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Proceedings IFKAD 2023

Managing Knowledge for Sustainability
  • Matera, Italy 7-9 June 2023
  • ISBN: 978-88-96687-16-1
  • ISSN: 2280-787X
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List of Included Articles:
Increasing Diversity in Aviation Industry
  • (2627-2645)
Federico,reis, Federico Maria Sottoriva

Social and regulatory pressures and competitiveness are increasingly encouraging companies to invest in diversity to manage differences in the workplace. In service industries such as hospitality, tourism, and transport, the relationships and interface between customer and service are critical (Singal, 2014). According to this approach in aviation companies, the subject of this is study, diversity management takes on even greater importance than in other industries (Steven et al., 2004). The commercial aviation industry is a high-tech service industry, extremely competitive and sensitive to the customer-employee relationship, since it is obviously a service that is consumed at the same time it is delivered (Appelbaum, Fewster, 2004). It appears known from the literature that diversity management plays a significant role in the organization’s outcomes (Lorbiecki, Jack, 2000). This study seeks, in fact, to provide a brief review of the history of diversity management in organizations, aiming to identify how, from the business side, diversity management is perceived and considered and which strategies have been implemented, or are in the planning stages, that may prove useful. In order to analyze the intangible aspects of airline and how attention to diversity can become an element of competitive advantage, a qualitative research methodology using a multiple case study was chosen in the paper, through an unstructured questionnaire interview. Specifically, direct interviews with three management figures in the aviation industry were chosen as the source of information collection. This first explanatory research confirms that the best combination of differences and, thus, the management of human resources enable the enhancement of diversity in organizations, with performance level benefits. Therefore, through the interview some strategies in aviation industry in order to sustain diversity management are highlighted. The limitation concerns the number of pilot cases observed (three) Future lines of research will be focused on the study of other company to acquire more data on the topic.

Gender Bond, Innovative Financial Tools in Woman Enterprises
  • (2699-2715)
Niccolò Paoloni, Giuseppe Modaffari, Martina Manzo

This paper aims to analyse how an innovative financial tool for female-led Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) can contribute to the development and sustainability of these businesses. Women’s enterprises can only reach high levels of indebtedness if there are equally high personal guarantees. Women’s enterprises have always been distinguished from men’s enterprises by simpler financial management, mainly related to the control of internal sources of finance, such as treasury and equity of the female entrepreneur, and only residually of external sources by way of debt capital. The development of sustainable finance in recent years has opened up the use of capital to the explicit aim of reducing the gender gap. In this context, Gender Bonds (GB) seem to be the most viable solution to solve this issue and, at the same time, meet today’s sustainable development challenge. In this way, the present paper aims to answer the following RQ. RQ1: what is a Gender Bond and what are its characteristics in term of sustainability? RQ2: what economic and financial benefits can a GB bring to women’s enterprises? The present work is supported by an exploratory descriptive qualitative (EDQ) research. As above, EDQ conducted by document analysis represents the first step in developing grounded theory (GT). This paper aims to expand the literature on the topic of sustainable financial tools for woman enterprises, with a special focus on the gender bond. This study therefore highlights how all those new financial tools, such as gender bond, succeed in improving the economic results of woman companies. It also highlights how the use of gender bond can allow to woman enterprises to improve their financial structure.

Starting from the Past Knowledge to Manage a Sustainable Present in a Continuum Design: A Best Practice from the City of Bacoli in the Phlegrean Fields
  • (2716-2736)
Marina Fumo, Marianna Illiano, Mariateresa Gamba

The cultural landscape of Phlegrean Fields is famous for the variety and value of territory -volcanic and geo-morphological nature, archaeological and historical heritage, naturalistic and high biodiversity, rural areas- that forms the articulation of mutual relations as unique landscape of exceptional value and identity. This landscape has been in continuous evolution over the millennia for different reasons: 1) changes produced by volcanic activity and anthropic impact that it generates; 2) historical processes of settlement, from the Greek and Roman until the periods of depopulation after the fall of the Roman Empire, the reclamation of ninetieth and the industrial settlements of the twentieth century and finally the post II World War urban expansions and deindustrialization; 3) the socio-economic changes interacting with settlement. In this context, the identity of the city of Bacoli territory has acquired a progressive complexity and continuity, despite the current presence of critical elements, its matrix based on the permanence and interweaving of environmental and cultural values remains very strong. Starting from these strengths, the local government works on the KM by minimal sustainable projects that represent important actions to increase the community wellness. Also for the abandoned area of an ex-military site is proposed a green regeneration and reuse.

Female Leadership Engagement in the Italian Audio-Visual Companies: The Role of Soft Power
  • (2646-2662)
Mihaela Gavrila, Giuseppe Modaffari, Camilla Rumi

Defining the pillars of sustainable development, the 2030 Agenda recalls inequality and valuing diversity as an asset. Diversity management can be defined as a managerial approach pursuing an active and conscious development of a forward-looking, value-oriented strategic and communicative managerial process of accepting differences and using some differences and similarities as a potential of the organization, a process that creates added value to the enterprise. However, a lack of literature emerges regarding the studies on “behind the line” themes, which represent the key factors for the companies operating into the audiovisual industry. Especially, one of these regards soft power meaning the use and persuasion to change minds and influence behavior. In this stream fits in the present research aiming to analyse how women’s leadership can support audiovisual companies in reaching sustainable development. Qualitative face to face surveys methodology supports the paper, analysing 16 in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted mainly with key figures of several audiovisual companies such as TV producers, production managers, directors of public and private TV networks, and heads of audiovisive archives. The positive role of female leadership in the audiovisual industry is confirmed. From executive appointments to new recognition paradigms, inclusion is on the 2022 agenda of the audiovisual world. A growing presence of roles and productions of female filmmakers is confirmed, although the gap between men and women is still very wide. Several insights emerge from the study of soft power topics, linking them directly to themes like training, innovation, responsibility, and change that emerge from the interviews. The present study has several theoretical and practical implications. From theoretical perspective, it enriches the literature on gender study fields. Also, several aspects of the company’s sustainable development and diversity management have been treated. From practical perspective, the present research points out the main features in terms of soft skills that female leadership must fulfil in order to achieve sustainable development for the company. The main limitation of the research could be recognised to the number of interviews conducted. The future lines of research aim to expand the survey, also considering international entities. This perspective will help the authors in identifying the main characteristics of women managers that could allow the audiovisual companies in reaching the best outcome format for the market. Moreover, extending the analysis could promote the generalisation of the main findings of the research.

The Role of Digitalization in the Sustainable Business Model: A Content Analysis of Integrated Reporting of European Companies
  • (2663-2683)
Ferdinando Di Carlo, Manuela Lucchese, Raffaele Adinolfi, Silvia Solimene

The topics of sustainability and digitalization are increasingly present in contemporary academic, economic and social debates. Both topics are drastically changing the behaviour of companies. This article aims to examine the disclosure of information on digitalization and sustainability in the context of the Integrated Report of European companies. It seeks to understand the extent to which these companies are moving towards a sustainable business model (SBM) that includes new digital technologies. In particular, the analysis started from the systematic literature review proposed by Broccardo et al. (2023) who, in order to investigate the contribution of new technologies to the transformation of companies’ SBM, provides a new table of categories started by the Business Model Canvas. Based on this framework, the authors constructed the useful items to develop and test the research objective. For this purpose, the qualitative research method was chosen. In detail, an automatic content analysis was conducted. This work analysed the Integrated Reports using a sample of 125 European companies in the period 2020-2021. The results showed that companies are increasingly including digitalization and sustainability issues in financial and non-financial reports. However, the financial sector seems to include digitization issues more closely, while the non-financial sector includes sustainability issues. Although studies in this field are increasing considerably, it seems that the academic debate is still in its infancy and that there are not enough empirical studies. To fill this gap, this article can contribute to the existing literature and provide an element of support for academics, companies and standard setters.

The Circular Economy Provenance Effect
  • (2737-2747)
Vinicio Di Iorio, Francesco Testa, Daniel Korschun, Natalia Marzia Gusmerotti

Used clothing carries a story to tell. While the circular economy emphasizes reusing, recycling, and recovering materials to minimize environmental impact, research is focused on technical aspects of circular products, such as materials composition and quality. However, little is known about the impact of a product’s provenance on its value perceived. We argue that a product’s previous owner can imbue it with a sense of value beyond its physical characteristics. Accordingly, we conducted a between-subject experiment to test this hypothesis. We compared two different background information settings, which we call status provenance (socialite vs no-frills previous owner), and the type of circular product (remanufactured vs second-hand). We found that remanufactured products, which are crafted by previous owners, had a higher perceived meaningfulness and purchase intention than second-hand products. Furthermore, the status provenance of the previous owner had a negative effect on perceived meaningfulness, suggesting that the focus should be on the crafting process rather than the identity of the previous owner. The study’s findings highlight the importance of recognizing the intangible, value-based aspect of remanufactured products, which can be an important aspect to promote to consumers and ultimately accomplish the transition towards a circular economy.

Leading Tourism Businesses through Digital Transformation
  • (2748-2763)
Daniela Carlucci, Antonio Lerro, Giovanni Schiuma, Francesco Santarsiero, Rosaria Lagrutta

Technological advancements are progressively changing tourism value chains. Tourism value chains are transforming into global value ecosystems and for tourism businesses is becoming essential to evolve their business model to ensure a smart, sustainable and inclusive tourism development and the adoption of innovation strategies which place the user, the citizen, or the tourist at the centre of the destination processes and value co-creation. This means not only adopting digital technologies to improve products and services but also changing and enhancing organisational culture, competencies, structure, leadership, operating model to be more agile, adaptable and innovative. Looking at management literature on digital transformation (DT) and DT in tourism sector, it emerges that the role and skills of leaders in guiding and inspiring their organisations to adopt and leverage digital technologies for creating new business models and value propositions, remain under investigated. By drawing on extensive literature on DT, the study briefly examines some key management issues regarding DT in tourism and discusses leadership traits that help organizations successfully navigate their transformation towards the absorption and exploitation of digital technological knowledge. Then, the research suggests some directions for future research.

A Critical Analysis of the Integration of Life Cycle Methods and Quantitative Methods for Sustainability Assessment
  • (2764-2791)
Roberto Cerchione, Renato Passaro, Ivana Quinto

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and related methods have been widely used for sustainability assessment. However, the integration of these methods with quantitative methods such as mathematical models, statistical methods, and artificial intelligence has received less attention. This literature review aims to examine how these methods have been integrated to pursue sustainability assessment objectives. A systematic literature review was conducted using Scopus database. The search was limited to articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 1960 to 2022. The search keywords included Life Cycle Assessment, Social Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Life Cycle Costing, Emergy Accounting, Sustainable Value Stream Mapping, mathematical methods, statistical methods, economic methods, simulation methods, building information modelling methods, and artificial intelligence methods. The literature review identified a total of 150 articles that addressed the integration of Life Cycle methods and quantitative methods for sustainability assessment. The majority of studies focused on the integration of LCA with mathematical models, statistical methods, and artificial intelligence methods. The studies demonstrated that the integration of these methods can improve the accuracy and reliability of sustainability assessments. Additionally, several studies proposed novel methods, such as the integration of LCA with building information modelling and simulation methods. The integration of Life Cycle methods and quantitative methods has the potential to enhance sustainability assessments by providing more accurate and reliable results. However, the integration process requires careful consideration of the assumptions, data quality, and uncertainties associated with each method. Further research is needed to develop standardized guidelines for integrating these methods and to identify the most effective integration approaches for specific sustainability assessment objectives.

The European Digital Decade and the Tourism Ecosystem: A Methodological Approach to Improve Tourism Analytics
  • (2792-2802)
Simone Corrado, Rachele Vanessa Gatto, Francesco Scorza

Tourism is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that involves social, cultural, and economic dimensions. While the economic benefits of tourism are often studied, there is a lack of a solid methodological framework to measure the impacts of tourism on other components such as the environment and cultural heritage. The tourism ecosystem is a network of resources and operators that spans across different domains and industries. This ecosystem is especially important for inland areas, where tourism can drive socio-economic development and prevent land abandonment. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the European Union’s economy, including the tourism industry. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been hit hard, with many planning significant cuts in investments after the pandemic. In response, the EU has proposed a renewed New Industrial Strategy to support investments and strengthen the resilience of the EU Single Market. As part of the TechForYou project aimed at promoting and strengthening collaboration in the Calabria and Basilicata Regions, a data-driven approach using Artificial Intelligence and GeoAI is proposed to monitor tourism trends in inland areas in near real-time. The approach focuses on analyzing the huge flow of data and information regarding tourism in a territorial/spatial dimension, and characterizes tourism as a relational phenomenon in a territorial perspective. The European Digital Decade initiative aims to improve Europe’s competitiveness and ensure that European citizens can fully benefit from the opportunities offered by digital technologies. A single data space with a standard-based structure among all European countries will be established as part of the European Data Strategy, which will include the tourism ecosystem. This will facilitate the sharing of European data in key economic sectors and create a vibrant data-driven economy. In conclusion, a solid methodological framework is needed to measure the impacts of tourism on all components, including the environment and cultural heritage. The tourism ecosystem is a network of resources and operators that spans across different domains and industries, and a data-driven approach using AI and GeoAI can be used to monitor tourism trends in inland areas. The European Digital Decade initiative will establish a single data space with a standard-based structure for the tourism ecosystem, facilitating the sharing of European data and creating a vibrant data-driven economy. The tools derive from the ML and AI and the perspective to exploit the informative potential of available open data sources seems to be an encouraging research direction.

Gender Disclosure in Sustainability Reporting under the Lens of the International Comparative Accounting
  • (2803-2816)
Paola Paoloni, Antonietta Cosentino, Marco Venuti

The Directive 2022/2464 on Corporate Sustainability Reporting (CSRD) amended the Directive 2014/95 on Non-Financial Information (NFID) by introducing changes in gender disclosure. Starting by comparing the texts of two Directives, this paper investigates the factors that influenced the new gender information required. The new Directive devotes specific attention to gender equality information, requiring disclosure on equal pay for equal work, training and skills development, and employment. This is the main innovation introduced by CSRD in accordance with the principle of equal gender treatment that has inspired European legislation (EU, 2020). In this respect, CSRD requirements are consistent with the Pay Transparency Directive, which aims to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay between men and women and the prohibition of discrimination, though also pay transparency mechanisms. These Directives contribute to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women worldwide, as envisaged in Goal 5 of Agenda 2030 (UN, 2015). There have been no major changes in the disclosure of diversity on boards and gender policies adopted and their implementations. This paper contributes to filling a gap in the studies by highlighting an unexplored area of literature related to the changes in quantity, quality and modalities of regulatory gender disclosure requirements.

Gender Diversity Management in a Decade of Research: A Structured Literature Review
  • (2817-2833)
Paola Paoloni, Antonietta Cosentino, Martina Manzo

If “diversity” can be defined as the distribution of attributes among interdependent members of a work unit (Jackson et al., 2003), “diversity management” (DM) can be recognised as the comprehensive process of building an environment where all the employees can interact effectively through practice and organisational structure aimed to manage the diversity (Yadav and Rajak, 2022; Roberson et al., 2017; Pitts, 2006). This process consists of implementing measures that make an organisation’s workforce more diverse and inclusive, promoting genuine communication and transmission of knowledge (Trittin and Schoeneborn, 2017; Fältholm and Norberg, 2017). Among the most evident aspects of social diversity is gender diversity, which always kept women in a background position compared to men, both in the public and private sector (Fusco et al., 2022; Dong, 2022). The measures and actions aimed at achieving equal representation of men and women represent Gender DM (GDM) (Kamasak et al., 2020; Uddin and Manir Chowdhury, 2015). The present research aims to i) analyse how economic literature is facing GDM); ii) classify the main foci of analysis in the extant literature; iii) identify thriving future research areas. The analysis is conducted through a Structured Literature Review (SLR) methodology (Paoloni and Demartini, 2016), a literature classification widely used in business studies to classify them according to four lenses: Article Focus, Research Area, Geographic area; Research method. The present work considers 153 studies among articles, conference papers, book chapters and books identified on the SCOPUS database by searching “diversity management” and “gender”. The authors considered only the studies that have been published in the last ten years. This paper implements gender studies about women’s emancipation in employment and improves studies about diversity management by adopting a gender perspective. It categorises all the studies related to Gender and Diversity Management (GDM) to give researchers a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities women face in the workforce, and the measures organisations take to address these issues.

Increasing Social Sustainability in Agricultural Sector for Supporting Resilience: A First Preliminary Analysis
  • (2834-2844)
Federica leo, Valerio Elia, Maria Grazia Gnoni, Fabiana Tornese, Diego De Merich, Armando Guglielmi, Mauro Pellicci

The scientific debate about sustainability in agricultural sector is growing worldwide, thanks to the increasing awareness of customers towards the impact of their consumption behaviors. While a great deal of attention is given to the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability, social sustainability is more easily left out of the analysis of agrifood supply chains. In particular, research on occupational health and safety (OHS) in agrifood is not vast, although the sector is among the most critical ones for what concerns accidents on the workplace. As an example, agriculture and food industry workers are considered high-risk groups during the handling of equipment, chemicals, and cleaning of contaminated instruments because they are exposed to health hazards that require an effective training program along with personal protective equipment. Similarly, the fishing industry has been identified as an exceptionally precarious occupation compared to other industries due to its high rate of accidents and deaths. This work is a first attempt to fill this gap: starting from the analysis of open data available through a national database provided by the Italian National Institute for the Insurance of Work-Related Injuries (INAIL), a critical analysis of work-related injuries and near miss events in Italian agrifood companies is provided. A discussion on the results is presented proposing some evidence-driven guidelines and research gaps, with the aim of shedding light on OHS in the Italian agrifood sector, its main criticalities, and possible directions.

Corporate Museum in Agrifood Sector: Implementing Ba for Knowledge Creation
  • (2845-2857)
Walter Vesperi, Concetta Lucia Cristofaro, Anna Maria Melina, Marzia Ventura

The agri-food context represents a very complex and dynamic sector, which influenced by the current competitive ecosystem, is experimenting with new way to enhance and implement knowledge. The characteristics of the agri-food organizations impose the need to rethink the “traditional” knowledge management practices (Bresciani, 2017; et al., 2018; Vesperi and Coppolino, 2023). Indeed, even in the agri-food sector, corporate museums are proliferating, with the aim to collect, archive and enhance knowledge, currently considered obsolete and not used within the agri-food organization. In this way, the corporate museum represents a “container” of knowledge (or organizational memory); that is, a space shared between various actors that through interaction, observation and experience between them, collaborate to start a process of co-creation of new knowledge (Durst and Zieba, 2019; Baima, et al, 2020, Vesperi and Ingrassia, 2021). The strategic role of the corporate museum emerges for the agri-food organization as Ba, in other words an ideal shared place for the creation of new individual or organizational knowledge (Nonaka 1994; and Konno, 1998; Del Giudice, et al., 2013). The aim of this study is to analyze the strategic role of the corporate museum, in the agri-food sector, in facilitating the creation of new knowledge. In particular, the corporate museum is considered as a place shared by various actors to implement a process of co-creation of knowledge. This study is based on a qualitative methodology of an exploratory nature. The complexity of the phenomenon has imposed the need to use a multi-step methodology (Bowen, 2009; Yin, 2009). The first step of the analysis, using the Museimprese database (museimpresa.com), made it possible to develop descriptive indicators in order to understand the diffusion and characteristics of corporate museums in Italy and the connection with the agri-food sector. A case study was analyzed in order to better understand the main aspects related to the creation of knowledge and the corporate museum. The results suggest the growing importance of the strategic role that the corporate museum plays in the agri-food sector; in fact, it allows to valorise “obsolete” knowledge and through a process of co-creation to generate new knowledge. In fact, the main innovative element of this study consists in the theoretical perspective used to analyze corporate museums in the agri-food sector. The practical implications of this study can suggest entrepreneurs and the management of agri-food organizations to implement new solutions for the creation of knowledge, through the corporate museum.

New Work in Public Administration: Translating Workplace and Organizational Requirements into Spatial Patterns. A Methodological Approach
  • (2858-2881)
Anja Jannack, Solveig Hausmann, Jörg Rainer Noennig, Martin Schmauder

Digitalised work processes, fast information flows and flexible project structures also have an impact on the design of working environments and work organisation. Hybrid work and multi-structure offices are concepts that are often implemented in the private sector but rarely in the public sector. Due to the pandemic conditions of the last two years, however, many employees and employers in the public sector have gained experience with remote work in home offices. The “paperless office” is increasingly becoming reality, filing cabinets are getting smaller and replaced by e-files. Digital screen work, video conferencing as well as extensive data and document exchange via cloud services increasingly determine everyday work. It can be questioned whether spatial-organizational formats such as the conventional two-person office are still appropriate solutions for office work in the future public sector. Are there new (spatial) environments that create more suitable work conditions for the changing requirements? How can employees participate in the design of these new work environments? How can they be empowered to re-organise and re-use their work environment under the changing conditions? This paper reflects on a feasibility study conducted by TU Dresden for a large Saxon administration. Addressing “Future Work” scenarios, it focused on new concepts for workplace design, work organisation and knowledge management. The feasibility study started with a survey of employees in order to derive spatial, organisational and technological requirements for new work organization and spatial concepts. The paper introduces – besides the scientific and practice background – the overall procedure of the study as well as new concepts for work organisation and workplace design. On the one hand, it focuses on (online) surveys and co-design workshops as methodological approaches for the assessment of needs. On the other hand it discusses the specific results of the feasibility study. It concludes with the translation of the findings into schematic designs, and outlines how to incorporate the insights in the future planning of new work organization and spatial concepts in public administration.

Open Innovation Activities and Firm Performance: A Comparison between Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis
  • (2882-2901)
Marco Greco, Michele Grimaldi, Livio Cricelli, Serena Strazzullo, Benito Mignacca

Innovation played a relevant role in coping with the related economic-financial consequences of the 2008 crisis. In particular, several studies show the pivotal role of open innovation activities in responding to 2008 crisis-related downturn conditions. Remarkably, previous studies share several limitations. First, they leverage single-country data or single sectors to examine open innovation activities. Second, they examine open innovation activities and firm performance through binary comparisons between either pre-crisis and crisis or crisis and post-crisis periods. An overall view of how the outburst of a crisis altered the 2008 pre-crisis collaboration strategies and how such strategies changed after the 2008 crisis is a relevant gap in knowledge. This article addresses this gap in knowledge by examining open innovation activities and firms’ performance through a binary comparison between pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. In particular, this article analyses a repeated cross-sectional sample of firms from 13 European countries interviewed during 5 consecutive Community Innovation Survey waves. This article shows how after the crisis, European firms reduced – on average – the variety of their innovation partners. Such a loss was recovered only in 2012-2014. The outburst of a crisis seems negatively associated with the propensity towards open innovation and, specifically, with the number of different collaboration channels exploited by a firm to innovate. A crisis may urge firms to focus their energies on fewer collaboration channels to make the most out of them. The results also emphasise that the financial crisis temporarily reduced innovativeness. Interestingly, the results show that the positive relationship between collaboration breadth and innovation performance is more marked in the post-crisis wave for the firms more active in open innovation.

Use of the Smart Glasses in the Learning Surgery Residents: The Empirical Case
  • (2940-2950)
Concetta Lucia Cristofaro, Marzia Ventura, Anna Maria Melina, Rocco Reina

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sudden reorganization of surgical activities to deal with the global emergency. Non-urgent surgeries have been postponed providing resources for COVID-19 patients and non-deferrable cases. This collapse in activity has profoundly compromised the training programs of medical residents (whose activity is usually focused on inpatients, outpatient clinics, minor surgeries) (Hodges et al., 2020). An alternative to the traditional training method, where skills are acquired primarily in the classroom and operating theatre, is training with digital technologies that enable skills training remote. According to Vale et.al. (2021) in this transition process, teachers and students had to reflect, adapt, change, innovate and use digital tools. On these premises, the research focused on the implementation of Smart Glasses to support the training and learning of medical residents at the Hemodynamic Cardiology – Electrophysiology Unit of a University Hospital in Southern Italy. The methodological process was developed through a qualitative approach based on a case study, according to the methods and indications suggested by Yin (2009), which involved the collection of data through semi-structured interviews and analysis of documents. The data reveal, the transition from face-to-face teaching to remote teaching, or online teaching and learning, became the possible alternative for Education institutions to ensure the continuity of courses and medical residents learning. In this case study, the technology used are the smart glasses web-connected glasses that can present data onto the lenses and record images or videos through a front-facing camera. The medical residents displayed positive attitudes towards using the new device. The study results show that technology tools can effectively improve learning efficiency and reduce learning cost and have shown that smart glasses training improved the technical abilities and reduced complication rates.

Women Founders and Innovators: Technology and Intellectual Property as Success Factors on Eco-Innovative Companies
  • (2902-2916)
Valentina Battista

Today the role of women in entrepreneurship is assuming great value and has become one of the most relevant topics in literature. According to the latest World Bank report (2022) [1], promoting women’s empowerment is essential to achieve inclusive growth, especially in sectors that pay particular attention to the environment such as eco-innovation. Women’s participation in the economy can increase productivity and help build a more harmonious society. But what are the enabling cultural, social, and economic factors that make a company founded by an innovative woman a success story? This is the research question underlying this study. In particular, the analysis was conducted through the methodology of the case study, on a company operating in the eco-innovative industry and her founder. The analyzed innovative company is characterized by a business model oriented towards innovation. The importance of the topic is related to the need to identify the enabling factors that contributed to the business success of women entrepreneurs, to understand in-depth the main challenges that these women entrepreneurs faced and to highlight policy recommendations offered as key drivers for facilitating entrepreneurship. The qualitative approach allows for considering cultural, social and economic aspects in an integrated way.

What Do the Faculty Members Know: A Multidimensional Knowledge Portrait
  • (2917-2927)
Tatiana Gavrilova, Olga Alkanova, Anna Kuznetsova

Information overload is putting pressure on organisations to provide a better-quality service and improve agility. The key challenges for knowledge intensive organisations are how to identify, map, assimilate, disseminate, and apply knowledge, particularly the knowledge mapping of different users with incompatible perspectives and purposes. As part of this study we started the development of ontology based knowledge map which reflects faculty knowledge and delivers knowledge to various users with different perspectives and purposes. The faculty knowledge map is based on the triad of faculty activities: teaching, research and consulting. As there is no methodology for faculty knowledge map development the paper focuses on the methods of developing such digital knowledge maps, forming a multidimensional knowledge portrait module that can be later integrated into knowledge management systems. Methods of ontology engineering are used for developing the conceptual models of the knowledge domain and faculty activities.

Disruption in Research Practice – Disruptiveness in New Knowledge Spaces
  • (2928-2939)
Paul Raphael Stadelhofer, Anja Jannack

Disruptive innovation has become a hype in some industries, discourses and applied research fields and often has a positive connotation. This normative conception of disruptive innovation often arises from the context of sustainable development: outside existing systems and structures, new solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change are to be sought. Ethical reflection is of particular importance. (IPCC, 2014). The paper, therefore, argues that a critical examination and definition of the disruption concept are pending. This means that it should be examined how the term is used in such a way that it is linked to normative expectations of research and innovation processes. Based on this, it is argued that disruptiveness cannot easily be invoked in research projects as a legitimising approach to positive social consequences of development processes. The concept of disruption is therefore related to changing knowledge spaces in research and innovation processes. By changing social interactions in socio-technical systems, reference systems for research and development processes are altered and dynamics are disrupted. Starting from the discussion of various possible definitions, the legitimacy of the demand for disruption in research practice is critically questioned. Thus, it is less a matter of radical change happening through external force, but rather of disruptive research or innovation being actively pursued Some problems with disruption are outlined in the introduction. The resulting questions are formulated in the first section. Some approaches and possible goals in modelling disruptive innovation are discussed in the second section. Finally, the state of the research and conclusions are discussed. The overarching question for the contribution is: “What is the significance of the concepts of disruption and disruptivity for the practice of responsible research and innovation, taking into account the technical shaping of new knowledge spaces”?

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Managing Knowledge for Sustainability

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