The current research is a part of ongoing work aimed to shed light on relationship’ value for woman startup in the crowdfunding context. This paper analyses how intangible resources, as relational capital, can contribute to fundraising during the early stage and, especially, which types of these relations female entrepreneurs must or must not growing to fundraise resources from the crowd. Based on the qualitative approach of the single-case study, the paper, through the CAOS (‘characteristics, ambiance, organization, start-up’) observe all the relevant relationships (cardinal links in first, second, and third types) that can lead the success of the financial operation. The findings show that at least for the early-stage, in the crowdfunding operation, the informal configuration of the relationship established by woman start-up can produce a negative effect on fundraising process. Several implications have been reached. Firstly, for the academic community, this study can contribute to expanding the literature on gender study especially which that focusing its studies on the start-up phase of female company. Secondly for practitioners, because ever more companies, especially in the actual context of the digital age, are oriented toward alternative ways of finance, particularly via internet as crowdfunding. In this way, efficient use of relational capital’ resources could be a value driver to overcome the hard stage of the start-up. Also, again concerning managerial aspects, the model applied (CAOS) allows to observe that the misdistribution of the role can involve the failure of the female startup. The limitation of the research concerns the SMEs (startup) dimension. Analysis of data has been available only through direct interviews with female entrepreneurship. Regard to future perspectives, the present paper represents the second step of “RC and Woman start-up” research mainstream. In the future, the authors will replicate the analysis, by the acquisition of additional data, will investigate which RC factors can promote the success of fundraising operations.

In recent years, several routes have been entered to face the scarcity of financial market liquidity, with the aim of increase access to credit for individuals and micro and medium enterprises (MMEs). In this framework, the application of Islamic banking finance instruments has progressively assumed relevant dimensions, showing to be compatible with the needs of micro entrepreneurs. Moreover, the increasing concentration of wealth of Islamic market is leading western realities to look at the potential arising from collaboration between conventional and alternative markets to decrease inequalities within gender entrepreneurship. Within this context, globalization and digitalization have enlarged market opportunities to empower women financially. Authors examine the socio-economic status of women Shariah compliant financial products to investigate the impact that Islamic micro finance instruments could have to upward mobility of worldwide female entrepreneurship. The objective of this paper is thus to explore viable means for both middle east and western women to manage their wealth from an Islamic perspective. The applied methodology is grounded in academic publications and reports published by authoritative bodies, also relying on cross-sectional data. It is organized in different steps: first, a proper analysis of Islamic finance instruments is in-depth; then, the comparison between traditional and non-conventional financial instruments is shown; and the assessment of women Islamic-backed status is tackled; moreover, the proficiency of microfinance is analysed; finally, succeeding the finance models evaluation trough the application of a balance scorecard system, a SWOT Analysis is mentioned. The approach undertaken appears to be innovative in consideration that Islamic Microfinance is still considered a new market. Thus, a concerted action to expand existing knowledge on the possible advantages coming from the study and complementarity of different financial systems is needed. Indeed, the research represents a deepening in order to assess system potentials. In addition, the high feasibility of such application in different contextual realities would result important for the possible fulfilment of worldwide both Muslim and no-Muslim statused women needs and objectives. The attractiveness of the application is going to be crucial in order to tackle gender gap in financial inclusion. The possibility to overcome the restrictions related to inadequate collateral, insufficient legal status, high transaction costs and the sensitivity of entrepreneurs, proper of Islamic microfinance would possibly allow to overcome interest-based financing products thus permitting women and MMEs to contribute to the re-launch of economies and financial policies.

Improving education quality is crucial for raising human capital. Raising the quality of education system and particularly learning outcomes is useful to know and understanding where we are in terms of learning achievement and what are the action that we need take to improve. Some questions – who, what, when, how, and why – become of central importance for planning National Learning Assessment System. To answer each question and all of them in a coherent way for the multiple contexts we suggest a knowledge governance approach. Clarifying concepts, understanding the links between data, information and knowledge and making them available to different segments of stakeholders requires this holistic approach.

This paper focuses on the Italian public administration that, with its more than 10,000 inefficient data centers, employs at least 30,000 people who are tasked with the maintenance and technological updating of these obsolete infrastructure and with the upkeeping applications (often outdated and on which much more people work) that run on these infrastructures. Yet, there is no measure to empower or even hire Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Security Officers, Cloud Computing Architects, Data Scientists and so on. In the specific case of the Italian public sector, despite Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is rapidly changing our planet, there is a significant ICT specialists’ shortage; the situation is common to other countries but in Italy it is particularly severe due, not only, to the lack of skills but also to the abundance of useless and wrong ones. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ‘Italian digital emergency’ with a specific focus on the public sector and suggest a way to improve the situation in Italy but also in other similar countries through innovative ways of recruiting and training, and with structural reforms, for instance, in the system of education.

The digitalization of the public sector has been implemented through smart technologies, that is digital processes and tools. At local government level, this allows not only to communicate with citizens and provide digital services, but also to collect information generating new knowledge. Smart data and analytics can improve services, foster transparency, promote accountability, as well as improve decision-making, management, and control. The study focuses on the digital transformation of municipalities in Italy. It highlights opportunities as well as critical issues and obstacles for local government digitalization within a knowledge management context. In particular, the timeliness, relevance, and selectivity features of information and control systems seem to be overlooked: digitalization has often induced mere bureaucratic obligations, often made even more ineffective by the digital divide. The paper benefits from national data and the experiences and opinions of managers who generate, manage, and could use digital information at local level. The issues raised by digitalization at local level highlight the need to refine competences about information systems and knowledge management, but also to listen to local requests to avoid fuelling new gaps instead of favouring a homogeneous development at the lower tier of government.

This study examines the relationship between the time students spent abroad, personality traits, behavioural patterns as well as the circumstances during this time and the student’s intercultural competence. The study uses a correlative cross-sectional design. Design and sample: A total of 202 academic subjects were surveyed in a cross-sectional design. The study was conducted between the 01.05. – 01.07.2018 via an online survey tool. The average age was 22 years. Measurements: The survey characteristics of stays abroad such as type and length of the longest stay or the integration into the target culture, further, intercultural competence, social competence and work-related attitudes as patterns of behaviorbehaviour and experience using the “Work-related Behaviour and Experiencing Pattern 44”. This scale assesses work related personality traits and sorts participants to one of four patterns, describing their health behaviour at work. Results: The motivational competence increased after one to five month, the cognitive and behavioral competence was significantly higher after minimum five month. The personality patterns influenced the motivational and metacognitive competences. Having a pattern A or B lead to a lower motivational competence through occupational stays abroad. Further, a S pattern was connected to lower metacognitive competence after a occupational stay abroad or an Au-pair. The results show that for different types of stays abroad and different characters specific support measures are required from companies or universities.

The study aims to explore tensions in an inter-organisational knowledge transfer involving key “Quadruple Helix” actors: academia, regulators, industry, and public or civil society, in the emerging FinTech sector of Bahrain. The collaborative initiatives under a Quadruple Helix configuration bring together a group of actors with dissimilar agendas, to work together and solve complex problems despite their differences. The contrasting nature of the various actors, however, makes these collaborations more vulnerable to tension and conflict. This study provides an understanding of the nature of these tensions, of the reasons why they arise, and of some of the strategies deployed by different organisational actors to address them. In line with the study’s exploratory purpose, a qualitative methodological approach was used employing the principles of Grounded Theory. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key participants. Initial findings identified a number of collaborative tensions. These involve tensions associated with conflicting interests, incongruent collaboration motives, and the divergent values sought from the collaborative engagements by different stakeholders. While most participants held an espoused discourse of collaboration and collegiality, their descriptions of de facto instances exposed tensions that were in practice recognised by them. The study contributes to the field by further exploring the micro aspects of the collaborative tensions within a Quadruple Helix configuration.

This paper seeks to open a new avenue in terms of study perspective and investigation methodology to explain the effects that strategic alliances may have on the evolutionary dynamics of an ecosystem. More specifically, we aim to shed light on the importance of developing a new systemic metric and a computational model to predict ecosystems’ network dynamics based on the agents’ behavior towards cooperation or acquisition practices. Despite existing literature on ecosystems has largely coped with issues related to the structure (closed networks or structural hole theory), the benefit of a network, or actors’ behavior, it does not provide contributions or methodological frameworks to investigate ecosystem dynamics trigged by collaboration or merger and acquisition strategies. Nevertheless, the topic is particularly relevant to understand for instance present and future dynamics of modern ecosystems (characterized by a high competitive context) or of nascent ecosystems (such as those in less developed countries), that evolve driven by strategic alliances employed between certain actors (i.e. incumbents and startups or incumbents and service providers). Insofar, authors introduce three new issues in the ecosystems management literature to address this topic: i) the relevance of strategic alliances in the ecosystem evolution; ii) the introduction of a new measure of proximity to evaluate the structure and the characterization of the network – the value chain distance -; iii) an integrated methodology to capture ecosystem evolutions – the agent-based simulation combined with the social network analysis – . Authors propose as the unit of analysis the industrial ecosystem, an embryonal ecosystem useful to derive general assumptions on the ecosystem configurations and its evolutionary dynamics. The paper is purely conceptual, its originality concerns the perspective of study and represents the first attempt to propose some direction to better study the evolution of ecosystems as a result of actors’ strategic alliances.

In recent years, the business models of companies have undergone significant changes. These transformations are fueled by the increasingly domineering advent of technological innovation. New technologies affect most sectors of the economy with significant impacts on industrial processes. The development of devices capable of transmitting and processing huge amounts of data in a timely manner promotes the efficiency of production processes and greater precision. In line with these considerations, the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies could be considered the tool capable of promoting the sustainability of business processes. The protection of the ecosystem, the satisfaction of the present and future needs of the community, as well as the continuous evolution of the production and industrial process have led to a radical transformation of the competitive business environment. The issue of pollution and climate change is radically transforming the relationship between businesses and the environment, pushing them towards the implementation of strategies that affect the social, economic and social environmental problems in which they operate. Furthermore, in support of the adoption of sustainable behaviours, there are also new European regulations that increasingly encourage the integration of environmentally friendly policies. Since environmental sustainability is one of the main drivers of competitiveness and innovation to date, this work aims to study the relationship between technological innovation and sustainability. In order to achieve our goal, a regression model for the panel data will be estimated considering a time horizon of 5 years. The analysis will be conducted with reference to a sample of listed companies operating in the public services sector in Europe and the United States. In our document we will use a multiple regression analysis to test the relationship between sustainability and digitalization of processes. Since there is a productive synergy between Industry 4.0 and environmentally sustainable production, we expect to find greater sustainability in companies that use the digitalization of their industrial processes. Today many studies focus on sustainability, while there is still little research explaining the relationship between digital innovation and sustainability. This study aims to fill this gap by offering an empirical analysis of the national and international context. The contribution has practical implications, as it provides market operators with information on how environmental sustainability issues will be affected by the adoption of new digital technologies.

Nowadays, the development of data management technologies has deeply contributed to make immediate and effective the activity of gathering and processing large amounts of data with reference to specific process or performance indicators. The Big Data phenomenon along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques represent a new era in information exploration and utilization, by offering new perspectives in the decision-making processes, especially in complex and fragmented situation. In this way, the emerging knowledge derived pushes toward new models of collective intelligence which can help to face the challenges that are affecting the current social context. In this direction, the paper, by adopting the interpretative lens offered by the Viable Systems Approach (vSa), proposes a conceptual model for managing collective knowledge based on big data and AI and for supporting decision-makers in complex contexts. The work is organized in four main sections. First of all, it opens with the analysis of the theoretical background of reference, highlighting the scientific evidence emerging from the literature dedicated to big data, artificial and the collective knowledge approaches. By adopting the concepts provided by the vSa, a new possible interpretative path is defined concerning managing knowledge in the digital era. In this regard, the Chinese case in facing up the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to collective intelligence approaches is presented. Finally, the potential implications of the work, both from a theoretical-scientific and a practical-managerial point of view, are highlighted.

Nowadays, all organizations face increased global competition in a knowledge-based economy. Consequently, they need to continually learn and convert their project-derived knowledge into enhanced and innovative products and services in order to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive market. Knowledge is not merely widely regarded as a key asset in companies, but it is becoming the most critical strategic determinant of economic growth. This study investigates possible correlations between the adoption of knowledge management systems, complexity of the working environment and digitalization. It investigates any correlation between complex working environments and systems of knowledge management, between specific organizational context and level of digitalization. The study has been developed with the start of a structured online survey sent via e-mail to a selected target working in companies located in Switzerland and Northern Italy and operating in different sectors, whose size range from small, to mid-size to large, including both local and global organizations. It consisted of 19 closed questions grouped in 4 main KPI (Complexity, Digitalisation, KMS, Organisational Context) aimed to gain a relevant insight on knowledge management practices and digital transformation topics. The overall picture that emerged shows that organizations with high KPI for digitalization, knowledge management systems and organizational context are tendentially young, small, from tertiary sector and with national customer base. Moreover, the survey demonstrates a strong interconnection between the 3 KPIs organisational context, digitalisation and adoption of knowledge management systems. Organizations should therefore encourage the creation of knowledge and endeavour to invest in tools and technologies necessary to support processes involved in knowledge management

The paper focuses on Community of Practice (CoP) in the public sector as a lever for the development of learning processes and organizational change. While existing literature suggests that CoPs may be considered as a tool for knowledge sharing and learning process, previous contributions have rarely analysed organizations in the public sector. We deal with an experience promoted by SNA (Italian School of Public Administration) to establish a community of managers specialized in staff training and belonging to different Italian public administrations. The community involved managers from all central administrations and government agencies (about forty organizations) that have cooperated for the rationalization, digitization and innovation of the programming processes of training activities for two years. Our results show that the community has facilitated learning and knowledge exchange and has helped SNA to define needs in terms of training of public servants. Our empirical study contributes to the understanding of the theoretical relationship between CoP and learning processes in the public sector, which has been neglected in knowledge management research.

Service literature suggests that identifying the motivations of tourists is fundamental (e.g., Woosnam et al., 2016; Pomfret & Bramwell, 2016) to be able to adapt marketing strategies according to the different users’ needs. However, today digital technologies and more generally service innovations have profoundly changed the decision-making of the tourists photographers. Some contributions (Lo et al., 2011; Ozansoy Çardici et al., 2019) agree that the motivation that drives users to take photos is no longer linked just to memory but to the communication of personal identity, especially for the new generations. These changes depend on the use of digital tools such as the introduction of mobile with camera, social networks, and AI. Indeed, Huyn et al (2009) conceptualized the tourism in the mobile context, recognizing the use of mobile to search travel information through photo of other visitors; then, Prideaux & Coghlan (2010) investigated the photographic habits, using mobile phones or cameras as a tool of memory. Several recent contributions (Munar & Jacobsen, 2014; Kozinets, 2017; Trinanda & Sari, 2019) focus on the evolution of tourist’s motivation photo due to the development of social networks. Indeed, Munar & Jacobsen (2014) examined the reasons that drive tourists to share their photos on social networks, showing that the findings provide insights into motivational factors such as personal and community-related benefits, as well as social capital that influences the sharing of user-generated content. Besides, according to Kozinets (2017) the visitor became part of art domain with the selfie, not only for narcissistic reasons, as exposed by Fox and Rooney (2015), Sorokowski et al. (2015), and Lee and Sung (2016), but to express aspects of themselves through the art. Findings show that AI is actually a tool able to influence and add new motivations for tourist photographer: in particular, AI improve the game and curiosity motivations, with the consequent rise of a different and new interaction with art. Future research could use a customer survey (Hulland et al., 2018) to better understand which features of AI are the most appreciated by tourist photographers. The purpose of the research is to verify, through a content analysis, what emerged in the literature on the first two steps of the tourist photographer motivations. Furthermore, after investigating through the observation, the theoretical framework, we will proceed to define a theoretical framework inherent in the emerging phenomenon of AI implementation also in tourism which at the moment is little treated in managerial literature.

The present research aims at analysing the level of IC disclosure provided by a sample of knowledge-intensive Italian companies through an innovative tool – the web – considered as the most used vehicle to collecting, managing, conveying and sharing BD to investors and other stakeholders. From a methodological point of view, the research adopts a manual content analysis conducted on the websites of a sample of listed Italian companies belonging to the ICT sector. Results show that Italian companies operating in the knowledge-intensive sectors are aware of the importance of providing information on IC to the audience of investors and stakeholders and are exploiting the potential and opportunities offered by the web 2.0 and BD partnership.

Healthcare decision making process is a cognitive process included a choice between option as categories and diagnosis; its complexity is due to the involvement of more peoples and the gap between information availability and necessity. It could be affected by several factors including cognitive shortcut of decision makers. To identify these biases of decision-making process and improve its quality Kahneman identified a tool: the checklist. This study aims to analyse firstly the clinical decision process of orthopaedic surgeons, secondly it aims to understand if and how the more information availability derived by the use of an accounting tool (Time Driven Activity based Costing) can modify the decision-making process. Both goals regarding the decision making process about management of follow-up of patient undergoing a knee and hip arthroplasty surgery. To achieve its goals semi-structured interviews with three orthopaedic surgeons from three different working contexts were conducted. Several biases affected the decision-making process of orthopaedic surgeons choosing follow-up path of their patients; in particular, physicians are mainly influenced by consolidated practice and by the decisions of other departments or opinion leaders. The information derived using an accounting tool might be helpful to improve or modify decision process, although further empirical studies are required to test the feasibility and utility of the tool. This study fosters the debate between practitioners and scholars about the use of tools to improve quality decision process in healthcare sector.

This conceptual paper investigates the role of cooperatives for social innovation and local sustainable development in the context of the Region Lombardy, which is the Italian most populated and most economically relevant region, as well as the region with the largest number of employees in cooperative enterprises. The discussion is based on an exploratory study involving 9 cooperatives through semi-structured interviews with members of the boards and managers with the aim of exploring subjective viewpoints and gather in-depth accounts on cooperatives as central actors within the Social and Solidarity Economy ecosystem. In the paper the results of the interviews are presented, some implications are derived from them and some problems are identified that could limit the cooperatives’ capacity to unfold their full potential as natural carriers of social and sustainable innovation.

This paper aims to investigate and understand existing knowledge and paradigm of community issues to shift towards new knowledge management models, where open innovation could improve communities’ health with rightly managed to validate knowledge creation and integration. The article is conceptual in nature and adopts a systematic literature review approach, based on the concepts of knowledge management and open innovation in the healthcare sector. It analyses the most relevant studies. The paper’s contribution consists of how it connects open innovation in healthcare to knowledge management. The aim is to build a conceptual framework defining the main objectives of the article: (1) knowledge transfer and co-creation both inside and between health communities; (2) valid knowledge transfer through open innovation. So this paper aims to identify main definitions, concepts, and background theories. The analysis showed that 66 articles (22 in PubMed and 44 in Web of Science) are related to the topics of knowledge management and health ecosystems; open innovation and health; knowledge co-creation and community; knowledge transfer and open innovation, during the past ten years period (2011-2020). All articles were analysed in detail and divided to categories. This paper aims to investigate and understand existing knowledge and paradigm of community issues to shift towards new knowledge management models, where open innovation could improve health communities to validate knowledge co-creation and integration. This study proposes knowledge management approach and managerial paradigm shift from ecosystems to health communities. Identified the main articles and definitions in the field of knowledge transfer and health communities, proposed perspective of open innovation

Museums as social and cultural institutions should drive innovation to strengthen the relationship with the audience, contribute to social value creation and develop community-oriented processes within cultural ecosystems. The study investigates to what extent Romanian and Italian museums are perceived as innovative by their audiences to understand how a museum could better meet the expectations of the audiences. As social value-oriented institutions, museums should involve their communities to contribute to cultural knowledge creation fostering audience participation by involving the users to co-create public value and shape the museum as an innovation-driven community. In driving innovation, museums are involving their audiences and stakeholders to contribute to cultural heritage knowledge within cultural ecosystems. Museums as community-oriented organizations should drive audience-centered innovation for cultural knowledge creation.

The aim of this paper is to examine the state of researches on the knowledge management subject related to the supply chain, and its possible innovation based on the integration with blockchain technologies. Knowledge management (KM) is the process of identification, organizing, storage, sharing and management of knowledge and information towards value creation. Organisations try to apply and embed it into their primary activities as supply chain processes (Akhavan, Philsoophian, Rajabion and Namvar, 2018). Supply chains are configurations of firms working together in a network that constantly need to upgrade their operations and capabilities, both upstream and downstream, from raw material to end-use consumption. The information flows that lie at the heart of network members ‘ communication and collaboration are not only diverse sources of information, they also provide an opportunity to build knowledge-based resources that are an important part of the capabilities of the extended firm. Performance can be improved by sharing updated knowledge among the supply chain process and functioning through knowledge management tools (Jha and Karn, 2019). Knowledge management is based on trust management. The Blockchain technology can be used as a method for managing trust in generating, storing, sharing, protecting and applying a variety knowledge. Blockchain can potentially improve knowledge management, in order to share successfully relevant data and information about the product and services included in the “chain”. Despite to other initiatives to employ other technologies to share knowledge across the chain (such as “social manufacturing” or “cloud manufacturing” in the manufacturing industry (Zhi Li et al., 2017), the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) era introduces many opportunities like, “provenance certification” of stored information because of tamper-proof transaction history maintained in the distributed ledger, “knowledge automation” capabilities (Ziyuan Wang et al. 2018). The adoption of blockchain in the supply chain could create a new governance model for creating public value for a specific business process. This research aims to answer how to create the best connection between the business environment knowledge base and the supply chain management processes integrating blockchain technology.

Blockchain (BLK) is believed to have the potential to disrupt traditional business models through inherent features such as distributed, decentralized, peer to peer, and security-by-design. However, the academic community mostly dedicated its BLK research to financial and more recent supply chain disciplines, overlooking BLK implications in other domains. This research aims to fill the research gap of BLK implications for knowledge management by investigating the potential effects of BLK use for knowledge sharing. To do so, four state-of-the-art real use cases, namely, Orvium, ARTiFACTS, Everipedia, and Steem, have been reviewed and explored here. We identified the impact of BLK on the antecedents and benefits of knowledge sharing through content analysis of available data on websites and white papers of associated cases. The results were categorized according to benefits (cost reduction, growth, intangible benefits) and individual antecedents of knowledge sharing (intention, motivation, reciprocity, trust). The results of this research paper provide insights into the research community by presenting the current state and future research avenues.