In recent years, the integration of sustainability principles in urban planning has become increasingly important. The growing attention to economic, social and environmental aspects is also influencing the practice and policy of urban regeneration. In particular, the search for new ways to regenerate cities in a sustainable way has led to the concept of sustainable urban regeneration. However, despite the relevance of this concept, only a few contributions have quantitatively examined the actual sustainability outcomes of different urban regeneration interventions. This study aims to fill this important gap by examining the level of sustainability of urban regeneration interventions in the Apulian context. The results of the multiple case study analysis show a high level of sustainability of the interventions in all three contexts examined. However, they show some weaknesses related mainly to the absence of strategies aimed at the inclusion of women in the labour market and to the low efficiency in the use of energy. The results offer important implications and guidelines for municipalities implementing urban regeneration projects.

This paper aims to understand factors and processes that leverage from tangible and intangible cultural heritage (i.e., local know-how, tacit and codified knowledge linked to arts masterpieces and cultural heritage assets but also to local crafts and tradition) to sustain citizens’ social, cultural and economic wealth. So far not enough attention has been paid about the regeneration of smaller cities which hold major artistic heritage but do not have adequate resources to leverage on it and bring positive societal impacts. The paper adopts a qualitative approach and we followed an abductive approach oriented to the generation of new concepts and the development of new explanatory lens, rather than the confirmation of existing theories. It focuses on the case of Urbino, a UNESCO world heritage site whose population and economic status is declining because citizens and businesses are attracted by the lure of higher revenues and better quality of life of nearby cities. Findings revealed that culture and artistic knowledge and capabilities that belong to the tradition of a city rich in heritage can be the lever of innovation and boost civic wealth. Searching the past for looking to the future is, however, a difficult task and divergences in vision, resistance and even political tensions are among the factors that hinder the city regeneration.

Smart Working (SW) refers to new ways of working integrated in a way that enables spatial and temporal autonomy, favor cultural exchanges and trust, enable technological advances, and allow wider intellectual connections. SW is seen to be a way to “modernize” working practices by using ICT applications and new organizational settings, so that flexibility, creativity, engagement and, also, satisfaction of workers can be improved, for the benefit of employees, companies, and societies. However, the literature shows that SW requires the adoption of specific measures and levers, to fully exploit its potential benefits and reduce the risk of refusal by workers. During the COVID pandemic, many companies, schools, and public organizations all around the world asked their employees to start working from home (WFH). After the pandemic, some observers think that WFH can remain a common way of working especially for knowledge workers. So, it is necessary to understand to what extent this experience can really lead to SW – in other words, to investigate if WHF can be automatically a “smart” working modality for knowledge workers. The goal of this paper is, therefore, to explore if keeping workers at home can be a first important step towards SW, or if there can be some barriers or possible sources of inefficiency. The “forced” condition caused by the pandemic provides a unique opportunity to investigate what can happen when entire offices move to WFH. The paper reports the results of an online survey of WFH knowledge workers conducted in Italy during the first weeks of the lockdown (April and May 2020). The research provided some descriptive statistics and classifications, especially regarding the viewpoint of employees. Their real involvement and perception of usefulness of WFH was investigated. The data made it possible to analyse the potential points of strength and weakness of WFH, how a massive introduction of WFH can be seen as a really “smart” working modality for this elective category of employees, and what lessons can be drawn for work management.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced knowledge workers to switch from company offices to working from home. This switch was abrupt and needed to be conducted without preparation making it potentially challenging particularly to those with little previous experience working from home. Against this backdrop, our study examines what kind of job crafting, i.e. proactive modification of one’s work practices without formal approval, can help in dealing with enforced working from home among knowledge workers. The results of the study illuminate different ways physical, relational, and cognitive crafting can be leveraged when adapting to such a situation. Findings also raise questions whether current rigid theoretical distinctions between job and leisure crafting are sensible in the remote work context as work-life boundaries blur both spatially and temporally.

Although different studies investigated the SW phenomenon during last years and its evolution during the pandemic, reporting several benefits and advantages, there seems to be a lack of studies investigating whether and to what extent the SW can really impact on company’s performance. It is not clear to what extent smart working, especially in the emergence phase, has impacted the organizations, at macrostructure level and at the micro structure level, and whether the SW may be considered as a leverage to achieve new, incremental productivity, both at “people” and “process” level. This paper develops a conceptual framework, built on a series of testable propositions about the impact of SW on the organizations and the characteristics of SW as leverage to improve productivity. Then, a questionnaire to empirically test our theoretical framework is presented. Each construct of the model corresponds a set of questions.

In the last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak research in resilience has flourished. During the first pandemic wave, health systems had to cope with a high number of severely ill patients and a high degree of unpreparedness at the organizational level. In that period, having a clear understanding of the pandemic situation within the organizations and the systems was essential. Resilient healthcare organizations need to develop information systems concerning positive patients. In light of this evidence, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the use of information systems influence resilience in healthcare organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the aim, this research adopts a qualitative approach based on multiple case study to strengthen the findings by triangulation of evidence. Empirical data were gathered from multiple sources, i.e. observations, reports and interviews adopting a multiple case study methodology. In the healthcare organisations involved, the interviews were carried out to the head of the COVID units and the medical directions. Moving from the literature on resilience and knowledge management and information systems, firstly, the research identifies the elements required for building resilience. Secondly, the knowledge management processes fostered by the use of data. Then, using multiple case studies, it provides a number of propositions concerning the relationships between knowledge management activities, based on the use of information systems, the selected organisations developed and the resilience-building elements they nurtured. The study shows the importance of integrated COVID-related information systems between healthcare organisations to effectively face the crisis. By the analysis, the development and use of information systems boost resilience elements such as collaboration, flexibility, visibility, etc. The paper highlights the importance of data integration during the COVID-19 first wave and how the development and use of information systems can enhance resilience elements. Moreover, it contributes to shedding light on the relationship between the use of knowledge and resilience in healthcare organisations during pandemic events.

The Triage process is a crucial process of Emergency Departments, and scholars have proposed several solutions to streamline the processing of patients and reduce the waiting time of more urgent ones. However, a not thoroughly investigated issue concerns the factors influencing the decision-making performed by the nurses in the assignment of Triage’s priority code. The Triage decision-making is a dynamic and complex process: the decision emerges after an interpretation process of patient clinical conditions influenced by the interaction of organizational rules and environment conditions with nurse’s experience and beliefs. We investigate the Triage process through the fuzzy Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is a method used to test theory-based conditions considering multiple interrelated variables that lead to the same outcome. More specifically, we show how the QCA allows researchers to figure out how the interaction between individual, organizational, environmental factors affect the Triage decision-making. This analysis will enable us to suggest some possible interventions to improve the Triage process. This research has been performed through direct observation of the Triage carried out in an Emergency Department of a Hospital located in the South of Italy.

Integrated Care Pathways (ICPs) are multidisciplinary approaches designed and adopted by hospitals for achieving more efficiency and effectiveness in the care processes. Despite these advantages, it is still needed to demonstrate their economical and organizational positive effect, by taking into account specific contextual variables such as the existing resources and technologies of the hospitals (van Hoeve et al., 2020). In addition, since the complexity of the care processes is high, the development of an integrated dashboard of monitoring indicators of ICPs is a critical issue in the referred literature. In particular, the framework should be holistic and designed for a large spectrum use of actors; the indicators should be easily measurable and computable. For this reason, we design a framework of indicators measuring the effect of ICPs on multiple dimensions including quality of care, cost and productivity, and research and development.The framework was validated by a group of experts belonging to different functional areas. Afterward, we investigate the feasibility of the proposed set of indicators to the performance of the lung and the breast cancer care pathways in a specific hospital, i.e., the Cancer Institute “IRCCS Giovanni Paolo II” (Italy). The healthcare organization can use this tool to 1) monitor whether the pathways meet the requirements of continuity, responsiveness, and appropriateness of health services; and 2) optimize the allocation of resources.

In response to the Covid 19 pandemic emergency, universities found themselves to rethink the way of doing university. They have veered towards new circular economy models capable of actively involving users by strengthening the right of access to information and services through sustainable digitization. production systems with greater involvement of the territories. Our work uses multi-criteria methods to analyze the actions of universities to face the Covid 19 pandemic emergency. In particular, the study analyzes the choices on the reorganization of the main services offered to students with a particular focus on teaching. The actions considered from a digital sustainability point of view for teaching aim at the use of technologies not only to remotize the lessons but with a view that technology can be of support in the redesign of the didactic paths in their complexity.

Intended study aims to identify the challenges and opportunities mature and emergent entrepreneurs faced for adoption of digital entrepreneurship in face of COVID-19 in research industry of Lahore, Pakistan in view of the Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory. A descriptive research design was executed whereby, sample was chosen using purposive sampling technique and data were collected from start-up owners and their managerial teams using a Likert scale questionnaire. A total of 253 valid responses were recovered. The study results revealed that entrepreneurial teams were engrained in the fierce challenges for adoption of the digital entrepreneurship due to the absence of an approximate framework and support infrastructure. Based on the analysis’ results, a framework for digital ecosystem integration considering the life cycle of the business has been proposed along with robust digital entrepreneurship framework for the retail industry.

Creative neighbourhoods are the subject of increased discussions and concerns, both in the academic and the professional communities, having various cultural, social, economic, and policy implications. Nevertheless, the theorising in the field is at the beginning. Various interdisciplinary approaches highlight especially social, economic, and urban implications. The study aims to investigate the dynamic of creative neighbourhoods in Romania to understand which are the factors leading to success stories both for the creative communities and for urban development. The dynamics associated with the local administrations in two main Romanian cities are explored: Bucharest and Cluj. The findings are shading lights on the inner dynamics of creative communities in creative neighbourhoods in relationship with public administration for better cooperation.

The issues of food losses and food waste have reached such proportions that global economies are looking for solutions to limit their impacts. In this work, we describe an innovative e-marketplace for the agri-food supply chain (ASC), designed in the context of a R&D project (MEC) aimed at supporting the operators in reducing waste products and finding new sales channels. The MEC project involves the development of new knowledge management methods and technologies aimed at the design, modelling and experimentation of a new logistics network. Within the MEC project our purpose is to create a virtual commercial and logistics network, also functional to open the market to small businesses; to reduce the food products losses and waste; to extend the value to the uneaten food, waste and otherwise lost products; to strengthen the market of agricultural and agri-food specialties with a strong local/regional connotation through product management and control systems that allow for an improvement in the chemical, physical, organoleptic and nutritional qualities of the products at the time of consumption; to create a technological platforms for the integrated management of logistics for various commercial channels and the use of models for decisions based on the integration of “field” information with those acquired directly from the customer/final consumer, in the order and purchase and after-sales assistance. The system will be implemented as a web-based platform aimed to offer users: a decision support systems to aid sales services, also through demand forecasting algorithms that will allow optimization of the processes for locating goods with consequent maximization of consumption and reduction of waste; a route optimization systems, to strengthen distribution logistics services that will allow the selection of the best itineraries, also from the point of view of environmental sustainability; a systems for the valorisation of scraps, lost and wasted products through the definition of models of optimal use for energy production purposes of products no longer destined for food consumption; an ecosystem and social services related to the reduction of waste, production of energy from renewable sources, reduction of greenhouse gases linked to the optimization of the distribution phase, support to the third sector for the procurement of food for people in need. The expected results is the improvement in the competitiveness and sustainability of national agri-food supply chain linked to a reduction in the amount of product lost and/or wasted and pursued through a coherent set of innovative measures.

Organizations today live in a complex business landscape that requires them to be increasingly resilient, resourceful, intuitive, and flexible. Organizations must confront increasing complexity, turbulence, unpredictability, and the speed of change in the competitive environment. Many different forces and trends are shaping the new business landscape, and rapidly evolving digital technologies are forcing breakthrough and disruptive innovations. For companies to survive and thrive, they must transform their business and behaviours to respond to the evolving business landscape and turn challenges into opportunities for development and growth. Unlike change management, transformation aims to reinvent the organization and encourage the adoption of new approaches and discover new or revised business models that shape the perceived vision of the future. In particular, it is a digital transformation: the current business landscape is characterized by a continuous and inevitable digital evolution, so any type of organization should adopt the transformation considering digital factors. In this perspective, companies need to generate, manage and leverage tacit, explicit and practical knowledge to drive transformation and remain competitive. Creating a transformation culture is not easy and many factors contribute to this outcome. Leadership represents one of the critical catalysts of a transformation-focused organizational culture. Transformative leaders today are responsible for fostering an organizational cultural mindset that aims to support and encourage transformation. For this reason, it is important to attempt to identify and measure the critical competences that drive and facilitate the generation, management, and use of knowledge for continuous innovation. The study is at a preliminary stage and focuses on the following imperative research question, “How are the competences assessed that lead a Transformative Leader managing an organization to continuously innovate and drive transformation considering the digital age?”. Proposed is the Transformative Leadership Assessment Framework, a first draft of a competency model to assess the characteristics of leaders who drive organizational transformation in today’s complex business landscape. It lays the foundation for defining the specific skills, knowledge, and behavioural requirements that enable a leader to be transformative and lead an organization toward continuous innovation. Competences provide individuals with exemplary performance that has an appropriate impact on business outcomes. This analysis helps specify a set of useful behaviours of transformative leaders, provides a tool that individuals can use for self-development, and outlines a leadership framework that can be used by to select, develop, and understand the effectiveness of transformative leaders in transformative organizations. To develop the Transformative Leadership Assessment Framework, the principles of grounded theory were adopted and, using secondary data such as recorded interviews, the authors examined the profiles of some of the most influential and inspirational modern tech leaders.

Information technology is driving public organisations as smart and sustainable working organisations that facilitate processes of public value creation. Technology is opening to public collaborative innovation. As organisations seeking sustainability as a vision for strategy and action, public organisations evolve by developing strategic, managerial and technological sources to enable public value creation within society. Smart working is emerging as a new way to shape the work relationship as both collaborative space and innovation. Public organisations achieve sustainability adopting a service logic view as strategic orientation by developing the potential of information technology in order to drive innovation by building digital, smart, lean and open platforms for value creation, innovation and networking. Smart and sustainable working public organisations contribute to value creation processes and promoting collaborative innovation as a key source of public innovation. They support innovation as enabled by digital platforms, and adopt the smart working as a way to enhance collaborative innovation, enhancing the role of public managers, and strengthening the social and human factor in smart work relationships by developing the potential offered by information technology.

Times of emergency and confusion may pose a need to introduce and implement information systems in organizations, or to greatly hasten an ongoing implementation project. The purpose of this article is to recommend effective methods and practices that will improve implementation in times of emergency. In this article, we will discuss how organizations can deal with the challenges of implementing technological solutions for knowledge management and collaboration during crises, addressing issues such as technology selection, user capacity building, organizational trends that encourage or hinder technology adoption and organizational policies that can facilitate these solutions. The article discusses a case study of a national defence organization introducing the ‘Microsoft 365’ cloud-based suite, and particulary the ‘Teams’ service, to improve work performance during the Covid-19 crisis, while adhering to social distancing guidelines. This article will discuss the need that was generated, and the approach chosen, as well as the theoretical foundation for assimilation, focusing on motivational problems, change agents, and assimilation models. The method of gathering information and analyzing the data is then explained in depth, including surveys, participant evaluation in work teams, and data on system use. Finally, after reviewing the data and drawing various direct conclusions from it, ensuring that the final criteria (‘bottom lines’) are met in response to the need for functional consistency, commander preferences, and user satisfaction. In the discussion section we build on the observations made in the above case and examine the implications and perspectives of assimilation in a crisis and uncertain situation. A successful implementation of an information system can be boosted by following three main components, particularly in times of crisis: 1. Characteristics of the technology: effective, integrated, user-friendly, scalable, and generalizable. 2. The technical efficacy of users and management 3. Using a methodical framework for implementation as a flexible contingency plan.

Recent major health shocks like the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, the Zika outbreak, and, last but not least, the Covid-19 pandemic have strongly contributed to drawing attention to the issue of resilience of health systems, because health authorities and organizations experienced severe difficulties in managing these crises. The concept of resilience is assuming a central role also in the scientific debate about healthcare management. Nevertheless, the lack of clarity on how to systematize and deal with this topic led to a highly fragmented scientific literature, which creates difficulties in the development and assimilation of incremental research in this relevant field. This study provides a comprehensive map of the extant literature and identifies the main themes and future research needs. Methods: A systematic literature review was carried out. We used the database ISI Web of Science (WoS) to extract the dataset. The material search was conducted in December 2020, using keywords derived from the literature. The final sample, obtained from the application of exclusion and inclusion criteria on the initial dataset, comprises 89 articles that are the object of this analysis. Results: The 89 articles in the final sample range from 2001 to 2020. The research on resilience in healthcare appears fragmented and linked to different research streams. Hence, effective framing existing contributions could be beneficial and help at identifying the most investigated areas and the main gaps to fill. At this aim, we proposed a novel theoretical framework, to systematize the papers dealing with the topic of ‘resilience in healthcare’ and to provide a clear picture of the state of the art in this field. Conclusions: The content analysis allowed identifying the significant dimensions defining the scope of investigation on the topic under analysis. Scrutinizing articles along these dimensions, several gaps emerge, which opens interesting paths for future research.

The mounting pressure from governments and investors has imposed companies to think “green”, “sustainable” and be “social compliant”. In this paper, an investigation to understand the joint impact that Sustainable Oriented Innovation (SOI) and Open Innovation (OI) may have on companies’ performance is presented. In particular, the study aims to see if these practices, i.e. OI and SOI, impact in terms of innovation, sustainable and economic performance that have been described in the literature as different but often correlated outcomes. The model proposed a setting in which it is possible to test the joined effect of developing SOI and the sharing of knowledge considering open and closed OI strategies. Results show that the most convenient strategy is to develop SOI technologies, but the use of an open setting should be evaluated according to the life cycle stage and dynamicity of the technological environment.

In this paper we address the limited understanding of how the amount of sales used by retailers changes the customers’ propensity to plan purchases. We investigate the effects of shopping motivation, buying behavior, marketing skepticism, and marketing literacy on the propensity to plan purchases by customers and how they comply with this purchase plan. A classification of sales into short-, missile- and long-run is developed. Based on in-depth interviews and an online survey we identify the abovementioned factors perform differently depending on sales types. Overall, utilitarian shopping motivation that positively affects shopping planning and compliance with the shopping plan during sales, and sales buyers experience more hedonic value and have a higher level of marketing literacy at sales than non-buyers. It was also found that the less often the sale is held, the more unplanned purchases buyers make. During regular sales, buyers show a lower level of marketing skepticism that those who do not buy.

Food production represents today an environmental cost, boosting scientific community and food companies searching innovative solutions to reduce environmental impacts and wastes. Among all agri-food supply chains, 65% of global agricultural emissions of CO2 equivalent are produced by livestock and connected activities. Dairy industry produces a multiplier effect of impacts, using a large amount of primary products to obtain relatively little quantity of cheese. In this context, it is clear that food loss is not only a socio-economic problem, but also represents an additional environmental burden to be attributed to the production process. The adoption of circular economy strategies could represent the right way to reduce the issue of food waste and food losses, not only by reusing and/or recycling expired products but also extending the shelf life of edible products, that finally would mean reducing waste and increasing production efficiency (Stillitano et al., 2021). However, the effort of adopting circular strategies risks to become vain if the degree of circularity achieved is not measured, so that a process of continuous improvement can be adopted in a circular design logic. The aim of this study is to evaluate, from a circular, environmental and economic perspective, techniques for the shelf life extension (SLE) of Lacto-Fermented Mozzarella Cheese. Life Cycle Assessment, Circularity Assessment and Life Cycle Costing methodologies were applied to evaluate the effects of SLE implementation, taking also into account the potential reduction of food loss and returned goods. Results showed that despite a minimal increase of impacts and costs due to the introduction of the innovation, the SLE could allow reducing the share of losses up to 50%. Expressing results in terms of days of product shelf life, the innovative solution is more sustainable from both the environmental and the economic point of view and allows an improve

Due to COVID-19, telemedicine solutions, in general, have played a crucial role, with their ability to minimize physical physician-patient contacts, and to optimize healthcare system capacity, during demand surges, guaranteeing the taking in charge of the patients and the continuity of care. The present study aims at investigating the feasibility and economic/organizational sustainability of an innovative telemedicine platform, as an example of telemonitoring care programs for patients with or without COVID-19, integrated with telerehabilitation and tele-supporting activities (whose name is T-CUBE), by addressing the following research questions: i) Which are the main benefits related to T-CUBE introduction in the clinical practice, from a clinical and an economic perspectives?; ii) Which are the key factors determining the intention to use T-CUBE in the clinical practice? A Health Technology Assessment (HTA) was conducted in the year 2020, thus examining all the dimensions proposed by the Model for Assessment of Telemedicine (MAST), thus comparing T-CUBE implementation, with the usual care consisting of on-site monitoring and rehabilitative activities. The HTA was then integrated with an in-depth analysis of all the factors that could predict T-CUBE individual’s acceptance, focusing on social and cognitive instrumental factors, and based on the Technology Acceptance Model framework. Literature declared that telemonitoring and tele-supporting would improve the management of patients’ with or without COVID-19, optimizing the care by detecting clinical deterioration at an early stage, caused both by COVID-19 or chronic cardiac or pulmonary diseases, thus also revealing a lower hospitalization rate, as well as a shorter length of stay with respect to usual care. Furthermore, the platform would lead to a reduction of 14.11% of rehabilitative hospitalization days, with a consequent increase in the overall accessibility to care (51.6%). From an economic perspective, considering 184,792 patients potentially treated with T-CUBE in Lombardy Region, an economic saving equal to 41% emerged on annual basis. With regard to T-CUBE acceptability, its intention to use is strictly dependent from its usefulness and ease of use perceived by the healthcare professionals involved, as well as by its capability to produce a relevant job and a high-quality output. In conclusion, T-CUBE represents an ideal strategic leverage useful to manage the current pandemic emergency, thus being a relevant example in which digital technologies gives the possibility to solve a health problem in an efficient and effective way.