Using big data for co-innovation processes: Mapping the field of data-driven innovation, proposing theoretical developments and providing a research agenda

Revisiting the role of HR in the age of AI: bringing humans and machines closer together in the workplace

The functions of human resource management (HRM) have changed radically in the past 20 years due to market and technological forces, becoming more cross-functional and data-driven. In the age of AI, the role of HRM professionals in organizations continues to evolve. Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming many HRM functions and practices throughout organizations creating system and process efficiencies, performing advanced data analysis, and contributing to the value creation process of the organization. A growing body of evidence highlights the benefits AI brings to the field of HRM. Despite the increased interest in AI-HRM scholarship, focus on human-AI interaction at work and AI-based technologies for HRM is limited and fragmented. Moreover, the lack of human considerations in HRM tech design and deployment can hamper AI digital transformation efforts. This paper provides a contemporary and forward-looking perspective to the strategic and human-centric role HRM plays within organizations as AI becomes more integrated in the workplace. Spanning three distinct phases of AI-HRM integration (technocratic, integrated, and fully-embedded), it examines the technical, human, and ethical challenges at each phase and provides suggestions on how to overcome them using a human-centric approach. Our paper highlights the importance of the evolving role of HRM in the AI-driven organization and provides a roadmap on how to bring humans and machines closer together in the workplace.

E-commerce channel management on the manufacturers’ side: ongoing debates and future research pathways

Since the beginning of the 2000s, online commerce has been gradually taking over and shaping the global marketplace. This has led several scholars to study the phenomenon from different angles, from consumer habits to privacy risks to related technological innovations. However, only recently has a branch of literature addressing the online channel management phenomenon from the manufacturers’ perspective emerged. This rapidly expanding literature strand remains rather fragmented, raising the need for a systematic literature review to comprehensively structure and discuss it. This study, accordingly, proposes a systematic literature review on online channel management from the manufacturers’ perspective. Firstly, it provides relevant bibliometric insights into the ongoing research on the topic. Secondly, applying the bibliographic coupling methodology individuates 92 interconnected contributions published by 31 December 2021. Three different, albeit interconnected, thematic clusters are discovered and reviewed, revealing their focus on (a) strategic marketing issues around manufacturervsretailer conflict, (b) pricing policies and trade-offs among pricevsservices, and (c) operational interactions and strategies between supply chain members. Finally, after a systematic literature review the authors develop thirteen original research propositions concerning new research pathways and theoretical advancements to be designed and implemented.

The Role of Leadership and Digital Transformation in Higher Education Students' Work Engagement

Teaching and learning processes should be subject to continuous change due to the constant evolution of social, educational and technological environments, which ultimately results in higher levels of student engagement. The current paper describes the technological changes faced by higher education institutions as a result of digital transformation challenges. Further, transformational and transactional leadership styles' effectiveness is regarded within the context of higher education institutions' digital enhancements. Over time, these factors have led to contextual shifts that have disengaged students from learning and thus self-development. The current research aimed to examine how higher education institutions should apply different leadership styles within digitally transformed contexts so as to increase students' learning engagement and reduce the risk of failure in their future developments within (inter)national labor markets. Data gathering and analysis involved a qualitative approach: an online survey was distributed, resulting in 856 responses. Through structural equation modeling, the data revealed a valid higher education digital transformation assessment tool; the results also emphasize the increased role of transactional leadership, as opposed to the traditional transformational style, within a highly digitized higher education institutional framework. Consequently, the linear relationship of students' work engagement with leadership proved to also be enhanced by quadratic effects. The current study stresses the importance of internal and external peers in higher education performance through high levels of student learning (work) engagement through leadership and a uniformly developed digitally transformed higher education environment.

Waste management beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: Bibliometric and text mining analyses

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the demand for personal protective equipment, in particular face masks, thus leading to a huge amount of healthcare waste generated worldwide. Consequently, such an unprecedented amount of newly emerged waste has posed significant challenges to practitioners, policy-makers, and municipal authorities involved in waste management (WM) systems. This research aims at mapping the COVID-19-related scientific production to date in the field of WM. In this vein, the performance indicators of the target literature were analyzed and discussed through conducting a bibliometric analysis. The conceptual structure of COVID-19-related WM research, including seven main research themes, were uncovered and visualized through a text mining analysis as follows: (1) household and food waste, (2) personnel safety and training for waste handling, (3) sustainability and circular economy, (4) personal protective equipment and plastic waste, (5) healthcare waste management practices, (6) wastewater management, and (7) COVID-19 transmission through infectious waste. Finally, a research agenda for WM practices and activities in the post-COVID-19 era was proposed, focusing on the following three identified research gaps: (i) developing a systemic framework to properly manage the pandemic crisis implications for WM practices as a whole, following a systems thinking approach, (ii) building a circular economy model encompassing all activities from the design stage to the implementation stage, and (iii) proposing incentives to effectively involve informal sectors and local capacity in decentralizing municipal waste management, with a specific focus on developing and less-developed countries.

Big data analytics capability in healthcare operations and supply chain management: the role of green process innovation

Green approaches remain little disseminated in the healthcare sector despite growing interest in recent years from practitioners and researchers. Big Data Analytics Capability (BDAC) can play a critical role in the integration of environmental concerns into operations and supply chain management (OSCM) and further strengthen the environmental performance of healthcare facilities. According to the literature, the integration of the environment into operations process remains insufficient to achieve high levels of performance and requires efforts in green process innovation. However, this relationship between BDAC and green process innovation remains poorly justified empirically. To address this theoretical gap, we investigated the relationship between BDAC, environmental process integration, green process innovation in OSCM and environmental performance. The main contribution of this study is the valuable knowledge on how BDAC influences environmental process integration and green process innovation to enhance environmental performance. Moreover, the study highlights the mediating role of green process innovation on environmental performance, a finding that has not been mentioned in the extant literature. The paper provides valuable insight for managers and stakeholders that can assist them in supporting the application of BDAC in healthcare OSCM to create sustainable value.

Perceived customer journey innovativeness and customer satisfaction: a mixed-method approach

This research aims to understand the link between perceived innovativeness and customer satisfaction in the fine-dining catering segment. By employing a mixed-method approach, this paper proposes a multidimensional framework for measuring the perceived innovativeness of restaurants throughout the entire customer journey. Customer satisfaction was measured by considering online customer-generated data from TripAdvisor. The study not only finds a strong correlation between perceived innovativeness and customer satisfaction but also presents how fine-dining restaurants can employ user-generated data to co-innovate entire customer journeys and restaurant experiences. The results highlight menu-, service-, and customer experience-related innovativeness as the three most important criteria for fine-dining restaurant customers. Additionally, the results of the qualitative study indicate that in the context of fine-dining catering, the quality of the dishes, the service, and the customers' experience with the service staff and chefs are the main elements of satisfaction that restaurants should consider in promoting innovation.

The Effect of Digitalization on Innovation Capabilities through the Lenses of the Knowledge Management Strategy

In recent years, the knowledge management approach of the firm has emerged as the central theoretical perspective intended to address the question of adaptation to technological change. As for theoretical and practical implications, we proposed a comprehensive model that provides an integrative outlook on how the relationships between digitalization and knowledge management strategy predetermine the business results of the firm. To this purpose, we empirically analyzed the effect of digitalization on knowledge management, and how this contributes to the improvement of the company’s results in the IT, technology, consulting, and programming sectors by testing the hypotheses through the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach to Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). A group of 620 companies was targeted for collecting the data by quantitative means of analysis—a questionnaire. The final sample was composed of 78 companies, which corresponds to 12.58% (response rate). The research findings offer an explicit foundation, on which to base future research efforts in evaluating the ways companies should approach digital transformation, strengthen the knowledge management role in this process, develop the digital and innovation capabilities, and finally, ameliorate the effects on business performance, what also represents a certain value for the executives or individuals in the workplace.

Enabling Co-Innovation for a Successful Digital Transformation in Wind Energy Using a New Digital Ecosystem and a Fault Detection Case Study

In the next decade, further digitalisation of the entire wind energy project lifecycle is expected to be a major driver for reducing project costs and risks. In this paper, a literature review on the challenges related to implementation of digitalisation in the wind energy industry is first carried out, showing that there is a strong need for new solutions that enable co-innovation within and between organisations. Therefore, a new collaboration method based on a digital ecosystem is developed and demonstrated. The method is centred around specific “challenges”, which are defined by “challenge providers” within a topical “space” and made available to participants via a digital platform. The data required in order to solve a particular “challenge” are provided by the “challenge providers” under the confidentiality conditions they specify. The method is demonstrated via a case study, the EDP Wind Turbine Fault Detection Challenge. Six submitted solutions using diverse approaches are evaluated. Two of the solutions perform significantly better than EDP’s existing solution in terms of Total Prediction Costs (saving up to €120,000). The digital ecosystem is found to be a promising solution for enabling co-innovation in wind energy in general, providing a number of tangible benefits for both challenge and solution providers.

Digital technology deployment and firm resilience: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Although many firms are aggressively deploying diverse digital technologies (DTs) at inter- and intra-organizational levels, not all firms have achieved the anticipated resilience, especially in the face of supply chain disruptions caused by “black swan” events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. To demystify this phenomenon, we draw on the asset orchestration perspective to investigate how breadth (i.e., the scope) and depth (i.e., the scale) of DT deployment influence a firm's resilience to supply chain disruptions. Survey data from 162 Chinese manufacturing firms show that the depth of DT deployment exerts a positive effect on firm resilience. Interestingly, the breadth has a non-significant effect on firm resilience. Moreover, while the breadth and depth of DT deployment both enhance supply chain coordination, supply chain coordination mediates only the relationship between DT deployment depth and firm resilience. Finally, market acuity positively moderates the relationship between supply chain coordination and firm resilience. We contribute to the literature by providing new theoretical explanations for the inconsistency in the reported relationship between technology deployment and resilience. Our study also helps firms reevaluate their DT deployment.

Knowledge-based dynamic capabilities: a scientometric analysis of marriage between knowledge management and dynamic capabilities

Purpose

Several manuscripts are adopting knowledge-based dynamic capabilities (KBDCs) as their main theoretical lens. However, these manuscripts lack consistent conceptualization and systematization of the construct. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of KBDCs by clarifying the dominant concepts at the junction of knowledge management and dynamic capabilities domains, identifying which emerging themes are gaining traction with KBDCs scholars, demonstrating how the central thesis around KBDCs has evolved and explaining how can KBDCs scholars move towards finding a mutually agreed conceptualization of the field to advance empirical assessment.

Design/methodology/approach

The Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection database was used to extract 225 manuscripts that lie at the confluence of two promising management domains, namely, knowledge management and dynamic capabilities. A scientometric analysis including co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, keyword co-occurrence network analysis and text mining was conducted and integrated with a systematic review of results to facilitate an unstructured ontological discovery in the field of KBDCs.

Findings

The co-citation analysis produced three clusters of research at the junction of knowledge management and dynamic capabilities, whereas the bibliographic coupling divulged five themes of research that are gaining traction with KBDCs scholars. The systematic literature review helped to clarify each clusters’ content. While scientific mapping analysis explained how the central thesis around KBDCs has evolved, text mining and keyword analysis established how KBDCs emerge from the combination of knowledge management process capabilities and dynamic capabilities.

Originality/value

Minimal attention has been paid to systematizing the literature on KBDCs. Accordingly, KBDCs view has been investigated through complementary scientometric methods involving machine-based algorithms to allow for a more robust, structured, comprehensive and unbiased mapping of this emerging field of research.

Building SMEs’ resilience in times of uncertainty: the role of big data analytics capability and co-innovation

Purpose

This paper aims to enhance the small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) ability to develop resilience in the face of any turbulences, addressing the question on how these organizations can maintain business continuity when faced with a critical event.

Design/methodology/approach

A mediated regression analysis is conducted to investigate the relationships among big data analytics (BDA) capabilities, coinnovation (CI) and organizational resilience (OR) with reference to 192 big data SMEs in Europe.

Findings

Research reveals that the BDA capability and CI are positively associated with OR. Moreover, this study discovers the mediating impact of CI on the relationship between BDA capability and OR.

Originality/value

This paper provides important implications for considering CI as a viable strategy especially in a time of crisis and shows how SMEs are more able to recognize business opportunities. The microfoundations of the resilience building capacity of SMEs are also identified. These microfoundations become recommendations for practitioners to enhance SMEs’ responsiveness in light of coronavirus-related crises.

Bibliographic Coupling Links: Alternative Approaches to Carrying Out Systematic Reviews about Renewable and Sustainable Energy

New technologies, specifically the internet, have over the last two decades increased the number of publications in the most diverse fields of science. Subjects related to renewable and sustainable energy are no exception. These frameworks have allowed the main insights produced by the scientific community through literature surveys to be highlighted. Nonetheless, considering the vast quantity of studies, systematic approaches have been proposed by the researchers to better organize and perform the literature review. Considering the subjectivity of some of these methodologies, the main objectives of this research are to conduct a systematic review about renewable and sustainable energy through more objective techniques, based on bibliometric analysis, to provide an alternative or to complement those already available within the literature. For this purpose, a “Biblio4Review” approach was proposed in order to perform systematic reviews about renewable and sustainable energy that may spread into other scientific fields. This methodology is based on bibliographic coupling links from the bibliometric analysis to identify the most relevant studies for the literature review. The results obtained highlight that with this approach it was possible to identify the studies with greater centrality in terms of references shared. In this way, they are among the most relevant documents for these topics. Specifically for the topic considered (renewable and sustainable energy) the main insights were referred to. In any case, the findings obtained show that there is a field for more interdisciplinary approaches.

Strategic Innovation as a Factor of Adaptation of National Economies to the Development of Global Value Chains

In age of sustainable development, strategic innovations have become the most important factor in the adaptation of national economies to dynamic global changes, encompassing trade and economic relations between the leading and developing countries of the World. At the same time, the task of this study was to reveal the complex and contradictory role of strategic innovations in the development of national economies against the background of the transformation of global value chains (GVCs). Main methods for solving the problem were empirical methods of comparative and structural analysis, as well as econometrics. The study analyzed 44 countries classified by the World Bank in the group of countries with per capita incomes below and above the average, as well as with high income. Results of the calculations made it possible to establish a highly differentiated relationship between the share of products manufactured by foreign companies operating in the host countries, on the one hand, and indicators of the dynamics of foreign direct investment (the number of researchers engaged in R&D, the number of technical specialists involved in research and development (R&D), the cost of research and development in the territory of the host countries), on the other hand. This made it possible to determine the role of strategic innovation in the adaptation of national economies. The established dependencies expand the understanding of the role of strategic innovations in the formation and further development of global value chains and their significance in evolution: from process and product innovations of individual companies to the formation of global innovation ecosystems.