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This paper aims to introduce and test a model of shaping strategic agility based on dynamic capabilities such as information technology (IT) competencies, entrepreneurial alertness and acuity market to improve firms’ competitive activity.

A study based on a quantitative approach has been designed. Data have been collected through closed questionnaires from a sample of firms. The study has been conducted in the electronics industry in Italy based on the dynamism of the setting. Through SPSS-AMOS application, path analysis has been performed to conduct a first assessment of the theoretical model.

The dimensions of strategic agility are relevant capabilities for improving competitive activity. Furthermore, increasing strategic agility in the three dimensions (customer, operational and partnering) depends on the ability to improve other dynamic capabilities of the organization, including IT competency, systematic insight and strategic foresight. Finally, strategic agility results to be the only variable able to leverage the firm’s competitive activity.

The study presents some limitations linked to the response rate and the ability to conduct further analysis. However, it highlights the main dimensions that managers and entrepreneurs should develop to improve the competitive activities of the firm.

The paper addresses practitioners’ need to identify the main variable to leverage in order to increase firms’ competitivity.

The results of the study offer the opportunity for new reflections when designing business executives’ training programs and defining recruitment pathways.

This is the first study that investigates strategic agility building in a turbulent environment in the Italian setting.

The purpose of this paper is to enlarge the debate on total quality management (TQM) implementation in the healthcare sector and to evaluate how and whether leadership can affect TQM implementation.

This paper is based on findings from a literature review of TQM and leadership. The authors analysed these findings to categorise causes of a lack of leadership in TQM programme implementations.

The authors propose three categories of causes of a lack of leadership in TQM programme implementation. The first cause is well-known: a lack of senior managers’ involvement and commitment. The second category is the “combined leadership” that occurs in large healthcare organisations; and the third category is the influence of an external “political leadership” on public healthcare.

This paper presents researchers with three categories of causes of failure of leadership in TQM implementation that can be investigated. It also encourages reflections from practitioners concerning TQM leadership in the healthcare sector.

The authors request that practitioners reflect on ways to create or sustain a “monolithic” leadership, especially in large organisations, to ensure a common vision, values and attitude for unitary TQM governance.

In an original way, this paper analyses and proposes three categories of causes linked to a lack of TQM leadership in the healthcare sector.

There are different ways of implementing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) system. One interesting way of implementing a CSR system is based on standards such as SA8000 and ISO 26000. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences brought by the two standards in European manufacturing in CSR implementation using a survey.

Eight hypotheses were derived from an analysis of the implementation pattern for a CSR management system revealed from a review of the literature as well as from the actual two investigated standards. A questionnaire based on these hypotheses was administered to the CSR managers of 326 European manufacturing companies. A χ² and Cramer’s V-tests were used to validate the results. The CSR managers also added comments to their responses. The qualitative results gathered from the respondents’ comments helped the authors’ to better understand the quantitative data.

The results showed differences in how the standards affect strategies, economic and financial issues, stakeholders involved, environmental management, customer and market issues, supply chain management and CSR key performance indicators. The results indicated that it is not clear how production and technical departments can be involved in and committed to such standards or, in general, to a CSR system.

The research is based on a sample of European manufacturing managers and limited to the implementation of two specific CSR standards.

The differences between the standards should be interesting to practitioners who are thinking of implementing a CSR system in a manufacturing context and weighing the pros and cons of each standard.

This research analyses, for the first time, the differences in CSR implementation brought by SA8000 and ISO 26000 in manufacturing and, in particular, in production and technical departments.

This research enlarges the debate on the operations management strategies pursued by manufacturing companies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on issues concerning servitisation and customisation, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Lean-agile, supply chain orchestration, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Lean for design management.

A questionnaire of eight questions which stemmed from a literature review was completed by 152 senior operations managers from 120 large European manufacturing companies. Responses were scaled from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The results were tested for reliability using Cronbach’s α test. The questions were tested through a one-sample t-test.

The 152 respondents consider servitisation and standardisation to be a trade-off. They consider integration of ERP strategies with Lean and agile systems and customised products/processes to be difficult. Furthermore, suppliers’ orchestration is considered not that suitable for manufacturing companies and suppliers’ CSR performance measurement excessive. By contrast, a CSR internal performance measurement is helpful for increasing sales. The respondents also indicate that there is a lack of Lean tools for design and development processes and Six Sigma is the only strategy for improving quality performance in design and development processes.

The findings are applicable only to the manufacturing sector. The findings of this research indicate many avenues of research for scholars.

The findings can be very useful for manufacturing operations managers deciding their future strategies on operations.

Findings related to servitisation and customisation, ERP and Lean-agile, supply orchestration for manufacturing companies and Lean and agile for product design are original and open a valuable debate.

This study aims to ascertain the extent to which a cooperative controlling a wine supply chain implements a performance measurement system (PMS) that monitors the effects of a circular economy (CE) strategy, developed through partnerships, on the economic and environmental sustainability of the value chain.

The study analyzes the characteristics of the closed-loop business model and uses the PMS to assess the contribution of CE partnerships to the sustainability of the value chain. The case study is based on interviews conducted on the cooperative's top management and supplemented with an analysis of external reports, related documents and direct observations.

The PMS was underpinned by enterprise resource planning (ERP), through which CE indicators control for the benefits generated on behalf of the cooperative and its CE partners.

Given the paucity of the studies that address the performance measurement of CE at the supply chain level and its relation to sustainability, this study sheds light on the role that PMS can play in tracking the contribution of CE partnerships to the sustainability of a wine value chain operating in agro-waste valorization. Furthermore, the performance measurement of the CE strategy contributes to an assessment of the responsible production of sustainable development goals at the supply chain level.

This paper aims to investigate the consequences of the coercive regulations for performance measurement and comparability that strengthened regional health authority’s control over organizations’ activities on management accountants’ relationship with clinician managers, who are the recipients of accounting information for decisional processes in health-care organizations. To achieve this aim, the research focuses on management accountants’ perception of their role and whether they perceive role conflict and role ambiguity.

A case study was undertaken in a public university hospital in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy; 9 management accountants and 11 clinician managers were interviewed and secondary data analyzed.

Management accountants show low capabilities to support clinician managers’ decisional processes. Following the enactment of regulations, management accountants perform their role with a primary focus on functional responsibility. The focus on the provision of information to address regulations influenced management accountants’ capability to act as business partners in the organization. Because of the conflicting information needs from regulations and clinician managers, management accountants experience role conflict and ambiguity.

The paper has implications for policymakers, underlining the consequences of strict regulations on management accountants’ role. It also emphasizes the importance of revising accounting techniques to satisfy both regional requirements and clinician managers’ needs for decision-making.

The article contributes to knowledge related to the role of management accountants in health care. It explores, in particular, the consequences of coercive regulations in health-care organizations, adding knowledge to a field that remains quite unexplored.

This paper aims to analyze the process of implementation of a sustainability performance measurement (SPM) system by a North Italian university, which was constructed based on a participatory multi-stakeholders’ approach. In addition, it provides evidence on the use of outcome indicators.

The methodology is based on a single exploratory case study research.

The process of implementation of the new SPM system started with the intervention of an academic in accounting who acted as a propeller. The adoption of the framework required a shared meaning of sustainability among different stakeholders and indicators to track the shift toward sustainable development (SD). Despite the authors could not prove the stable adoption of the framework for the future, as new governing bodies were appointed in Beta, that framework could be considered a valid attempt to move from a single projects’ evaluation on sustainability performance to a systemic approach and introduce outcome indicators in performance appraisal. The framework supported university’s decision-making related to SD actions.

Difficulties in the measurement process were linked to the information system which was not designed to allow the collection of some of the newly introduced sustainability data. However, an attempt to introduce a personalized assessment tool fostered the improvement of planning activities for 2015.

The originality of the paper is twofold: first, it represents an attempt to discuss the process of implementation of a SPM system that was designed by a participatory multi-stakeholders’ approach. Second, the framework was designed to consider also outcomes’ indicators as urged by scholars calling universities to promote the shift toward a sustainable society.

The extent to which sustainability is integrated into conventional accounting practices, in the light of a more integrated thinking perspective, requires further exploration. This paper aims to investigate how management control systems (MCSs) and sustainability-specific control systems (SCSs) are mobilised and how they interact to support the environmental sustainability strategy of a small- and medium-sized entity (SME).

Through a case study in a waste disposal firm, this paper examines the influence of cognitive, organisational and technical factors on the interaction and integration of MCSs and SCSs to bolster an environmental sustainability strategy.

The MCSs that are mobilised vary according to the type of strategy that is pursued. Even though the technical integration of MCSs with SCSs was not achieved, interaction between them supported strategic decision-making and the pursuit of environmental performance in the light of a more integrated thinking perspective. The role of multidisciplinary teams formed by accountants and environmental scientists to support sustainability management control at the SME also enabled interaction and provided steps for integrated thinking.

Although based on single case study, this research offers practitioners useful knowledge about the potential levers and obstacles relating to the mobilisation of MCSs when a sustainability strategy is conceived and its impact on the development of integrated thinking.

The paper provides insight into how SMEs can mobilise their MCSs to support an environmental sustainability strategy, shedding light on the factors that enhance interaction among MCSs and SCSs.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the role of and relationships between human, structural and relational capital assets for strategic management in a farm business. In particular, it analyzes the interaction between human capital’s creativity skills and the introduction of climate-smart technologies for the competitiveness of the firm.

An explorative case study was conducted on one of the largest Italian farm businesses to gain an understanding of the drivers of intellectual capital (IC) and of their implications for strategic management. Full-time employees’ perception of the skills required to achieve strategic goals and their perception of whether they possessed these abilities were investigated to determine if an alignment was present. The skills were subsequently classified using the framework of Amabile (1988) into domain-relevant and creativity-relevant skills. Then, two linear regression models were used to investigate the effects of training on the acquisition of these two sets of skills.

The analysis confirmed the strategic role of interactions among human capital assets to effectively exploit the structural capital of the company. When investigating employees’ perceptions, a gap emerged about informatics capabilities and knowledge of soils. As the company’s investments in innovation are oriented to ICT technologies, the company could strengthen informatics training to enable its employees to implement effective innovation.

The paper contributes to the literature on IC by highlighting the role of interconnections of assets to align organizations with their strategic goals. Therefore, the provision of IC accounting contributes to the strategic management of human capital.

Exploring how to enhance innovative work behaviour (IWB) has been the main concern of top managers and researchers, particularly in knowledge-intensive and public organizations. Yet, studies investigating factors that shape innovative behaviour at work are scarce. Focussing on the healthcare setting, the purpose of this paper is to hypothesize a direct relationship between individuals’ perceived creative self-efficacy (CSE), creative collective efficacy (CCE) and IWB.

The research used survey data from 446 clinical managers working in public healthcare organizations in six different Italian regions and a set of previously validated questionnaires to measure the study variables.

Findings suggest that clinical managers’ perceptions of their CSE and their perceived CCE significantly influence their self-reported IWB.

Findings highlight the importance of constructing and developing clinical managers’ efficacy in creativity at both an individual and team level in order to incentivize the emergence of innovation behaviour. Further research is needed to assess the existence of mediating and/or moderating mechanisms underlying the relationships emerging from this study in order to support decision makers in diffusing innovation and creativity in healthcare organizations.

The research adds to the debate on improving IWB by introducing perceived individual and team creative efficacy as determinants of IWB in healthcare organizations. The research is among the first attempts to contribute to healthcare organizations’ management through exploring clinical managers’ characteristics that influence their IWB.