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The last two decades have witnessed a surge of interest in social entrepreneurship organizations (SEOs). Understanding their business models is crucial for sustaining their long-term growth. This paper analyses how SEOs that use the approach of social bricolage adapt their business model to develop social innovation.

This study used in-depth multiple comparative case studies and narrative analysis to focus on the South of Italy, where these ventures play a crucial role in the entrepreneurial process of minor and abandoned cultural heritage sites, generating economic and social value and employment opportunities.

By developing a conceptual framework, this paper enhances current understanding of the social dimensions of SEOs’ business model. These ventures using the approach of social bricolage can produce social innovation, reinventing and innovating their business model. The business model innovation of the cases revealed a strong social mark and identified peculiar strategies that both respond to social needs and long-term sustainability in complex contexts.

This study connects previous knowledge on social bricolage with the business model innovation, highlighting routines and processes used by ventures, and provides a starting point for social entrepreneurs and innovators in the complex and often uncertain cultural domain of the Third Sector in Italy.

The paper aims to contribute to the literature on SEOs by exploring their main features and social dimensions. By combining social bricolage and business model innovation, it offers a novel conceptual framework for developing social innovation and for the study of SEOs.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of trust on adopting and implementing blockchain technology in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil.

This study uses an exploratory qualitative approach to understand the construct of trust in the context of the educational sector. Data were collected through semistructured questionnaires and online interviews.

The research identified that, for most potential blockchain users, trust positively influences the HEIs, because benefits such as secure data sharing and transaction transparency could optimize the daily routine and avoid fraud in academic documents, providing a cooperative and reliable working environment. In addition, the results suggest that trust is needed to overcome challenges related to issues such as costs and privacy.

This study contributes to the advances in the emerging literature on blockchain in the educational sector as a system with the potential to generate trust, as well as the literature on the technology acceptance models.

For HEI managers and practitioners, this study highlights the need for a greater understanding of the influence of trust in the relationships between HEIs and other stakeholders.

This work shows that adopting blockchain technologies would allow users to build social relationships of trust in a cooperative work environment and develop trusted behavior by sharing data securely and transparently.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies on the adoption and implementation of blockchain in the education sector in Brazil.

Existing research evidence shows a fragmented understanding of the roles of first-line employees (FLEs) as essential factors for successful lean implementation in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), provoking recent calls for additional research on the identification of enablers and barriers for lean acceptance among workers. Therefore, this paper aims to identify related enablers and barriers to lean implementation among FLEs and determine future research avenues for improving the understanding of lean methodology implementation in SMEs.

Relying on a systematic literature review methodology, the authors aimed to synthesize and evaluate available peer-reviewed papers on the role of FLEs in lean implementation in SMEs. General descriptive and thematic analysis comprehensively depicted the selected research topic and identified the main themes within collected papers and potential future research questions.

The authors identified four main themes related to FLEs’ role in lean implementation: cultural change factors, employee characteristics, management involvement and lean job design. Within each theme, the authors present a comprehensive overview of FLE-related factors and associated enablers and barriers that should be considered for a successful lean implementation in SMEs.

The research outcomes are important to practicing managers in SMEs, helping them facilitate lean acceptance and enhance the likelihood of successful lean implementation.

The insights from this study present building blocks in developing a lean implementation model for SMEs that considers the FLEs’ role more comprehensively.

Industry 4.0 technologies are promising to increase manufacturing companies' performance through the new knowledge that such digital technologies allow to create and manage within the firm boundaries and through customer interactions. Despite the great attention on the Industry 4.0 adoption paths, little is known about the relationships with previous waves of digital technologies, namely, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and how different groups of both types of technologies link to knowledge and its related performances.

The study employed a quantitative research design using a survey method. Submitting the questionnaire to entrepreneurs, chief operation officers or managers in charge of the operational and technological processes of Italian manufacturing firms, 206 respondents stated that their firm has adopted at least one of the seven Industry 4.0 technologies investigated.

The findings of the study highlight the positive relationship between ICT and Industry 4.0 technologies in terms of both intensity and groups of technologies (Web-based, Management and Manufacturing ICT; Operation, Customization and Data-processing 4.0), and how technologies affect knowledge-related performances in terms of products and processes, job-learning, product-related services and customer involvement.

This study is one of the first attempts to link groups of ICT to groups of Industry 4.0 technologies and to explore the effects in terms of knowledge-related performances as a measure of technology use. The study shows strong path dependency among ICT, Industry 4.0 and knowledge performance, enriching the literature on technological innovation and knowledge management.

This study aims to focus on the connection between digital business strategy and performance measurement and management (PMM).

The implications of digital business strategy and its dimensions with regard to PMM were investigated through a survey. The survey questionnaire provided 202 valid cases with a focus on senior management of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Strategic dimensions were identified from the literature on management in the context of digitalization to build a theoretical framework that highlights the mechanisms that companies should focus on when managing and implementing digital technologies successfully.

The aspects that comprise digital business strategy are grouped into five major dimensions: technological understanding, goals, resources, management and responsibilities. The study reveals a direct and positive relationship between goals and management related to digital business strategy and PMM.

The study contributes to the existing PMM literature in the context of digitalization.

The results indicate that if a company has excellent goals and management with regard to its digital business strategy, it uses PMM in a more successful and effective way.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine PMM in terms of managing digital business strategy by trying to determine the extent to which the elements of digital business strategy can be integrated effectively into PMM.

Advance the state-of-the-art on how frugal innovation links to sustainability outcomes and based on content analysis of empirical publications in the field of frugal innovation, analyzing when and how FI is connected with social, environmental and economic outcomes.

Quantitative content analysis on empirical papers published on frugal innovation, using data visualization techniques to disclose relationships among the constructs adopted. Materials were collected following a step-wise methodology. In total, 130 articles were identified, read in depth and coded according to five main categories: context; development; implementation, adoption, diffusion; characteristics; and impacts.

The potential of frugal innovation to drive sustainability outcomes is influenced by the type of actors developing the innovation, regarding their organizational form (large firms, small firms, non-firm actors), their geographical origin (foreign or local) or motivations (mostly profit-motivated or socially-oriented). Collaboration plays a key role along the various stages of the frugal innovation cycle and is thus relevant for its potential to drive sustainability outcomes. The results reaffirm the need for greater attention to where and when sustainability-enhancing outcomes of frugal innovation are more likely to occur.

This study provides a qualitative study based on content analysis of empirical studies to explore the associations between frugal innovations and improved economic, environmental and social sustainability outcomes. The key novelty of this study lies in the systematic coding of each paper regarding the features of the innovation, the innovators, and the outcomes achieved. This allows taking stock of the evidence emerging in such a scattered literature, quantifying the extent to which insights take place in the empirical literature, looking for correlations, and highlight research gaps to understand to what extent frugal innovation can contribute to sustainable development.

This paper aims to inform the discussion on why and how non-profit organizations can experience a hybridization process to address the criticism that would assume hybridity as an intrinsic characteristic of all organizations. Specifically, by referring to the academies of intellectuals as the non-profit setting in which investigating the emergence of hybridity takes place, this paper aims at exploring, first, to what extent this emergence could be induced by institutional conditions, and, second, which structural innovations could sustain the academies’ “motion” towards hybridity.

This paper relies on the institutional logics perspective and adopts the case study method applied to a historical context. The case under analysis is the Academy of “the Immobili”, which, in spite of its name, experienced a hybridization process in 1720 because of the decision to involve an impresario in the management of its theatre.

The findings highlight the significant role played by institutional conditions in inducing the emergence of hybridity, even in presence of internal resistance to any “motion” from the non-profit setting. Moreover, the analysis of the innovations associated with this emergence detects the intertwined action of the different decision makers involved in the hybridization process, in spite of their formal separation. These findings strengthen the conceptualization of hybridity within non-profit organizations.

Besides referring to a historical period that is still little explored in terms of hybridity within organizations, the paper focuses on an original context, i.e. academies, representing an ancient typology of cultural organizations. Therefore, the paper also provides the first insights into the hybridization process of cultural organizations from a historical perspective.

The major objective of this research work was to evaluate various physico-chemical characteristics, such as, chemical composition, antioxidant capacity, objective color and texture profile analysis (TPA) of the wheat flour/chickpea flour (CF) blends, so that nutritious baked products could be consumed by the type-2 diabetic persons.

Wholegrain wheat flour (WGF) and white wheat flour (WWF) were substituted with CF at 0 to 40% levels. These wheat flour/CF blends were analyzed for proximate composition, the prepared dough and baked breads were tested for objective color, antioxidant capacity as trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC), malondialdehyde (MDA) and total phenolic content (TPC) and TPA.

WGF had the highest TEAC (117.42 mM/100g) value, followed by WWF (73.98 mM/100g) and CF (60.67 mM/100g). TEAC, MDA and TPC values varied significantly among all the three flour samples.

Inclusion of whole chickpea (without dehulling) flour in such type of blends would be another interesting investigation during the future research studies.

These research findings have a great potential for the production of these baked products for human consumption on an industrial scale.

Production of breads using wheat flour and CF blends would benefits the consumers.

Production of Arabic and pan breads using wheat flour and CF blends would, therefore, combine the benefits of both the needed proteins of plant origin and the health-promoting bioactive compounds, in a most sustainable way for the consumers.

The paper aims to explore how companies communicate their heritage by drawing on heritage marketing and corporate communications literature and mapping the corporate heritage communication strategies of iconic Italian brands.

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach, analysing the communication of corporate heritage by nine iconic Italian brands (Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, Barovier & Toso, Pasta Farina, Ducati, Amaro Montenegro, Fiat, Bonomelli, Olivetti and Illy).

In communicating corporate heritage, companies adopt different strategies that vary along two main dimensions – the subject of the story and the tone of voice of the content. The strategies are: (1) heritage for authenticity; (2) heritage for market leadership; and (3) heritage for continuity.

From a theoretical point of view, the study highlights that heritage marketing strategies vary according to underlying strategic themes and narrative approaches. From a managerial point of view, it offers a preliminary guide for the development of corporate heritage communications, also providing indications for their implementation.

This study is amongst the firsts to investigate the strategic antecedents that can shape corporate heritage communication strategies. It represents an integration of the existing literature, which is limited to the descriptive presentation of heritage marketing principles and tools.