Working in collaborative groups and teams now represents the practice predominantly adopted by organizations aspiring to create innovation and to remain competitive (Korde & Paulus, 2017; Paulus, 2000). However, this trend towards boundless collaboration at work is harshly criticized by a theory called the “New Groupthink”, which argues for a resulting discrimination of introverted employees (Cain, 2012, 2013). According to this perspective, introverts suffer from working conditions that inhibit individual and quiet work. The theory consequently argues that the current shift towards limitless collaboration overall elicits lower creativity and achievement levels due to the resulting suppression of introverts (Cain, 2013). Provided that the “New Groupthink’s” claim is reasonable, this inefficiency hence depicts a relevant issue for companies by reason of creativity and innovation’s decisive stake in todays’ turbulent environments. This paper examines the existing performance gap between introverts and extraverts in group brainstorming. This research aims at assessing whether hybrid brainstorming can equate introverts with extraverts by balancing their idea contribution and therewith lower the effect theorized by the “New Groupthink”. It is intended to suggest solutions to both introverts, with regards to enhancing their stake in brainstorming, and companies, with regards to how to apply this ideation method in its most efficient way. The research at hand is of quantitative nature, whereas the methodological approach selected constitutes an experimental study. The sample consists of a total of 87 business students; personality types are differentiated according to the introversion-extraversion dimension. Based on the obtained results, inferences can be made about the effectiveness and suitability of the traditional and hybrid brainstorming methods considering the proportionate idea-contribution and post-brainstorming satisfaction levels of the two personality types. Results indicate that applying hybrid brainstorming is suggested to be suitable for both introverts, who feel omitted in traditional brainstorming, and companies, to better include introverts’ ideas and to enhance overall results. The study adds original contributions to the creativity and brainstorming literature by providing first suggestions of how to counter the “New Groupthink” effect. It emphasizes the need to further explore the scarcely researched factor of personality in brainstorming and to search for solutions to strengthen the contribution of introverts. Further studies are required to elaborate on the hybrid methods’ potential with regards to the empowerment of introverts in ideation.

The aim of the paper is to analyse how innovative financial tools can contribute to the development and sustainability of the territory and his local products. This research is supported by a qualitative research of case study (Yin, 2014). Thus, the paper applies the CAOS model of micro-entrepreneurship by Paoloni (2011) with a few changes which make it possible to describe all variables that involve the company in a certain economic context. Using such model, we’re able to share some factors and to classify different types of connections, identifying several kinds of existing relations. Into economic context of Sardina, a little island in south west of Italy, where there are more than 60,000 agricultural enterprises, of which 60% shepherds, there is a constant difficulty in obtaining funding. This difficulty very often is related to the uncertainty of seasonal activity. Our work show how the use of innovative financial tools can encourage access to credit capital, even non-banking, of SME operating in the agrifood sector, and then how these innovative tools can promote the development and sustainability of the territory and his local products. This could be possible through the aggregation and cooperation of firms The paper also shows the active role of local authority “Regione Sardegna”. Following the case study, also allows a possible valuation of local products (Pecorino cheese) as, through a rotary pledge, they are the basis of the guarantees offered to the subscribers of the bond. Our work contributes to expansion of studies on the innovative financial tools for the promotion and development of the local agri-food heritage. This can be possible, on the one hand, through the growth of private local companies by the marketing of local products, and then, through the financial sustainability of the public authority that indirectly will see increased tax revenue deriving from the production of local activities. The future research will be focused on the analysis of the specific economic results of the financial operation described here. Furthermore, will be focused on possible similar cases with the aim to development local product through innovative financial tools The limit of our research are related to the short observation time since the finance instrument was issued, only in 2018. Furthermore, another limit for our research is the narrow territorial base of observation.

The knowledge and the cultural heritage concerning traditional recipes based on local and ancient crop varieties are very diffused in small rural areas and in local communities, in particular in Italy. This kind of knowledge, if well recognised and documented, can contribute to the sustainable development of territories in which it developed through oral transmission of local people. The traditional knowledge concerning food and foodways, that can be interpreted in terms of intangible heritage asset of the territory, in this paper is studied using the logic of Knowledge Transfer (KT). In fact, a crucial step for the preservation of the knowledge for future generations is the involvement of local communities, in order to elicit and to track the information of which they are custodians. The final goal is to engage them in the management of food knowledge for the sustainable economic, social and environmental development of their territory; in other words to preserve the social capital for future generation. The objective of the paper is to conduct a survey, in a very specific territory, that is the “Bio-Distretto della Via Amerina e delle Forre”, in Central Italy, in order to gather information concerning the actual awareness of local people and organizations concerning their food heritage and the values (cultural and economic) they attribute to it. The information retrieved will then be used as a basis for the preparation of a theoretical framework of valuation and management of food heritage through citizen engagement in other areas/organizations. The survey will have the structure of a questionnaire, used to elicit awareness, feelings and wishes about the food heritage and their desired management for the development of the territory, in order to achieve information about cultural and economic values of this heritage. In particular, for the latter type of values, a Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) will be used. The expected result in terms of Knowledge Management and Transfer will be the development of a tool that can be interpreted as a Participatory Rural Assessment (PRA) method. Indeed, the mix of surveys and public engagement techniques aimed at understanding the values and knowledge that local populations in Bio-Districts wish to sustain allows an informed and communitarian preservation of food intangible heritage.

Over the last years, the worldwide agribusiness sector is facing challenges due to globalization, the increased customers’ quality requirements in products and the development of new technologies. So, actors are looking for new business models able to guarantee competitive advantage in facing the global companies, to expand their operations, to improve the production processes as well as to develop new consumer market niches. A successful approach in order to support agri-businesses growth and competitiveness, helping them achieving higher performance is based on business network contracts. This organizational model enables networked agribusiness firms to operate on markets with the competitiveness of a medium-large firm without sacrificing their autonomy and flexibility. The paper investigates the phenomenon of Italian business networks contracts involving firms operating in the agricultural and agrifood sectors and which are localized in Southern Italy, as it results from the public database of RetImpresa, the dedicated Confindustria Agency for business networks in Italy. By combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, the paper, on the one hand, analyzes how many business networks contracts have been formalized in Southern-Italy. On the other hand, the effects on firms’ performance of business networks ‘with legal subjectivity’ (the so called ‘reti soggetto’, according to Law no.134/2012) are analyzed and compared to the ‘contractual’ business-networks ones. The objective is to verify whether the network contract constitutes an effective organizational and production model that is functional to the needs of SMEs active in the various sectors of agribusiness industry or whether it is only considered a duplicate of other forms of collaboration.

Wine is one of the most traditional products with high symbolic value and for some countries in the world is a carrier of community knowledge, embodying immaterial and intangible assets. Furthermore it generates income, employment, economic and social value. Through a review of the various contributions of the research strands, this work aims to highlight what have been, over the years, the most discussed issues, the research areas most investigated and those that have aroused less interest, so that any gaps may emerge in the current academic scenario. To comply the paper aim, a literature searches on Scopus has been conducted, using a set of selected keywords. This work uses a structured literature review (SLR) method proposed by Massaro et al. (2016) as was adapted by Paoloni and Demartini (2016). This paper contributes to extend the international literature through the construction of a comprehensive framework on the wine sector that, starting from the state of the art, highlights the contribution of intangible resources to the sector, as provides different input for future researches and analysis.

The emerging user-centric personal information ecosystem within the data-driven economy offers new opportunities and poses new challenges to organizations that base their business on the collection and use of personal information. In the user-centric ecosystem, the control over personal information is given back to the individuals who, as the information owners, can decide whether, under what conditions and in change for what to disclose their data to trusted counterparts. In this new scenario, organizations should revise their relationship with individuals to make them willing to disclose the information they need. Based on evidences from the economics and psychology of privacy literature, the paper argues that this could be done by involving individuals as coproducers in the value-generating processes that use personal information. Under this strategy, besides economic compensation and personalized services, organizations can leverage the ‘psychological’ benefits deriving from the coproduction experience as further incentives that can enhance the individuals’ willingness to disclose their personal information.

Climate change is the biggest social challenge facing the globalised world. The aim of this paper is to investigate the requirements for governance structures in regional sustainability programmes against climate change. The study is an explorative case study. It is based on a literature review and expert interviews. It also involves the participatory observation of working groups meetings, and a design thinking workshop. In spite of their enormous importance, little is known about the institutional conditions of the regional governance of climate change projects in Germany. For this reason, the research project focuses on the important aspect of networking and governance structures. Consequently, the investigation will contribute to answering the question of which institutional framework conditions can raise the likelihood of climate change projects having a sustainable effect. The outcomes of the application This research has not only practical implications for the single case. The exploration of the critical factors of success also offers other regions important food for thought in shaping their governance structures. In particular, the design thinking process and the business network in the District of Steinfurt offer valuable points of reference.

Knowledge is a strategic tool for public administration. Therefore, knowledge management would affect organizational effectiveness. In the context of the new approaches of public management, especially considering the public value management point of view, knowledge transfer with stakeholders should be the norm. The present study identified a gap in the academic literature in relation to stakeholder management practices and how do public bodies involve their stakeholders in the decision-making processes. The paper proposes several lines of mapping the interactions between public administration and its stakeholders by considering the value attributed to stakeholders, the awareness of their needs and desires, as well as the degree of involvement into the decision-making processes.

Knowledge ecosystems offer an important perspective in studying knowledge management, innovation and value creation across large and holistic communities. Health communities could be defined as such because of their complexity, representation of multiple stakeholder groups, varieties of knowledge, and also individuals, where the ultimate goal is health, as a consequence of patient value creation. The community approach serves the main goal of patient value creation, as it responds to the need for a systematic approach in encouraging patients to play a more active role in health. It is important to integrate patient engagement strategies into all efforts to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of care. Patient value creation includes much more than the clinical communication, and the knowledge domains extend far beyond clinical knowledge. We need to answer, how ecosystems create and deliver value in sustained way (Levit et al., 2013). Based on this problem formulation, with this paper we aim at answering the following research questions: how to manage holistic knowledge across health knowledge ecosystems? what are the main barriers for knowledge sharing and integration for patient value creation? In order to answer these questions, we apply knowledge creating community approach (Paavola, et al 2004), where various stakeholders create and share knowledge of clinical, and social domain, that all together contribute to patient value creation. In order to understand the complex nature of knowledge flows in the health ecosystem, (collection, mapping of knowledge flows, and identification of preconditions for knowledge exchanges and co-creation) we have applied phenomenological approach. We have applied case study method with the research base at Lithuanian Health Science University Hospital, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and associated communities. The research on knowledge creating communities in health from the patient perspective has indicated important tendencies, and knowledge management implications in the field. Qualitative empirical study has revealed a specific knowledge development pattern from the patient perspective – knowledge socialisation and development starts within very close and trusted community members. Trust, validity, reliability and responsibility of knowledge has emerged as a full mediators for knowledge absorption. Thus, health communities and knowledge ecosystems need safe places for “unverified” knowledge in order to ensure that the important trends and unresolved questions are not missed.

Corruption and misconducts, “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (Pope, 2008), are pervasive virus that negatively affects the public lives of many Countries. Given that the 9% of the worldwide GDP on average is represented by health expenditure, healthcare is particularly vulnerable to corruption (Petkov and Cohen, 2016; EU, 2017). Due to the large number of services delivered, Public Hospitals and Local Health Authorities undergo a high risk of misconducts, which could bring not only to a waste of public resources, but also to undermine access to the services, impoverishing their quality and the possibility for sustainable development of countries (Braithwaite, 2013; Neu et al., 2013). Corrupt practices and fraud affect up to 25% of expenditure on medical and non-medical goods (Sorenson and Kanavos, 2011); these increase inequality and determine substantial well-being and value losses (Porter, 2010). Corruption can be expressed by the Klitgaard’s equation (1998): Monopoly plus Discretion minus Accountability. Hence, to limit corruption phenomena an efficient way seems to be increase accountability and transparency by strengthening of internal controls (Christensen and Skærbæk 2007; Fadda et al, 2017). Accordingly, e-Procurement in the public domain can be seen as a tool to support the delivery of public purchasing process, improving efficiency and transparency of transactions (Carayannis and Popescu, 2005; Croom and Brandon-Jones, 2005); Budgeting control system is a powerful tool to align strategies and plans with operational decisions (Garrison et al, 2010), suitable for simultaneous controls in daily management and purchasing decisions (Provenzali, 1991). Therefore, the goal of this work is to understand if it is possible to integrate the simultaneous budgeting-based control system with the e-Procurement procedures (through an ERP software), and how this integration could potentially limit misconducts in healthcare purchases. After a theoretical background about themes of Corruption, e-Procurement and Budget, a single pilot qualitative case study (Yin, 2014) has been conducted. In particular, we developed a qualitative inquiry (Patton, 2002) based on face to face interviews (Said et. al, 2017) with two high-qualified SAP developer-providers. This contribution attempts to clarify how internal controls impact on the “responsibility chain” (roles, responsibility, transparency degrees of discretion) of procurement process in public healthcare, by increasing level of accountability. This paper fosters debate about relationship between corruption and level of internal control system of Healthcare Organization. This would have considerable consequence also for practitioners involved in ERP software development.

Public organisations should contribute to value creation moving towards sustainability as a vision for strategy and action, redesigning trust-based relationships with stakeholders and sustaining governance networks within ecosystems. As organisations seeking sustainability, public organisations should evolve as communities developing strategic, managerial and technological sources to enable and facilitate public value creation within society. Public organisations should achieve sustainability and develop the community adopting a logic service view as strategic choice, strengthening transformational and ethical features of public managers as leaders, and developing the potential of information technology by driving the transition from using technology in government to developing digital, smart, lean and open platforms for value creation, innovation and networking as sources that enable public organisations as sustainable communities.

Cities of tomorrow should evolve as sustainable communities that promote social and economic growth and development, and contribute to creating public value within urban services ecosystems. The aim of the study is to elucidate how cities can identify some pathways to develop the city as sustainable urban community. Cities as sustainable and smart communities should promote continuous innovation within knowledge-based, technological-enabled and learning-oriented society. Cities should select a pathway for sustainability promoting smartness as strategic and cultural vision that helps design and production of citizen-centred services, driving urban organisational networks and cooperation to develop knowledge management and innovation systems. As sustainable communities, cities should select a sustainability-oriented pathway to develop the community, enabling all the stakeholders to actively play a key role to support innovation and urban value creation. Cities should use technology in order to design a human-centered and community-oriented urban strategy for growth and development engaging urban stakeholders in innovation processes and systems, investing in urban intelligence as engines of sustainable development.

This paper sheds light on the disclosure of knowledge transfer (KT) and how disclosure impacts and is impacted by the stakeholders of a public university and its anchored legitimacy. This is a qualitative case study that focuses on an Italian university. A mixed-method approach is adopted, triangulated from different sources. The methodologies used are drawn from active research and, in particular, our study relies on an interventionist approach. KT disclosure is found to be more efficacious than KT reports in anchoring the legitimacy of an institution in its territory. This shows that the nature of the knowledge influences the transfer process. Disclosure must be smoothly adapted to formal or informal KT. Research limitations/implications – In a single case study, our paper provides evidence for the implications of KT disclosure. This study shows the potentiality of disclosure for KT in terms of unlocking and offering new opportunities for relations between universities and territories. In an environment with few studies on the peculiar situation of a generalist university, the paper provides new insight into the importance of KT disclosure for strengthening links with the local community and enhancing legitimacy. This is essential for an anchored institution, and a novel concept of anchored legitimacy is presented.

“Each company has the customers it deserves” said one day a Ceo to his management. This is a very strict statement that forces companies to question the reasons why they have a specific customer portfolio and to distinguish strategic customers from tactical ones. The mapping of the customers, focus of this article, has the dual objective to measure objectively the level of “strategicity” of the customer portfolio and the level of business reciprocity between the company and its customers, in order to appropriately orient the decision processes of the company. In order to achieve the aforementioned dual objective, three sets of information are required: the economic and financial quality of the client, the level of utility of the client for the company and the level of utility of the company for the client. The combination of the two first set of information allows to evaluate the level of “strategicity” of each single customer, that is if the customer is strategic or tactical ad why. The questions to be answered are: how much competitive are the strategic customers for the company? How many customers are at the same time competitive but tactical for the company? The company’s goal is to select strategic customers that are at the same time competitive and useful for the company over time. A second combination between the above strategic level of the customer and the level of utility of the company for the client allows to measures the degree of business reciprocity of the customer relationship. The questions to answer are: how much is strategic the company for the strategic customers? How many are the strategic customers for whom the company is considered tactical? The company’s goal is to be strategic for strategic customers. Each set of information is based on key performance indicators that allow not only to map the customer portfolio in terms of customer strategicity and business reciprocity of the customers, but above all to identify the priority business figures in terms of management decisions and actions and therefore to plan and control the customer portfolio quality and through the latter the economic value creation.

This paper aims to uncover the determinants of University-Industry Cooperation (UIC) from an individual perspective, to identify which entrepreneurs’ characteristics affect the emergence of UIC and, more specifically, affect the selection of cooperation channels. To this purpose, we employed the Corporate Entrepreneurial Intention (CEI) model (Fini et al. 2012), which allowed to assess the effect of both individual and contextual factors in UIC dynamics, whether no previous attempts have jointly considered both types of variables in UIC literature. After applying structural equation modelling techniques to a sample of 130 entrepreneurs in the Region of Campania (South of Italy), our results show that corporate entrepreneurial behaviour is positively related to forms of UIC with an average and high level of complexity

Exploitation and exploration are strongly complementary and both essential for successful innovation, organizational learning, and even organizational survival, although the simultaneously pursuit of both appears to be very difficult. In the literature, several studies focus on the issue of balancing exploration and exploitation at the firm level, while poor attention has been paid to firms’ systems at the territorial level, such as geographical clusters. Based on this premise, the present paper tries to cover this gap by evaluating the effects of the exploration and exploitation on the economic and innovation performances of local systems of firms. An econometric analysis on the 103 Italian Provinces over the period 1999-2015 was performed. Main results show that Italian firms operating in the same province perform on average more exploration in unrelated technological domains than in the case of the same technological area. This behavior is not beneficial in terms of economic performance in the short run, but is conducive of innovation and employment. In the same technological domain, the exploitation of existing knowledge is prevailing among local systems of firms and affects negatively the employment. Finally, the paper aims to contribute theoretically and methodologically, to the scientific debate about the application of exploration-exploitation framework beyond the boundaries of single firms. In particular, results could support i) policy-makers in defining proper and customized initiatives and measures able to boost local economic and innovation growth; ii) academics and scholars in developing comparative studies among diverse geographical contexts, benchmarking analysis and best practices identification at provincial, regional and national level.

A successful integration of migrants in the labour market and in organisations is getting more important based on demographic changes. The central aim of the investigation is to deal with problem fields of the Human Resource Management, which arise by demographic changes regarding migration. Therefore, an explorative qualitative study with human resource managers and diversity representatives of the large DAX companies was conducted. The views of leaders and employees with and without an immigration background regarding diversity potentials in organisation are compared in this study. The results indicate that diversity is important for organisations. Employees have recognised the importance of diversity. Managers have not recognised the seriousness and urgency of cultural diversity and diversity actions. Human resource managers are not able to assess the additional stress of migrants correctly and to consider them in their day-to-day management and diversity actions.

Innovations in Internet Technologies have radically changed the business in Travel industry. A variety of internet technologies, mobile and non (websites, portal, apps), enabled customers to plan and book complete travel solutions at the best available rates. Among the Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), that are web tools to support users from information collection to booking travel products, Dynamic Packaging (DP) is emerging as a key approach. DP, besides providing automated online travel packages, has a conceptual model of a great importance to reflect on the strategic issue of Travel industry: integration. How it emerges from our conceptual analysis of DP models (DPMs), effectiveness of DP depends from travel inter-system and intra-system integration. The first, affects DPM’s capacity of create coherent travel packages, while the latter affects the capacity of providing efficiency in travel. This latter dimension of integration is deepened in this paper presenting a case study. Namely the case study demonstrate how DP conceptual model is effective to integrate independent, private Bus transportation services/providers, operating at the national scale. The relative technology platform is able to provide integrated, multicarrier travel tickets. By leveraging on DPM, then, improvements on the bus transportation services can be achieved, and impacts on the travellers marketing behaviours are expected, such as increasing the bus transport against the private car.

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of entrepreneurial experiences of heads of departments and their impact on the ability to acquire external funds and the commercialization of research results measured by patents. The study is based on data from 208 Austrian university departments and combines data from different sources encompassing the CVs of the heads of departments, the commercial register, funding data and performance data intellectual capital reports. The results show a positive relationship between entrepreneurial experience and the third-party funding and patent output of the departments.

Analysing the entrepreneurial role of universities discussed by scholars, this paper is directed to investigate diversification and multinationalisation strategy of universities through the proposition of a single case study. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to discover the reasons that led our university case study to develop its strategy and the role of its intellectual capital in supporting the chosen strategy. Our case is investigated through Secundo et al.’s (2016) collective intelligence framework for universities. Answering the research question, our findings include why our university case study choses to pursue its business strategy to achieve teaching, research, and the third mission.