 3D virtual worlds. Two characteristics of our conceptual approach help designers during the modeling phases: abstraction (the metaphor) and separation of concerns (model views). By this ways, trainers and start up incubators in general are free to model the formative experience for the entrepreneurs of the future, designing its objectives and concentrating on the method, without the pain on facing with the technological details.

Purpose – A key task in many Collective Intelligence systems is to represent people and resources in some computational form that is general enough to accommodate different needs and diverse sources of information. Also, it should take into account the inevitable imprecision deriving from the necessity of representing complex phenomena in feasible ways. The purpose of our work is to define an abstract model for representing both users and resources with the main features of generality, adaptivity and capability of handling imprecise information. This model is called Fuzzy Information Filter (FIF). Design/methodology/approach – A FIF is based on the homogeneous description of users and resources in terms of fuzzy metadata, i.e. attributes whose values are defined in terms of fuzzy sets. Metadata define elementary filters, which can be combined in order to define composite filters that could better represent complex profiles. Furthermore, both elementary and composite filters can be adapted to incoming data by means of learning rules based on Possibility Theory, eventually relaxed to comply with specific application needs. Originality/value – The adoption of metadata to represent resources in an homogeneous way makes possible the use of the proposed model within semantic web applications. The use of fuzzy sets to define metadata enables imprecise assignment of values to attributes coming from subjective judgments, perception-based knowledge, etc. When a resource is given, the application of a FIF assesses how much the resource is compatible with the information stored in the filter. The resulting degree can be used to rank resources, e.g. with respect to the interests of a user. This approach could be exploited to attenuate the problem of information overload in large repositories of resources. Furthermore, the technology of fuzzy sets makes FIF models intelligible to analysts and inclined to integration with expert knowledge. Finally, the possibility of automatically adapting filters using incoming data enables the realization of personalized and adaptive systems. Practical implications – FIF models can be applied to represent user profiles in personalized applications where the use of fuzzy sets is a competitive advantage, as in personalized e-learning systems, recommendation systems, etc. More advanced applications could profit of the peculiar representation of profiles in terms of complex filters to produce, for example, clusters of people with a similar profile. On the overall, FIF introduces flexibility and adaptivity in web-based applications that use social networks and resources to expose intelligent behaviors.

Purpose – In the changing business environment, organizational capability to create innovation can be considered as a prerequisite to sustain its growth. Therefore, it becomes important for both academics and practitioners to examine all drivers (tangible and intangible) of innovation process. In researching the linkages between intellectual capital (IC) and innovation, it is widely accepted that IC is associated with organization’s innovative performance. Nevertheless, traditional assessment of innovation performance does not usually tackle IC and knowledge issues. For that reason, this paper presents an empirical analysis of the effect of different IC categories on various types of innovation performance. The main objectives are to understand the role of IC in different aspects of companies’ innovation performance better and enable companies to capture as much of innovation potential as possible in order to capitalize IC for innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on survey data, collected in Serbia during 2014. The survey included 78 Serbian companies with at least 100 employees. The companies were diverse with regard to ownership structure, industry and geographic location. Seven IC categories were analysed (human, structural, internal relational, external relational, renewal, entrepreneurial, trust) in terms of their effect on five different types of innovation performance (innovation in products/services, processes, management practices, marketing practices, business models). Correlation and linear regression analyses were used to identify correlations between aforementioned measures and significant influence of IC stocks on different types of innovation performance. Originality/value – It is well-accepted in the relevant literature that IC encompasses three interrelated categories: human capital, structural capital, and relational capital. However, to explain the linkages between IC and innovation better, the following new IC dimensions were added: renewal capital, entrepreneurial capital and trust capital, which could be especially influential for innovation. This study is original also in examining the linkages between IC categories and different innovation performances to identify the most significant IC elements for various aspects of innovation. Practical implications – The outcomes reveal potential and barriers within IC, crucial to different aspects of innovation performance. In this way, this study enables deeper understanding of intangible drivers of various types of innovation and highlights possibilities to foster intangible innovation potential. Finally, our findings help the managers to capture more innovation potential, facilitate and capitalize IC in process of innovation and improve different types of innovation in Serbian companies.

Purpose – As the global market conditions become progressively more volatile and unpredictable, public and private organisations are increasingly pressured to rely on innovation and adaptability as crucial sources of sustained performance. Our study investigates the still underexplored link between organisational knowledge assets and contextual ambidextrous learning. Specifically, we study how different configurations of knowledge assets – also called intellectual capital architectures – influence an organisation’s ability to simultaneously pursue knowledge exploration and exploitation. Methodology – We tested our model on a large hospital of about 250 beds and 35 wards located in the northern part of Italy. We surveyed health professionals by means of a structured questionnaire and also employed objective data in order to measure our outcome variables. Selected respondents included head physicians and assistants. Collected data were analysed using structural equations modelling (SEM) methodology in its PLS form and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Originality/Value – We propose and empirically explore the relation between intellectual capital architectures and organizational ambidexterity. In so doing we contribute to the debate concerning how organizations can simultaneously pursue both knowledge exploitation and exploration giving birth to ambidextrous learning processes. Also, by conciliating two bodies of literature that come from organizational learning and intellectual capital theory, our study extends the current understanding of the relationships between knowledge management activities and continuous improvement in healthcare. Practical implications – Our study might have implications for managers of healthcare organizations in that it sheds first light on the responsibility hospital managers have to promote current practice improvement through a set of interventions aimed at increasing healthcare organisations’ intellectual capital.

Purpose – Within the dynamic capability approach of the resource/knowledge-based view in strategic management we develop a research model, which delineates how innovations can be fostered through managing human resources (human capital) and organisational learning (structural capital). Design/methodology/approach – – We use structural equation modelling in AMOS for testing our hypothesized research model with a data base of the German economy (n = 1942). Originality/value – The empirical results of SEM indicate that strategic human resource management positively influences the relationship of human resources (Human Capital) and organisational learning capability (Structural Capital). The latter positively effects innovative outcomes directly and fully mediates the effect of human resources on innovative outcomes. Practical implications – Our inquiry calls for a strategic alignment of human and knowledge management practices in order to employ and develop organizational knowledge for continuous learning and innovations on the basis of human resources.

Purpose – In step with the increasing importance of patents in today’s economy, academic contributions have focused more and more on tools and practices that firms can adopt in order to fully extract patent value. This literature stream, called “strategic patent management”, has never been subject to a systematic review. Thus, in order to do so, we adopted two bibliometric techniques that allow us to identify its structure, highlighting in particular research subfields that received more attention from scholars and the ones that could benefit from a deeper investigation. Design/methodology/approach – After selecting main papers focused on “strategic patent management”, we tested whether these articles form a coherent body of literature analysing the patterns of citations among them. Then, based on the similarity of bibliographic coupling profile, papers were grouped into homogeneous factors, that we labelled “patent value”, “competitive and technological landscape” and “strategic decision”. Finally, each factor has been described and discussed. Originality/value – Re-organizing and systematizing the different contributions on the topic of “strategic patent management”, we contribute to reduce the risk of further developing a quite fragmented literature. In addition, bibliometric techniques, thanks to their quantifiability and objectivity, allow to avoid potential subjective biases Practical implications – Revising patent management practices, methods and strategies can provide useful insights to practitioners that can apply them in order to improve firm competitive advantage.

Purpose – Our paper aims at investigating how country culture affects firms’ innovative performance. While many contributions are given on the effect of national culture on countries’ innovation, the effects of culture on firms’ innovation performances has not been explored so far. Our study aims at filling this gap, by investigating how culture affects both firms’ innovation capability and innovation rapidity. Design/methodology/approach – The research employs a quantitative methodology based on non parametric correlations analysis between Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and firm’s innovative performances. We focus on technological innovation, and limit the analysis to the five Hofstede’s dimensions, which are usually employed in similar studies, that is: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and long-term orientation. We measure the correlation between each dimension, and three main indicators of firms’ innovation performances: the number of international patents (absolute, and relative), the distribution of patent, and the patents’ growth ratio, so to consider both firms’ innovation capability, and rapidity. Originality/value – Our paper gives an original contribution to the entrepreneurial culture approach. Most of the studies focus on the impact of national culture on innovative performance at a country level, and consider how cultural dimensions impact on national innovation, usually measured as the amount of national patents or as the R&D expenses per capita. Our paper focuses instead on firms, and investigates how cultural dimensions impact on firms’ innovation performances, and more specifically on firms’ capability to innovate, and on the rapidity of the innovation process. Practical implications – By evaluating how cultural dimensions impact on innovation, managers may decide in which countries to relocate their R & D activities or with which companies to cooperate to innovate. Policy makers can understand which cultural dimensions affect innovation in order to define their policy, and leverage the values, which have a positive impact on local firms’ attitude towards innovation, and on their inclination to protect their innovations.

Although not a new concept, intrapreneurship is still of little spread in businesses and in the academy. Therefore, the object of this article is to clarify the contributions that intrapreneurial professionals can bring to organizations and businesses. For this, a theoretical study of descriptive nature was conducted, based on literature review. The conclusion was that the main contribution that the intrapreneurial professional can bring is innovation, as well as strategic renewal, revitalization of business performance at the organizational level, increase in corporate value, optimization of benefits to stakeholders etc. However, in order for the intrapreneurship to emerge naturally it, is essential that such a concept be made part of the culture of the organization, thus forming the triad: culture, entrepreneurship and innovation. Finally, we infer that the intrapreneurship applied to organizational practice can become an important competitive advantage for organizations.