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The purpose of the paper is to show the importance of considering patients’ and citizens’ associations for understanding users’ involvement in health care systems.

The paper is based on both qualitative and quantitative data on Italy drawn from various sources (national statistics, own survey data, qualitative interviews).

Although the paper avoids an excessively positive view of the success and frequency of collective patients’ participation, it nevertheless shows that the Italian National Health Care System (NHS) is undergoing important changes in this regard. Voice and co-production among patients, health care services and professionals have become more common and important also because of forms of collective action. Professionals themselves often belong to or promote such associations and groups. The Italian case also shows that voice and co-production tend frequently to merge into a single complex strategy where patients’ requests go along with their direct involvement in health care provision.

The study provides useful information for policy makers considering the implementation of policies that promote collective action in order to increase an active users’ participation in health care.

This is one of the limited number of Italian studies which investigates users’ involvement in the NHS and collective action, thus adding knowledge to the limited research in this field.

The lockdown imposed to avoid the increase in the number of infections caused by the pandemic emergency declared in January 2020 has unavoidably compromised the normal functioning of the Universities. They have been forced to stop the operation of their traditional student-oriented activities. In this light, the present work aims to analyse how traditional Italian Universities continue to deliver services to their students during the emergency.

Qualitative explorative research was done. The paper used a multiple case study focused on two main public universities located in Rome (Italy). The data was collected using action research with participant observation. The activities observed before and during the health emergency are those related to the second mission and their services.

Until the pandemic emergency arose, in the organizations analysed, the work was done traditionally. When the lockdown started the main instruments adopted to teach and provide the related services to students were the digital tools. Therefore, these devices represent how these organizations could immediately react to face the challenge arising from the impossibility to physically meet the students while continuing to support them in their educational path. Based on the findings obtained these universities fall into the “corporate entrepreneurship” definition.

The present work has managerial and academic implications. The academic implications can be summarized in two main points: the work (1) promptly analysed the changes necessary to overcome the problematics caused by the pandemic emergency; (2) contributes to the debate concerning the transfer of knowledge using digital tools and their relevance on the intellectual capital. One of the limits of the work is that only two Italian traditional universities are analysed and that the study focuses on universities located in a same city.

On the other hand, in referent to managerial implications, this paper highlights how the corporate entrepreneurial view could be useful to support an inspected challenge that could happened in a certain historical period. Therefore, a real implementation of the entrepreneurial concepts is preferred.

The paper discussed an original and contemporary topic not yet investigated since it refers to the Universities' reaction to the pandemic emergency in 2020, with the focus on their ability to maintain the intellectual capital value and give more points that could be investigate in the future, as, e.g. a selection of more than three traditional universities or with a comparative case study, useful in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the decisions taken in different contexts, considering: (1) telematic universities and traditional universities; or (2) universities located in other countries. Another future line of enquiry could be to focus the analysis on the effective quality of the MOOCs applied at the universities' activities, using the students' opinions obtainable through OPIS (Rilevazione Opinione degli Studenti) or through direct interviews.

There are two major objectives in the research. First, the authors investigate the impact of knowledge integration in terms of joint decision-making and joint sense-making, on relational performance, including operational efficiency and innovation. Second, the authors examine the key antecedents that might facilitate knowledge integration: strategic supply management and trust. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper expands and tests theory drawing upon survey data from 133 buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs). The authors employed a two-step process of analysis to evaluate first the measurement model and then the structural model. The measurement model test built upon confirmatory factor analysis, while the structural model quality test built upon path analysis.

The results suggest that both integrative mechanisms, joint decision making and joint sense making, affect performance although in different ways. This study also finds that while trust has multiple significant influences and consequently must be viewed as an organizing principle, strategic supply management is required to jointly understand the dynamic and complex context but not to jointly make ongoing decisions.

Three limitations: first, this study was cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. Second, in line with accepted practice, the authors surveyed only one side of the relationship. The suppliers’ viewpoint is thus not fully taken into account. Third, another potential limitation of the study is that the sample stems from just one country and its size does not distinguish subgroups in the analysis of the path model.

Managers should be advised that: first, a trusting partnership built on knowledge integration is a hard order, especially with a new, unknown supplier in a low-cost country, where intellectual property protection is less obvious; second, strategic supply management may not improve cost or operational performance, but in its absence, it is unlikely that a supplier has insight into the exact needs of its buyer and thus, may not add considerable value to their customers; third, building a dynamic knowledge integration capability (valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate) takes time, as does creating reliable learning mechanisms. Joint teams, visit partners’ workplace, early involve suppliers in developing new products or selection of supplier with high-learning capabilities may help to create a knowledge integration capability.

The authors suggest that companies should move from an arm-length relationship and turn their supplier relationships into a tool for innovating faster while cutting cost. In order to do this, joint sense-making and joint decision should be seen as institutionalized inter-firm routines rather than ad hoc activities. Thus, the authors recommend managers to proactively build certain knowledge-based capabilities that hinges heavily upon a strategic stance toward supply management and trustful relationships with selected suppliers.

The major intent of this research is to expand understanding of knowledge integration by building a more testable, complex model around its creation. While previous research relied on a configuration approach to explore the relationship between knowledge integration and performance, the authors evaluate causal relationships at the level of the formative dimensions rather than higher order knowledge integration, as this has proven to be a superior analytical method. Second, although supply chain scholars have expressed great interest in trust, an in-depth examination of prior studies in knowledge integration indicate that trust has been analyzed alone. In contrast, the study empirically examines the simultaneous effect of trust and strategic supply management in BSRs.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative impact of dynamic capabilities on various dimensions of strategic flexibility in Indian manufacturing industry.

In this study, 102 manufacturing organizations have been extensively surveyed, to assess the relative impact of different dynamic capabilities on various dimensions of strategic flexibility. The correlations between dynamic capabilities and strategic flexibility have been evaluated and validated by employing various statistical tools.

The research focuses upon the significant contributions of dynamic capabilities such as human resource capabilities, innovative capabilities, technological capabilities, alliance capabilities and research and development capabilities, towards managing flexibility at strategic level in manufacturing organizations.

This study provides the first empirical evidence of such a relationship with a relative choice between dynamic capabilities for managing strategic flexibility in large and medium scale organizations in India.

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common nutritional anemia in the world and a pervasive health problem, especially in developing countries. Children under two years of age are more prone to be affected by IDA. The best strategy to prevent and treat IDA is to use iron supplements. This study aims to examine the factors associated with noncompliance (such as non-utilization or inconsistent usage) of iron drop supplementation among infants between 6 and 24 months old.

Online databases (PubMed, Scopus and SID) were searched to retrieve relevant articles published from inception up to July 2023. Among the 2,177 articles detected, after removing duplicate and irrelevant titles, 21 cross-sectional studies that met the authors’ inclusion criteria were included. Screening for articles and data extraction were conducted separately by two researchers.

The findings suggest that some factors related to mothers, such as education, knowledge, attitude and performance; some factors associated with child such as child’s gastrointestinal and dental complications; taste and smell of iron drops; and birth order and gender are the main determinants of adherence to iron supplementation.

It can be proposed that the most significant factors affecting the feeding of iron drops to children under the age of two include: the level of mother’s awareness, socio-economic status of the household and the occurrence of digestive complications following the supplementation. Given these observations, adopting proper policies toward improving the nutritional awareness of mothers and producing iron supplements with minimal side effects seems crucial.