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Technological innovations provide huge opportunities to expand and revolutionize the scope of products and services offered. This is particularly true for tourism, which is undergoing significant changes due to the development of new technologies. The level of technology diffusion depends on several factors like the exchange of information among peers, and the attitude and shared perception among the contributors. The aim of the study is to explore the diffusion of technology in tourism with a specific focus on the social media discourse around new technologies. Thus, the paper investigates the level of interest in these new technologies analysing the information exchange occurring between individuals on Twitter in order to explore the influence of reciprocal networking.

To capture the attitudes expressed in the industry, the study analyses the ongoing discourse on Twitter as a proxy for the participants “interest in new technologies. Through a social network analysis of the tweets and retweets conducted over a period of nine months, the research maps the level of information exchange about the diffusion of new technologies. Moreover, the sentiment analysis provides an interesting overview of the individuals” attitudes towards the awareness or the adoption of new technologies.

Our analysis has provided several insights: (1) the information network on blockchain in tourism consists of participants who change very quickly over time (high turnover of accounts); (2) some contributors have an extremely important role in influencing the flow of information in the system (information centralization), they can have a generalist (discussing several topics) or a specialist (focusing on a specific topic) behaviour and this strategic choice influences their network's structure; (3) these central nodes also have an impact on the definition of positive and negative sentiment towards a topic (sentiment influencer).

The paper contributes to the literature on technology diffusion, by focusing on one of the preconditions of diffusion that is the shared positive attitude towards technological innovation. More specifically, we adopt a network-based approach, which is useful to explain the level of information exchange and the public discourse that can impact the shared perception and attitude towards technological innovation. The study also highlights the role of knowledge brokers in influencing this public discourse. Future studies can deepen the association between positive perception, higher levels of information exchange and increasing usage of specific technologies. Our results also suggest further exploring the opportunity to combine social media data and other sources of information to shed more light on the technological innovation diffusion processes.

This paper shows how practitioners can benefit from the analysis of information exchange about new technologies in tourism adopting a network perspective with the aim of understanding the level of influence among contributors. Moreover, the increasing interest in blockchain technology and the potential combination between social media data and other sources of information can offer promising insights.

The present study explores the level of technology diffusion through the analysis of information exchange on social media (Twitter). Furthermore, the dynamics of individual user behaviour offers a better understanding about media effects.

While previous research is focused on the users' perception towards the development of new technologies in tourism, the aim of this study is to investigate the dynamics behind the level of diffusion of information and awareness about these new technologies, which still represents an unexplored area of research.

For at least three decades, inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) has attracted scholarly attention and many studies have unveiled its inner dynamics. More recently, new phenomena have appeared in the changing landscape of IOC, affecting the way in which organizations are open to interact with, and rely upon, other actors that may be standalone entities as well as representatives of other organizations. These actors operate “betwixt and between” the organizational core and its external environment(s), populating a liminal space located at the organization’s boundary in which activities take place according to non-proprietary and non-employment logics. The authors focus on the forms of collaboration, which blur the lines between organizations, calling into question the fundamental label of crowd-focused IOCs. The authors consider two forms: crowd-open and crowd-based organizations. The authors show the organizational design impact of openness spans from the mere scalability associated with organizational growth to the phenomena of reshaping formalization and standardization of roles and processes, and self-organizing over time.

Decision-making has long been recognized as being at the core of organizational life. Yet, the cognitive mechanisms by which managers make decisions represent a critical field of exploration. In this context, business models (BMs) are cognitive representations of organizational architectures that managers use to orient their firms in the business environment. While BMs – as managerial schemas – have been extensively studied for their beneficial applications at the strategic level, scholarly attention has rarely focused on their dark side. In this chapter, we point out that BM thinking – that focuses excessively on established schemas – might narrow managerial cognition in the process of fine-tuning the current BM; in the process, opportunities for more radical BM innovation can be overlooked. We systematize March and Simon’s contribution on managerial cognition into a more comprehensive conceptual framework by integrating the perspectives of Kahneman, Baron, and Gollwitzer. The result is an epistemologically coherent framework for managerial cognition and decision-making that focuses on how managers can overcome cognitive biases that derive from a reliance on established BMs as schemas. We close this chapter with directions for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible coexistence of single and multiple organizational identities (OIs) after mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In particular, it describes how the sensemaking process leads the acquired and acquiring companies to maintain multiple identities, even after the formal conclusion of the integration process.

The paper presents a grounded study based on a single case study (M&A between a German chemical multinational and an Italian/Swiss pharmaceutical firm).

While many previous studies suggest that the evolution of OI reduces ambiguity by providing multiple identities under a shared commonality, this paper shows that multiple identities might survive within the same “new entity.”

Despite being based on a single case, the paper argues that the choice of maintaining multiple identities may be even more appropriate than the tendency to converge toward one of the old ones or toward a new one. The “sense” that employees and managers give to the same “words,” as well as the “sense” that they make for them, mirrors the perception they have of the OI.

The conclusions presented could help managers to facilitate sensemaking as a means of dealing with multiple OIs.

Differently from the extant literature, the paper concludes by stating that striking a balance between single and multiple identities might provide the ideal platform for building a new identity based on plurality. When the two (or more) organizational contexts present some complementarities, the existence of multiple identities, and its inner ambiguity, is not a problem per se.

Based on the interactionist perspective proposed by Woodman et al. (1993), this paper conceives organizational creativity as a complex concept whose investigation requires the understanding of the process, the product, the person, and the situation. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to enrich the understanding of how organizational creativity can be fostered by offering a framework which combines (inter-)individual-level learning (collecting knowledge from others), information sharing (through information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures), and contextual factors (perceived top management support).

The empirical analysis draws on a sample of 362 employees from five subsidiaries of multinational corporations. The analysis is based on multivariate regression models considering organizational creativity as dependent variable.

The paper shows that individuals’ orientation toward learning from others significantly enhances organizational creativity. However, heavy ICT use negatively moderates the relationship between knowledge collecting and organizational creativity, while top management support does not show a significant moderating effect on the association between knowledge collecting and organizational creativity.

Although based on a geographically bounded perimeter, the analysis allows some generalizations.

Based on these results, the paper contributes to the literature on organizational creativity by confirming the importance of providing a holistic view of the phenomenon, consistent with its inherent complexity. In so doing, it suggests organizations and their managers should simultaneously pay attention to individual and contextual factors when planning how to foster their firms’ creativity, as both of them are found to play a critical role in firms’ success and competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the quality practices of European pharmaceutical manufacturers to determine the level of readiness of this industrial sector to implement and/or sustain lean manufacturing (LM).

An assessment framework developed by Al-Najem et al. (2013) was adapted to evaluate how ready European pharmaceutical manufacturers are to implement and/or sustain LM. Therefore, the lean readiness (LR) level of these organisations was assessed through six quality practices related to LM. These included: processes, planning and control, human resources, top management and leadership, customer relations, and supplier relations. One research question and three hypotheses were formulated and tested using a combination of descriptive statistics and non-parametric Mann-Whitney tests. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire distributed to 310 European pharmaceutical manufacturers and responded by 37 of these organisations.

Overall, the results of this study indicate an inadequate level of LR for the participating firms. Simultaneously, it was concluded that factors such as company size, type of relationships with suppliers and ISO 9000 certification do not have an effect on the quality practices, and hence LR level, of European pharmaceutical manufacturing organisations.

This study provides crucial information regarding the LR level of European pharmaceutical manufacturers, which can now be aware of the areas in their practices that require further improvement towards a successful lean journey. Simultaneously, organisations in the pharmaceutical sector that intend to implement LM can consider the results of this study and evaluate their readiness level. Managers can, therefore, refer to this research and use it as a platform to take better decisions regarding what quality aspects of their operations need to be enhanced to successfully deploy or sustain a lean strategy.

This research is one of the very few studies that have focussed on evaluating whether the European pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is ready to successfully implement or sustain LM. Therefore, this research expands the limited existent body of knowledge of LM in this industry.