Companies are constantly looking for new ways to innovate and integrate external knowledge into their innovation processes. In the era of makerspaces, a new source for collaborative innovation has evolved. As research shows, the users of makerspaces, so called makers, tend to be highly creative and innovative. That makes this tech-savvy community very promising for companies to collaborate with during innovation processes. Prior research revealed that makers and companies are open to collaborate. However, we still know little about how makers can be engaged in corporate innovation processes and in which phases (ideation, prototyping, test and launch) they are interested in for collaboration. Our quantitative study tackles this research gap and specifically looks into what might motivate makers to collaborate with companies in new product development processes. We find four distinct maker types that differ in their collaboration motives: reward enjoyers, knowledge hunters, opportunity seekers and intrinsic enthusiasts.

Financial Technology (FinTech) is the latest innovative solution in the finance sector, an emerging disruptive technology to provide financial services. The usage of Blockchain (core technology in FinTech) and Cryptocurrency technologies have getting more attention to the investors, regulators, investment industry, and consumers. Blockchain technology is the most famous digital technology to successfully achieve the trusted and secured financial transactions (Bai and Sarkis, 2020); cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that hold high potential aimed at using for investments or transactions. The technology of Blockchain can ease the new method for production of eco-friendly products (Saberi et al., 2016), integrating various environmental protective initiatives by monitoring the parameters required for production like emissions, processing of raw materials, and energy consumption. Blockchain can enhance the access to the consumers for using green energy, strengthen the environmental protection programs implementation, and decrease the stakeholders’ involvement in the initiatives of low- carbon energy (Upadhyay et al., 2021). However, the applications of FinTech also have certain obstacles. FinTech startups are facing difficulties like data security threats, money laundering issues, user retention and experience problems, and so on, while implementing the technology in their business life cycle. Hence, the present paper has the objective of investigating the impact and sustainability of adopting blockchain and cryptocurrencies on FinTech for an eco-friendly nature. Quantitative methodology based on survey questionnaires data has been used. The respondents are 150 students of the University of Amsterdam (Netherland). This methodology involves three stages: in the first stage, the adoption level of blockchain and cryptocurrency applications is measured; the second stage involves a pilot study that needs to be performed for the validation of questionnaires from the target respondents; then, the data are analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result of this analysis indicates that the level of impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies is at the intermediate level. The real usage of these technologies is low or not fully received by peoples, showing high resistance against these technologies. Moreover, privacy has high significance in adopting blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies applications. Hence, the necessity of governmental regulations is increasing for providing guidelines to ensure the growth of FinTech in the near future. Therefore, the current paper may assist FinTech startups in making decisions to evaluate the potential use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies technology for their services and businesses, providing them useful elements to make strategic business decisions.

Digital innovation of public services has overcome the technology-driven phase and entered the technology-enabled phase towards organisational and governance transformation. This shift offers PAs several opportunities to improve decision-making and orient policy action, but also to engage in profoundly transformative processes affecting – among the others- organisational structure, culture and behaviours, processes, employees’ requirements and abilities, information systems and technological infrastructure. The present study starts from the assumption that to seize this transformative opportunity, public administrations (PAs) are required to engage in reflection and learning processes, both at the individual and the organisational level. Also, it assumes that these processes need to take place at all levels and across multiple sectors and organisational units. Relying on the preliminary results of the ESPON Project DIGISER (espon.eu/DIGISER), this study analyses how the exposition of participant cities to the Project and its conceptual and analytical frameworks can set the ground for reflection on their digital and organisational transformation and practices. In particular, this paper illustrates the methodological approach and tools developed, focusing on the activities revolving around an extensive survey about digital service innovation carried out in 250 European Cities. In addition to the survey itself, the study illustrates visual and narrative tools developed to give feedback to participants, highlighting their potential in terms of reflection drivers. The contribution then discusses to what extent (i) filling the survey allowed a better understanding of the digital innovation process and its relation with existing organisational structures; and (ii) the critical reading of the results contributed to triggering reflection and raising awareness among the respondents. Evidence gathered during the data collection shows that completing the survey has required the identification of respondents from different sectors and with different levels of skills and responsibilities, thus confirming its potential in activating reflection on the survey topic and supporting cross-silo interactions and knowledge sharing. Also, exposure to the survey and to its results has improved respondents’ awareness about the organisational structure, opening up to new collaborations and enhancing situational awareness among PA employees. Finally, the experiment carried out shows a high exploratory potential, as it proved able to support reflection on new envisioning about public service design and provision. Even if further testing is required to corroborate these preliminary reflections, the illustrated methodological approach has promising profiles in terms of its ability to support reflection on digital transformation processes within PAs.

Learning is a keystone for the development of a collective intelligence environment. Specifically, in a collaborative effort within inter-organizational ecosystems, learning can create new knowledge with the potential to influence behaviour and activate organisational collaboration as well as redesign social aspects and reconfigure the existing norms and values. To mobilise collective intelligence, creating crowdsourcing environments can be considered as learning experience tools that provide information based on real-life contexts. For migrants and refugees learning to access and feed reliable information can be a fundamental path toward their integration into a host community. To validate the possibility of developing a collective intelligence environment in a form of a wiki-space for (and by) migrants, this paper adopts the Triple-Loop Learning mechanism and the three learning drivers (what, how, and why) developed by the easyRights project. To do that, the paper presents the lessons learned from two hackathon initiatives organised in Palermo in Italy and in Malaga in Spain. The two subsequent hackathon initiatives had the scope to a) frame the wiki-space as an informative and crowdsourcing environment, b) create reliable content, and c) activate the necessary governance to guarantee its sustainability after the project’s termination for the very complex and ambiguous procedure of job seeking. The results led to a shared solution among the two cities as a service to sustain migrants’ job seeking in the form of a wiki-space with two collective learning spheres: the methodology (the how dimension), and the platform itself (what, how, why dimensions). Through the findings from the two pilots’ learning experiences, the paper essentially discusses how the project targets a systemic change by revisiting the existing knowledge in the organizations and creating a crowdsourcing platform of collective intelligence through a new mechanism that feeds the creation of values in different extents (societal, approach and service) toward a more inclusive society.

This paper aims to better understand the application of stakeholder management within the university spin-offs (USOs) of the five Flemish universities (Belgium). Every organization, including USOs, must deal with different types of stakeholders. Even though a lot of research on USOs exists, as far as we know, no previous research has been done on how USOs manage their stakeholders. For this qualitative research 30 in-depth semi- structured interviews were conducted with executives from USOs to understand how they define, categorize, and manage their stakeholders. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 on their stakeholder management is examined and an overview is conducted of the stakeholders in each development phase of the USOs. Based on these interviews, we found that stakeholder management is mostly done in a more intuitive way. However, it is shown stakeholder management becomes more important as the USO moves along the company life cycle.

As crisis become progressively more frequent and complex, better preparation to respond to them becomes more important. This contribution focuses on the investigation of the opportunities for supply chains to develop transformative resilience preparing to respond to crisis. In the most recent years, actors with superior logistics competences have become important players in the humanitarian field, in line with the crucial role of logistics in these complex and turbulent contexts. Logistics service providers (LSPs) offer supportive logistics services for different organizations and governments when they prepare to respond to major crises and disasters. Despite their crucial support, the academic literature on humanitarian logistics is still in developing when exploring the role that LSPs play in relief supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to identify what is the role of LSPs in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management, supporting the development of transformative resilience of supply chains in response to crisis. The paper is based on a literature review adopting a bibliometric approach, and from the analysis some insights and preliminary considerations emerges. The results could be interesting and useful for both academics and professionals and for both humanitarian and business sector. Going towards transformative resilience in humanitarian supply chains needs to focus on preparing actors and supply chains to respond to crisis, and LSPs may concretely support in this direction collaborating with humanitarian actors through platforms solutions.

For more than ten years Italian community co-operatives have become an important social issue, a new form of collective enterprise that plays a role in regenerating local economies and social animation of the territories. This new form of business allows the civic forces to organize new services to satisfy some socio-economic needs of their communities. It creates collaboration networks with different stakeholders of the community and innovates both from the point of view of the evolution of the co-operative model as well as the practical implementation of the theories of community development (Bianchi, 2021). Community co-operatives are experimental laboratories of new forms of diversity coexistence and are based on organizational and management models that promote participation and involvement in independently of their productions, that could be of every kind: goods, artistic, recreational, social, cultural services. At the same time, because of their territorial nature, they combine the themes and values of active citizenship with those of environmental sustainability and solidarity. The contribution aims to investigate the characteristics and effective resilience capacity of these forms of “business” even in the face of the current pandemic crisis. We want to highlight the possible particularities of the approaches and solutions adopted and whether the distributed knowledge (social capital), that characterizes them, is actually used.

In the digital age, even more so after Covid19, both public and private organizations have developed an awareness of the need for digital transformation. Indeed, thanks to new digital technologies, it is possible to benefit from services and/or products that were previously unimaginable and that neither people, citizens, users, consumers nor organizations can do without. Moreover, given the upcoming challenges of the PNRR and the 2030 Agenda, which require the pursuit of sustainable digital development and efficiency goals, the topic of transforming organizations is more relevant than ever. However, digital transformation is not a simple process. Although the importance of this process is well known, a Forbes report (2020) demonstrates that about 70% of digital transformation initiatives do not achieve the intended results. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of ability to guide these initiatives through codified protocols or the provision of tools for planning, monitoring and evaluation. Even the literature on digital transformation, while definitive and empirical in terms of describing initiatives, impacts, and benefits, is still under-researched from the perspective of planning, monitoring, control, and evaluation systems. Thus, this research aims to develop a strategic planning model for developing, monitoring, and evaluating digital and sustainable transformation initiatives. The model draws on the soft systems literature. The model is based on the fundamental assumption that digital transformation follows the dynamics of soft systems. In fact, from a performance management perspective, digital transformation initiatives can be compared to the dynamics of R&D initiatives and thus soft systems, namely situations where performance cannot be measured by collecting data and evidence from physical devices or sensors and the focus is therefore on processes (Lazzarotti et al., 2011). With this in mind, the model identifies and describes the compelling dimensions to consider in the planning, monitoring and evaluation phase of digital transformation initiatives (Bremser and Barsky, 2004; García-Valderrama et al., 2008; Gwynne, 2015; Schwartz et al., 2011). In particular, these dimensions result from the combination and adaptation to the digital transformation perspective of the reference models of the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 2007) and the logical framework approach (logframe) (Practical conceps, 1978). This combination is necessary to develop a model that is useful both in the strategic planning phase and in the ex-post evaluation. The research makes important theoretical and practical contributions. The study enriches the literature on digital transformation and proposes a model for designing, monitoring, and evaluating digital transformation initiatives. From a practical perspective, the proposed model aims to be a guiding and orienting tool for managers and practitioners that has normative and prescriptive value. Indeed, the model identifies the key dimensions to be considered in the planning phase of a digital transformation initiative, while describing the dimensions to be taken into account when monitoring the development of the initiative and the final evaluation of the impact achieved.

In the current turbulent socio-economic scenario, new spaces to foster innovation and boost learning are acquiring increasing importance, becoming key objectives for public and private organizations. These spaces may be described as spaces of interaction between individuals, their behaviors, and the external environment (Morris, 2020; Ellis e Goodyear, 2016). Today’s companies need more and more to improve and foster their processes of knowledge creation, sharing and transfer and properly managing learning spaces. Learning spaces can be considered places where knowledge is created, shared, and applied; therefore, they can be found in every organizational and geographical context in which generation and application of knowledge are key factors. (Kuuskorpi et al, 2011). Although several studies have discussed the features of learning space, especially in educational contexts, there is still a gap regarding a comprehensive view of the distinguishing dimensions of this space in an organizational context (Ryan, 2016; Basye, D. et al, 2015; Menninen et al, 2007). Identifying the key dimensions characterizing a learning space would help better manage and assess its performance. In such a prospect, based on an extensive review of literature, this study analyses the evolution of the notion of learning space, its features and main performance dimensions and proposes a holistic definition of learning space by highlighting its main dimensions, in educational and organizational contexts. The research results synthesize data and knowledge gathered from the literature review and offer implications and insights both for theory and practice. In fact, the findings suggest specific variables and dimensions to consider in assessing and managing learning spaces. From a practical viewpoint, the paper provides managers with a conceptual framework for the assessment and the management of organization learning space.

The increasing socio-economic uncertainty and the new challenges and opportunities of digital revolution are forcing organizations to anticipate changes and boost more and more their innovation processes in order to maintain their competitive advantage. Managing knowledge and improving learning dynamics are essential to foster innovation and successfully embark on digital transformation journey. Knowledge Management (KM) may be viewed as a systematic, articulated and intentional process that is supported by the creation, transfer, storage, and dissemination of knowledge throughout and outside organization, to achieve organizational excellence, competitive advantage, and transformative process (Corso et al., 2003; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2019). Within this scenario, organizations appear increasingly committed to adopting initiatives aimed at developing the organizational skills necessary to deal with the transformation processes required by the 4.0 industry. In such a prospect, the study attempts to shed more light on the assessment of KM 4.0 initiative aimed to develop knowledge and competences to capitalize digital transformation. Drawing on the results of a literature review about the evaluation of KM initiative in the era of Industry 4.0, the study proposes a tool to assess a training initiative. Then the research tests the assessment tool with a multiple case study approach. The multiple case study is based on the evaluation of KM initiatives, i.e. training courses, for the development of skills for business 4.0, implemented by 21 Italian SMEs with the aim to increase the skills necessary for their digital transformation. Summarizing, this paper contributes to further developing the literature on KM 4.0 by shedding more light on the assessment of KM initiatives. The study provides an assessment tool and focuses on the effects of KM initiative, i.e. training course, aimed to improve company’s knowledge and competence for dealing with digital transformation.

Viable public value generation is realized at the intersection of the public and the private realms, involving collaborative efforts aimed at tackling the wicked issues affecting collective well-being. Public private partnerships (PPP) and Public Private People Partnership (PPPP) are privileged organizational forms for the generation of public value. The idea that PPP and PPPP can bring collective benefits nurture their diffusion. They can be conceived of as inter-organizational relationships, characterized by: 1) mutual coordination of activities; 2) shared level of risk, and 3) an organizational agreement between the partners. Interorganizational relationships are usually hosted in project settings, which enact a context for eliciting interdependencies and enable public value co- generation. Although literature has investigated the challenges related to the management of projects in the public sector, unveiling “hard” and “soft” issues for their successful accomplishment, little is known on how projects can foster the knowledge assets for public value co-creation. The article pushes forward our understanding of the antecedents, processes, and implications of knowledge sharing in project settings aimed at public value co-creation, shedding lights into the factors which encourage public sector entities and private companies to cross-fertilize their assets to co-produce public value. A systematic literature review has been accomplished, trying to comprehensively integrate the scholarly debate about knowledge sharing dynamics within projects launched by public sector entities to engage private partners and people in public value co-creation. Altogether, 50 items were contemplated in this literature review. Four main themes emerged from the scholarly debate. Knowledge sharing and dissemination relies on contextual factors, which concern the institutional, technological, and social frameworks within which projects are implemented. Knowledge transfer is facilitated when public sector entities promote openness in the design and the implementation of value co- creation projects, introduce reliable technologies to support inter-organizational relationships, and establish trustworthy relationships with their partners. Appropriate organizational architectures should be designed to foster knowledge sharing. Two main solutions are available for this purpose: a conservative approach entails embedding boundary spanners in conventional organizational structures, enabling them to perform as bridges to promote inter-organizational exchanges; a radical way involve arranging a temporary flexible organization, which is hybridized by the partners and hybridizes their knowledge assets. Public managers should be adequately trained to effectively manage projects which are characterized by the engagement of private partners in the process of public value co-creation. Finally, the direct and indirect implications of knowledge dissemination on public value generation should be addressed.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed existential public health and economic fragilities of the aviation industry. To prevent future public health disruptions, the industry is gaining interest in becoming more “resilient” but rarely elaborates on its meaning, hampering the development of a long-term strategy. When looking into academic literature it seems that a proliferation of resilience-related concepts occurred. Although enriching resilience, it also dilutes its meaning and reduces its use for practice. This paper aims to create concept clarity regarding resilience by proposing a novel “framework of resilience”. Based upon a scoping review, this framework dissects resilience into four reoccurring traits: fragility, robustness, adaption and transformation. When applying this framework in the aviation and public health context, the transformative trait seems lacking in current strategies. Since transformation is assumed to be an essential trait for creating long-term resilience in turbulent times, it is recommended to further explore its use and value.

In recent decades, digital transformation processes have significantly impacted the new forms of flexible work. This demand for work flexibility has spread rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Foss, 2021; Stich, 2020). The current pandemic emergency, which began in February 2020, has had several waves that have resulted in significant changes, especially in public organizations. Many public organizations faced a greater degree of uncertainty. To manage uncertainty, the first organizational response was the massive use of smart working (SW) to ensure operational continuity (Mascio et al., 2020, Todisco et al., 2022). Smart working is a new form of work to ensure greater spatial and temporal flexibility for employees to improve individual well-being and organizational efficiency (Bednar and Welch, 2020; Ellerton, 2015). However, the introduction of smart working has created difficulties in non-resilient organizations, especially in the coordination and objectives clear definition that each employee must achieve. Therefore, adopting new methodologies and approaches to manage activities and new working tools is necessary to improve communication. The description of a new working relationship is no longer on control but trust and responsibility. More employee responsibility, aimed at ensuring an increase in organizational productivity, is based on identifying and implementing well-defined objectives, forsaking old organizational models based only on physical presence in the office, and implementing a routine. In this rapidly changing scenario, public management plays a key role in addressing the challenges arising from the pandemic emergency. (Ansell et al., 2021). On the one hand, public management must make smart working effective, intervening in optimizing projects and clearly defining the objectives to be assigned to employees. On the other hand, public managers must translate the challenges of smart working into development and growth opportunities for their organizations, promoting greater organizational resilience in public organizations focused on projects. Based on these premises, through interviews conducted with ten public managers of public administrations at the local Italian level, this article aims to understand how public management, during the pandemic emergency, was able to intervene in the definition of objectives for public employees. Furthermore, another aspect on which the following research work focuses is understanding how public management has managed to optimize significant projects for its administrations by adopting new methodologies and work approaches for the activities’ management in their administrations.

Numerous articles demonstrate how supply chain models have evolved, affecting their organisational configurations, goals, and natural relationships between suppliers and customers. Today’s supply chain is a multi-objective system traversed by numerous resource flows, but the behaviour of knowledge flow within the supply chain is not entirely understood. Numerous previous contributions have concentrated exclusively on relationships with clients and first-tier suppliers (FTS), with little or no attention paid to relationships with second-tier suppliers (STS). This article proposes a hybrid model for comprehending the process of knowledge diffusion within a triadic relationship between the customer, FTS, and STS. The model is based on two major approaches to these problems that have been proposed in the literature: Analytic Hierarchy Processes and Fuzzy Set Theory. We can determine how the triadic relationship can account for knowledge diffusion through the supply chain by examining a sample of 18 supply chains. More precisely, the research establishes a taxonomy that elucidates the role and behaviour of FTS throughout the supply chain. Numerous FTSs were identified and classified in four distinct areas. From the proposed taxonomy, this research suggests implications for customers and suppliers and delineates further additional research.

During the last two decades, lean healthcare has received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners because it plays an imperative role in quality and safety clinical process improvement. Although there is much evidence of the positive results of the paradigm implementation at the micro level, only in few cases the methodology is implemented at meso level or improvements are observed at organizational level. Among the main factors leading to the failure of meso implementation is the lack of widespread knowledge of lean tools and concepts within the organization. The lean implementation process at the meso level require high efforts to manage the transfer, sharing, integration, and transformation of lean knowledge within the organization. Thus, many researchers have positively assumed knowledge management (KM) as a critical success factor of lean sustainability and meso implementation. Although, the relationship of KM and lean sustainability have gradually become a hot topic, few scholars have investigated this issue in healthcare sector. Based on the key characteristics of the implementation process, this article aims to bring out the relationships between lean tools, KM and lean sustainability in hospital setting. In particular, by using structural equations modelling, an in-depth exploration of how the KM system mediates between lean tools and lean sustainability is conducted in Italian hospitals. Results provide some relevant insights for hospitals applying the lean paradigm namely: KM is a critical success factor in disseminating and sustaining lean methodology and lean knowledge degree is strongly influenced by the use of lean tools.

Global economic development cannot be dissociated from global warming and sustainability concerns. The existence of supranational institutions such as the United Nations favour the process in the sense that they can share their vision, which is both global and inclusive. Nevertheless, the ultimate actions are undertaken by economic actors, such as companies and consumers. On the companies’ side, sustainability issues have been identified on second, third and more upstream suppliers. The responsibility in dealing with sustainable issues of their suppliers can be attributed to the companies, so the role of multinational companies such as Amazon is clearly very relevant. They possess the financial and technological means to generate a positive impact on the sustainability of their suppliers. A possible way to handle it is by implementing strategic alliances between the company and its suppliers. This is the rationale under the Vendor Flex model of Amazon, in which we focus in this research. The Vendor Flex model is based on the use of Amazon’s technology and labour to make a better use of supplier’s assets, while providing a better service to Amazon’s customers, especially in high demand seasons, such as Black Friday or Christmas. At the same time, mileage of merchandise transport is reduced, allowing Vendor Flex model to have a positive impact in sustainability. However, as any other strategic alliance, Vendor Flex has several issues in terms of governance, that are dealt with in this research.

Health systems face many challenges. New technologies are believed to be a solution to these problems. The digitalization of the health care system plays a significant role in improving health care, as well as in planning and financing health services.However, addressing these issues with the digitalization of health care will involve the correct use of technologies. health systems, be they big data or artificial intelligence tools for the surveillance, planning and management of “personalized data” in the form of universal electronic recording systems and personalized treatment protocols. Digitalization therefore represents one of the most effective responses to the growing pressures to increase the quality of health ecosystems while reducing their costs. ICTs offer opportunities to reconcile the ability to leverage current resources with the ability to move away from them to explore new and better ways to deliver value. In a strategic value-building perspective, the healthcare organizations decided to develop knowledge-sharing strategies by encouraging knowledge codification with the help of Information Communication Technology (ICT). ICT provides a wide spectrum of tools and means to facilitate value creation. On these premises the paper analyze implementation and use of ICT tools like the EMR and EHR in Italian public and private health care sector, analyzing the state of the art in the dissemination of theese applications within the Italian healthcare context.

This paper deals with a case of organizational change “triggered” by a process of digital transformation. More specifically we refer to the management of change activated in the Supreme Court of Cassation and related to the introduction of the on-line civil trial (Processo Civile Telematico, PCT). In this case change management has been designed in accordance with a participative logic, high involvement and cooperation of the various organizational actors with the aim of re-designing activities and work processes according to a bottom-up model. In this setting, change is related not only to the innovation of rules and procedures, but above all, to the management of people, through the adoption of an approach that can we term as “behavioural”.

Green Business Models Innovation and Development are in 2022 object to heavy investments. Businesses competences – employees, organisational systems and culture – are under high pressure to be changed into being green including unlearn existing knowledge of yester days business practice – pushed to adapt green knowledge and develop new green competences. This is maybe the largest and most challenging knowledge transfer and competence innovation and development process – businesses have ever been requested to do. According to UN Climate report this change is a must to prevent disruptive climate change and prevent the earth to collapse. The paper address some initial studies on the overall question – How can businesses measure, innovate and develop Green Knowledge and Green Business Model Competences – specifically to their human resource, organizational systems and culture and to their business value networks BM Competences?

Innovation is a fundamental process for the development of a prosperous and dynamic economy in this post-Covid era. The use of the Rao and Weintraub Model (2013) allows us to have an X-ray of the innovation culture of various organizations through the vision of general managers and/or founders. When these types of tools are used, it is possible to provide invaluable assets to decision makers for the promotion of elements towards a solid culture of innovation in a region, since it allows the identification of dynamics and practices in a sample of companies. In the case of the study, the application of the instrument was carried out between the months of July to September 2021 to 177 managers and/or founders of small and medium-sized companies in the state of Guanajuato.