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This study analyses the link between product/service innovation, partnerships and Managerial Control System (MCS). Particularly, it aims to analyse empirically the role of MCS in supporting the innovation partnership successful functioning and management.

The sample of this study consists of 106 Italian manufacturing firms belonging to the sectors of the Italian economy with the largest number of registered patents according to the European trend chart on innovation.

The results show that MCS may play a key role in reducing risks and lowering the likelihood of failure of innovation partnerships. Particularly, the authors found a positive correlation between the use of informal control mechanisms and a partnership’s successful performance. Moreover, among informal control, the findings show that trust is the only true informal mechanism that can guarantee a successful collaboration. The results of this study may offer relevant implications for practitioners. With regard to the control of the partnership’s activities, the initiatives and creativity of those who are actively involved in the innovation process should not be inhibited; therefore, stifling them with strict rules and procedures would be ineffective but if a firm is not willing to give up formal control mechanisms altogether because it does not believe that a trust-based coordination is sufficiently reassuring, it should opt for “weak”, albeit formal, control mechanisms based on a shared production and management of plans and reports, thus ensuring a perfect information symmetry among different partners.

Notwithstanding the different opportunities provided by partnerships and strategic alliances to support there is a growing body of evidence of a high failure rate in such organisational forms. One of the causes cited in the literature is the high level of risk associated with alliances as compared to internal development of innovation. The risks mainly arise from the difficulties to obtain cooperation with partners that might have different objectives, and from the potential opportunistic behaviour of some of the partners. This is particularly true in innovation networks where the uncertainty of producing an interesting result is very high and the investments that the partners make are considerable. In this context, MCS could play a relevant role in reducing the risks and decreasing the likelihood of failure.

Considering rapid digitalization development, this study examines the impacts of digital technology innovation on social responsibility in platform enterprises.

The study applies the event study method and cross-sectional regression analysis, taking 168 digital technology innovations for social responsibility issued by 88 listed platform enterprises from 2011 to 2022 to study the impact of digital technology innovations for social responsibility announcements of different announcement content and platform attributes on the stock market value of platform enterprises.

The results show that, first, the positive stock market reaction is produced on the same day as the digital technology innovation announcement. Second, the announcement of the platform’s public social responsibility and the announcement of co-innovation and radical innovation bring more positive stock market reactions. In addition, the announcements mentioned above issued by trading platforms bring more positive stock market reactions. Finally, the social responsibility attribution characteristics of the announcement did not have a significant differentiated impact on the stock market reaction.

Most scholars have studied digital technology innovation for social responsibility through modeling rather than second-hand data to empirically examine. This study uses second-hand data with the instrumental stakeholder theory to provide a new research perspective on platform social responsibility. In addition, in order to explore the different impacts of digital technology innovation on social responsibility, this study has classified digital technology innovation for social responsibility according to its social responsibility and digital technology innovation characteristics.

Although the significance of technological progress in economic development is well-established in theory and policy, it has remained challenging to agree upon shared priorities for strategies and policies. This paper aims to develop a model of how policymakers can develop effective and easy to communicate strategies for science, technology and economic development.

By integrating insights from economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature, a replicable research framework for analysing the opportunities and challenges of technological revolutions for small catching-up countries is developed. The authors highlight key lessons from piloting this framework for informing the strategy and policies for bioeconomy in Estonia towards 2030–2050.

The integration of economic complexity research with traditional foresight methods establishes a solid analytical basis for a data-driven analysis of the opportunities for industrial upgrading. The increase in the importance of regional alliances in the global economy calls for further advancement of the analytical toolbox. Integration of complexity, global value chains and export potential assessment approaches offers valuable direction for further research, as it enables discussion of the opportunities of moving towards more knowledge-intensive economic activities along with the opportunities for winning international market share.

The research merges insights from the economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature in a novel way and illustrates the applicability and priority-setting in a real-life setting.

Climate change is one of our time’s most pressing global environmental challenges, and environmental innovation is critical to addressing it. This study aims to investigate the relationship between environmental innovation and carbon emission in the healthcare industry in Europe while also examining the moderating role of environmental governance.

Data for this study were collected from publicly listed healthcare companies in ten European countries spanning the years 2012–2021. The selected countries encompassed Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The research encompassed all healthcare companies for which data were accessible, resulting in a comprehensive dataset comprising 1,210 companies. The authors collected data from multiple sources, including annual reports, the World Bank and Eikon databases, to ensure a robust and extensive dataset.

The results of this study indicate that environmental governance plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between environmental innovation and carbon emission within the healthcare sector in Europe, but when combined with high levels of environmental innovation, strong environmental governance leads to enhanced efforts to reduce carbon emissions. This combination also contributes to meeting the expectations of a broader range of stakeholders and maintaining legitimacy.

The study’s findings have practical implications for healthcare regulators, policymakers and various stakeholders. It underscores the importance of integrating solid environmental governance and innovation to address climate change challenges in the healthcare sector effectively. This integrated approach not only helps reduce carbon emissions but also contributes to achieving sustainable outcomes while satisfying a wider range of stakeholders.

This study adds to the existing body of knowledge by highlighting the significant role of environmental governance as a moderator in the relationship between environmental innovation and carbon emission in the healthcare industry. The research findings provide valuable insights for academics, practitioners and decision-makers, emphasizing the need to combine governance and innovation for sustainable outcomes in healthcare sectors.

This study aims to understand how organizations in the service industry can encourage the use of enterprise social networks (ESNs) for knowledge sharing, focusing on the concepts of intra-organizational trust and governance.

The authors gathered data through an online survey of 104 participants from the financial services industry. Data were analyzed using structural equation modelling to test the proposed model and evaluate the constructs’ reliability and validity.

The findings of the survey data indicate that intra-organizational trust and governance are related to the use of ESN for knowledge sharing to enhance service innovation. Further, the findings suggest that, although trust directly affects service innovation, using ESN for knowledge sharing partially mediates the relationship between trust and service innovation. The findings also reveal that governance significantly moderates the relationship between ESN for knowledge sharing and innovation.

This paper provides insights into the relationship between trust, knowledge sharing and innovation. The novelty of this study demonstrates that governance strengthens the relationship between ESN for knowledge sharing and innovation. Further, the study suggests that firms using or intending to use ESNs could keep track of the evolving nature of ESNs, develop an open culture and create a trusted environment in their organizations.

By providing an overview of the existing knowledge on public governance in the context of Construction 4.0, this review serves as a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners interested in understanding the current state of public governance in the context of Construction 4.0 and identifying avenues for future research and practical implementation.

This article presents a systematic and comprehensive review of the academic literature on public governance in the context of Construction 4.0. To ensure a systematic and rigorous selection of source material, the study adopts the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

By examining a wide range of scholarly works, the review identifies and discusses eight recurring themes that are crucial for understanding the role of public governance in Construction 4.0. These themes include policy and regulation, infrastructure and investment, skill development and education, digital inclusion and access, collaboration and partnerships, data governance and privacy, interactions with environmental and societal goals and the impact of Construction 4.0 on public governance itself. The review highlights a significant disparity between the normative debates on the importance of public governance in Construction 4.0 and the empirical knowledge available regarding its practical implementation. While the literature emphasizes the need for effective governance mechanisms to address the challenges and opportunities presented by Construction 4.0, there is a notable lack of empirical research examining the actual implementation and outcomes of public governance strategies.

This is the first systematic review of academic literature on public governance in the context of Construction 4.0.

This paper aims to present insights on the governance of sustainability transitions in higher education in Africa. The authors interrogate the research literatures on the governance of socio-technical transitions in water, electricity, transport and waste management, and identify barriers and enabling factors that enhance transformative practices in universities.

The analytical framework proposed in this paper combines the elements of governance network theory (GNT) and transition topology. The framework of this study is grounded in an actor-centric approach using GNT to understand networks conducive to sustainability transitions. Events and governance networks were mapped on a transition topology to visualise organisational and institutional changes over time. The study engaged students, management, academic and administrative staff in building a community of practice towards sustainability. This research is based on qualitative content analysis grounded in interview data, focus group discussions, workshops, webinars and secondary data analysis.

The findings show that the university has consolidated a sustainability vision and targets, but several factors prevent the community from achieving these targets, including hierarchical decision-making processes, a multitude of disjointed committees and fragmentation in the campus community.

This research adds to an emerging body of literature in the field of sustainability in higher education with two contributions. Firstly, the study presents a novel perspective(s) on the governance of sustainability transitions by combining the literatures on governance and sustainability transitions using a new methodological approach of transition topology to show organisational and institutional changes. Secondly, the study presents new empirical evidence for improving the governance of sustainability transitions in a diverse and highly unequal African university community in the process of (de)colonisation of knowledge and governance.

Prior studies mostly tested the association between carbon emissions and firm value in certain contexts. This study aims to advance the existing literature by concentrating on three indicators of greening in corporations namely resource use, emissions and eco-innovation, and examining their value relevance in the stock market at the global level. Furthermore, we deepen the investigation by exploring the moderating role of eco-innovation and the CSR committee between greening in corporations and market value.

The data for the study were retrieved from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database for the years between 2002 and 2019 and contain 17,961 firm-year observations which are analyzed through fixed-effects regression.

The results reveal that while resource usage is viewed as value-relevant by the market, the emissions and eco-innovation are not. However, despite eco-innovation per se not being value-relevant, its interaction with resource usage and emissions is value-relevant. Furthermore, CSR committees undertake a very critical role in translating greening practices into market value.

While the results for emissions support the cost-concerned school, the findings for resource usage confirm the value creation school. Furthermore, the interaction effect of eco-innovation and CSR committee confirms the resource-based theory and stakeholder theory, respectively.

Investors regard eco-innovation-induced pro-environmental behaviors as value-relevant. These results propose firms replace eco-innovation at the focal point in developing environmental strategies and connecting other greening efforts to it. Moreover, CSR committees are critical to corporations in translating greening practices into firm value by developing and implementing disclosure and communication strategies.

The study’s originality stems from investigating the synergetic effect that eco-innovation and CSR committees generate in translating greening practices to greater market value at a global scale.

The purpose of this paper is to model a process for moving toward sustainable ecosystem service decisions in a Coastal Biodiversity and discuss the directions of the process for decision-makers to apply in ocean ecosystem services.

After the development of theoretical approaches to understand their prospects for the future development of ecosystem services, the authors worked on a process for developing factors for sustainable decision-making. It uses the Delphi method to develop all the factors supported by six dimensions in two specific moments: deductive-inductive and inductive-deductive.

This process of modeling the factors expands the possibility of adaptive governance to make prior and subsequent decisions using factors related to dimensions, stakeholders and benefits, risks, opportunities and costs.

Considering the limitations, future studies could use another database to widen the view in terms of the studies, factors, dimensions and other additional information to maintain the evolution of this process in ocean ecosystem services decision-making. Another limitation arose in the number of projects and experts defining the factors. This may prevent the opportunity to have more impact in terms of future decisions if more sources are used in the market. In addition, time and the access to experts during this modeling process demonstrate a limitation, as does the time for feedback.

This set of factors developed for adaptive governance decision-making can be applied to develop a prior alignment of stakeholder interests with sustainable practices.

This set of factors developed with the intervention of experts reinforces the importance of sustainable collective decisions on ocean ecosystem services. This is a joint approach with participants in the NextOcean project, sponsored by the European Commissions (EC)’s Horizon 2020 program. An Earth Observation-based Consortia aims to create sustainable value for Space, Land and Oceans.

This modeling process generated dimensions and factors to support adaptive governance stakeholders in making sustainable decisions in a coastal biodiversity zone.

In view of the increasing exploration and scattered literature on digital leadership, this study aims to clarify the concept, characteristics and structure of digital leadership, identify its focus research themes and further determine future research directions in this field.

A systematic literature review is adopted in this study using 53 academic documents published in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, which comprehensively combs and analyzes the research achievements.

The key characteristics of digital leadership are vision motivation, digital empowerment, innovation and entrepreneurship, cross-boundary collaboration and dynamic adaptation. Digital strategic thinking, digital insight, digital change and digital talent development are the core dimensions of digital leadership. Besides, there are three main research topics: the application of digital leadership in certain contexts including school education, government governance and business management; the development of digital leadership scale within diverse contexts; and the effectiveness of digital leadership at the organizational, team and individual levels. Digital leadership has a positive role in organizational change and innovation, team effectiveness, and employee creativity and innovation behavior.

This study helps to clarify the connotation of digital leadership and its research progress, status and gaps, which contributes to the thorough knowledge system in the digital leadership area and the promising avenues for future research.