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This study investigates the role of “soft” factors of total quality management – in terms of empowerment and engagement of employees – in facilitating or hindering organizational performance of the university technology transfer offices.

The authors developed an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), multiple regression model to test if empowerment and engagement affect organizational performance of the university technology transfer offices.

The authors found that “soft” factors of total quality management – in terms of empowerment and engagement – facilitate the improvement of organizational performance in university technology transfer offices.

The authors’ analysis shows that soft total quality management practices create the conditions for improving organizational performance. This study provides practical implications by showing that, in the evaluation of the technology transfer office, not only the “hard” variables (e.g. number of employees and employee experience) but also the “soft” one (e.g. empowerment and engagement) matter. Therefore, university technology transfer managers or university technology transfer delegates should take actions to promote not only empowering employees but also create a climate conducive to employees' engagement in the university technology transfer offices.

With regards to the differences in organizational performances of university technology transfer offices, several studies have focused their attention on technology transfer professionals in technology transfer offices, but only a few of them have examined the “soft side” of total quality management. Thus, this study examines the organizational goals of technology transfer offices through “soft” factors of total quality management in terms of empowerment and engagement employees.

The purpose of this paper is to examine mothers’ social media accounts that focus on children’s fashion. The authors probed children’s fashion photo practices as representations of the mothers’ extended self and the kind of childhood representations produced by the social media accounts. They also investigated mothers’ perceptions of children’s privacy when engaging in sharenting – the sharing of information about children or parenting online.

The study is based on 16 semi-structured interviews with Finnish mothers who had Instagram accounts focusing on children’s fashion.

Children’s fashion photos play a diverse role in mothers’ identity work. The photos can be used to express a mother’s taste and aesthetic skills, to express values, to fit into peer groups and to store memories of oneself and the children. Through the photos, representations of the prevailing Finnish childhood ideals, such as authenticity, naturalness and playfulness, are reproduced. The mothers perceived the children as part of their extended self and justified sharenting with mother- and child-centered arguments.

Through shedding light on the practices of social media fashion photography, this paper provides insights into how commercialism and social media shape cultural expectations for both motherhood and childhood. The paper contributes to previous research on sharenting, extending it to the context of fashion photography.

The objective of this study is to examine current business and management research on “Industry 4.0 base technologies” and “business models” to shed light on this vast literature and to point out future research agenda.

The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications based on 482 documents collected from the Scopus database and a co-citation analysis to provide an overview of business model studies related to Industry 4.0 base technologies. After that a qualitative analysis of the articles was also conducted to identify research trends and trajectories.

The results reveal the existence of five research themes: smart products (cluster 1); business model innovation (cluster 2); technological platforms (cluster 3); value creation and appropriation (cluster 4); and digital business models (cluster 5). A qualitative analysis of the articles was also conducted to identify research trends and trajectories.

First, the dataset was collected through Scopus. The authors are aware that other databases, such as Web of Science, can be used to deepen the focus of quantitative bibliometric analysis. Second, the authors based this analysis on the Industry 4.0 base technologies identified by Frank et al. (2019). The authors recognize that Industry 4.0 comprises other technologies beyond IoT, cloud computing, big data and analytics.

Drawing on these analyses, the authors submit a useful baseline for developing Industry 4.0 base technologies and considering their implications for business models.

In this paper, the authors focus their attention on the relationship between technologies underlying the fourth industrial revolution, identified by Frank et al. (2019), and the business model, with a particular focus on the developments that have occurred over the last decade and the authors performed a bibliometric analysis to consider all the burgeoning literature on the topic.

Both technological and human-centric perspectives need to be acknowledged when combining lean production practices and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies. This study aims to explore and explain how lean production practices and I4.0 technologies may coexist to enhance the human-centric perspective of manufacturing operations in the era of Industry 5.0 (I5.0).

The research approach is an explorative and longitudinal case study. The qualitative data collection encompasses respondents from different job functions and organizational levels to cover the entire organization. In total, 18 interviews with 19 interviewees and five focus groups with a total of 25 participants are included.

Identified challenges bring forth that manufacturing organizations must have the ability to see beyond lean production philosophy and I4.0 to meet the demand for a human-centric perspective in socially sustainable manufacturing in the era of Industry 5.0.

The study suggests that while lean production practices and I4.0 practices may be considered separately, they need to be integrated as complementary approaches. This underscores the complexity of managing simultaneous organizational changes and new digital initiatives.

The research presented illuminates the elusive phenomena comprising the combined aspects of a human-centric perspective, specifically bringing forth implications for the co-existence of lean production practices and I4.0 technologies, in the transformation towards I5.0.

The study contributes to new avenues of research within the field of socially sustainable manufacturing. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the human-centric perspective when transforming organizations towards Industry 5.0.

During the 1990s, Italian healthcare organisations (HOs) underwent a process of corporatisation, and the most innovative HOs introduced the balanced scorecard (BSC) to address the need for broader accountability. Currently, there is a limited understanding of the dynamics and outcomes of such a process. Therefore, this study aims to explore whether the BSC is still considered an effective performance management tool and analyse the factors driving and hindering its evolution and endurance in public and non-profit HOs.

We conducted a retrospective longitudinal analysis of two pioneering cases in the adoption of the BSC: one in a public hospital and the other in a non-profit hospital. Data collection relied on accessing institutional documents and reports from the early 2000s to the present, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with the internal sponsors of the BSC.

We found evidence of three main categories of factors that trigger or hinder the adoption and development of the BSC: (1) the role of the internal sponsor and professionals’ commitment; (2) information technology and the controller’s technological skills; and (3) the relationship between the management and professionalism logics during the implementation process. At the same time, there is no evidence to suggest that specific technical features of the BSC influence its endurance.

The paper contributes to the debate on the key factors for implementing and sustaining multidimensional control systems in professional organisations. It emphasises the importance of knowledge-based assets and distinctive internal capabilities for the success of the business. The implications of the BSC legacy are discussed, along with future developments of multidimensional control tools aimed at supporting strategy execution.

We aimed to analyze the impact of the transition to the hybrid model of teamwork and team dynamics from the perspective of the five key challenges, i.e. communication, coordination, connection, creativity and culture.

To achieve the stated aim, we conducted a literature review and then an exploratory qualitative study. We split the research into phases: December 2021 to January 2022 and July to August 2022. In the first phase, we conducted computer-assisted online interviews (CAWIs) with all members of the remote team and an in-depth interview with the manager. After the transition from remote to hybrid work in February 2022, we returned to the team to conduct in-depth interviews with team leaders and the manager.

We identified key findings, i.e. managerial implications of differences across the 5 Cs (communication, coordination, connection, creativity and culture) noted in the functioning of the analyzed team as the team shifted from fully remote work to the hybrid work model.

We concluded that if people do not spend time together and are not impregnated with the unique culture and values of a given organization, they will not feel a connection to its distinctive ethos and may choose to leave. In the longer-term, the last challenge may be the biggest single opportunity for employees post-pandemic and concurrently the single biggest challenge that organizational leadership will need to address, given that sustainable market success depends on talent.

The results showed that team communication, teamwork coordination, social and emotional connections among team members, nurturing of creativity, as well as of the organizational culture were of high importance to the team in the hybrid work model. Thus, we confirmed the findings of other authors. The study contributes to our understanding of the impact of the hybrid work model on teamwork and team dynamics and provides some guidance on how organizations can mitigate these, in particular through the team manager.

Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.

This study aims to identify the contextual and relational factors that enhance and limit the empowerment of young people from the perspective of social education professionals.

Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model made it possible to locate the narratives of the educators in the territory. These narratives include field diaries, i.e. hybrid narratives that include visual, written and spoken materials, and focus groups with 11 educators from different fields of action and related to youth empowerment projects.

According to these educators, the most important factors for empowering young people are their immediate environment, and the issues that affect them most. For these factors to be empowering, young people need to be accompanied, with support based on connectedness, horizontality and the creation of safe spaces and learning experiences. Both the microsystem and the mesosystem form the immediate reality for their action. Aware of this, educators do the work of connecting with the exosystem.

It is evident why communities are spaces with opportunities for youth empowerment, and the authors observe the need for more transversal and less welfare-based social and youth policies that generate empowerment instead of dependency.

This methodology evidenced the environmental structures of educators and the dissimilar levels to explore and understand the work of educators and the complex interrelationships, which play an important role in empowerment processes.

This research presents a new perspective that allows traditional qualitative reflection to be embedded in the bioecological model. All of this sheds light on relational ecosystems with young people and proposes youth policies, in this case, oriented towards empowerment.

Using data from a continuous and ongoing cross-sectional web survey on hospitalisation service experiences in two Italian regions, the authors used multilevel and multivariate logistic regression models to identify factors related to users' demographics, emotional and informative support, technical and physical aspects of the provision, influencing satisfaction and willingness-to-recommend, before and during a crisis.

The value-in-use, defined in terms of a positive or negative value given by the experience with services, can be evaluated by users and influenced by the context of provision. The authors tested whether and how the value-in-use of services changed in a context of crisis. This study is applied to the healthcare sector during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, by evaluating the impact of the pandemic on hospitalisation experience.

Overall, analyses of 8,712 questionnaires found a greater value after the pandemic spread. In a time of crisis, technical and informative aspects of care were found to be most valued by patients that may recognise the extraordinary professionalism of workers during the crisis.

This study empirically suggests that context can affect the evaluation of value-in-use by patients during unprecedented circumstances, producing additional value-in-context.

These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

The level of healthcare system distress, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, positively affects patients' propensity to recommend, which the authors suggest is driven by healthcare services' feelings of reverse compassion. These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience, which can have positive social implications. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

Research based on the intersection of theoretical and empirical research regarding value-in-use, value-in-context and service quality measured through user experience is scarce, in particular in the healthcare sector. The authors' findings set the direction for future research on the influence of context on value creation and value creation's perception by users, on the concept of reverse compassion and on reverse compassion's impact on organisational well-being, particularly in times of crisis.

This paper aims to identify critical factors that influence small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) suppliers’ involvement in their customers’ product development and contrast these with the factors identified from the customer perspective.

A multiple case study approach was used, including four companies. Data were collected through 32 semi-structured interviews, six workshops and documents.

A model is presented that merges this study’s nine identified critical factors with seven critical factors from the customer perspective. The model provides a dual perspective of supplier involvement in product development, wherein the supplier and customer perspectives are concurrently addressed. Some factors are unique for the supplier, but several mirror those on the customer side.

The study is based on data from SME suppliers in Northern Europe. As it is expected that SME companies are more constrained by limited resources, future studies could study critical factors at larger suppliers.

Customers and suppliers having insights about the critical factors can provide better conditions for product development for the other actor; for example, when evaluating customer–supplier integration.

The presented model of critical factors provides a more nuanced picture of supplier involvement in product development as prior research has been biased toward the customer perspective. This study emphasizes the importance of contextual information that has been unnoticed in the literature.