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In the previous decade, a substantial amount of research has been undertaken to measure the digitalized supply chain (DSC) performance. This paper aims to present a systematic literature review on DSC performance measurement metrics to apprehend current practices, recognize gaps and advocate future research itineraries.

To guarantee a replicable, rigorous and transparent research process, the authors used a systematic literature review methodology to synthesize the research. A combination of 25 keywords was used to obtain 248 scientific studies in the first step. The balance scorecard (BSC) model was used to categorize 299 gathered performance metrics into 4 BSC perspectives.

The review highlighted the need for qualitative performance measuring metrics for DSC. During the review, only one study was identified that primarily focused on developing performance metrics for DSC. Additionally, the review identified that metrics related to internal and financial perspectives received the most attention while the “growth and learning” perspective received the least attention. The review also identified that external partners, such as distributors and suppliers, were virtually ignored in previous literature.

Although numerous literature reviews have been conducted in the past on the performance measuring metrics for supply chain management, no literature review aiming to synthesize the measuring metrics for DSC has yet been undertaken.

This study aims to examine and understand the impact of reverse logistics adoption on firms' digitalization and collaboration activities. Specifically, leveraging the knowledge-based view, this study examines how adopting sustainable logistic practices (reverse logistics) prepares firms to embrace digitalization and encourages them to collaborate with other organizations.

The study used longitudinal survey data from two waves (2017 and 2019) from the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research. The authors used the negative binomial regression analyses to test the impact of reverse logistics adoption on the digitalization and inter-organizational collaboration dependent count variables.

The study's findings highlight the usefulness of reverse logistics in enabling digitalization and inter-organizational collaboration. The results show that the firms investing in sustainable supply chains will be better positioned to nurture digitalization and inter-organizational collaboration.

For resource-bound managers, this study provides an important insight into prioritizing activities by highlighting how reverse logistics can facilitate digitalization and collaboration. The study demonstrates that the knowledge generated by reverse logistics adoption can be an essential pillar and enabler toward achieving firms' digitalization and collaboration goals.

The study is among the first to examine the effect of reverse logistics adoption on firm activities that are not strictly associated with the circular economy (digitalization and collaboration). Utilizing the knowledge-based view, this study reports on the additional benefits of reverse logistics implementation previously not discussed in the literature.

Despite the multiple calls for research on the dark side of open innovation, very few studies have approached the topic so far. This study aims to analyse successful and unsuccessful open innovation projects.

This study uses thematic analysis to describe the factors determining their (un)success. The researchers interviewed 27 managers and owners in the manufacturing sector. Then, the respondents were asked to discuss one successful and one unsuccessful open innovation project to explore the differences in triggers and setbacks, focusing on the causes that determined the failures.

Findings show that many interviewees are reluctant to identify failure cases, which somewhat explains the paucity of studies on the topic, and others do so when the failure is recognised by a third party (such as a public institution not granting funds to the project). This study discussed how this phenomenon is linked with the paradoxical relation between innovation success and failure. It is also found that triggers and setbacks determining the project's (un)success are markedly differently based on the technological intensity of the firm. Implications for scholars and practitioners are also drawn.

This study provides a balanced view between open innovation successes and failures to offer informative recommendations to practitioners. Furthermore, it contributes to filling the scarcity of studies related to risks and failures of open innovation projects. This gap has been addressed by studying the factors that determine the success and unsuccess of an open innovation project.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and performance of public universities in emerging countries in order to identify patterns and provide recommendations that may turn the universities’ IC into development opportunities, in terms of research, innovation, and education.

The analysis targeted the whole population of the public universities in the Republic of Colombia. A cluster analysis, based on five performance variables, has been conducted. Then, the IC of the universities pertaining to the three resulting clusters has been compared. Subsequently, for each performance variable, the IC of above-average and below-average universities has been benchmarked.

The results of this study show how different aspects of IC are associated with University performance. Among the many, the authors found that universities should achieve a critical mass to obtain outstanding research and innovation results. The findings also identify the particular importance of both students and scholars’ international mobility programs for most of the performance variables.

This study provides a baseline for the assessment of the impact on society of the IC available in the universities of emerging countries. The application may serve as a guide in the choice of public policies, dedicated to the strengthening of the universities’ IC in order to improve their performance.

This paper proposes an innovative model to analyze the relationship between IC and university performance in emerging countries. The model identifies the association between the IC accrued in the universities and their capability of transferring it to the society under the form of science, innovation, and education.

Despite the flourishing literature on intellectual capital (IC), few studies explored its features in the perspective of family firms, and even fewer focussed on small family firms (SFFs). The purpose of this paper is to analyze how managers and senior employees in SFFs perceive the benefits and costs of intellectual capital assets (ICAs) and provides many insights for future researches.

Taking the lead from the constructivist epistemology, this instrumental study describes the implementation of a framework for the assessment of ICAs into four SFFs in order to develop general theoretical principles.

Among the findings, it stands out that most SFFs in the sample especially rely on their internal processes and on their human resources’ knowledge and competences. Furthermore, the authors found much internal disagreement with respect to the expected costs of investing on ICAs, especially within firms operating in more turbulent markets.

Being referred to a multiple case study, the results may not be generalized to other organizations. Nevertheless, they are useful to build theory, either by verification of falsification, and to encourage their future testing in empirical papers.

The implementation of the framework allows identifying internal disagreement with respect to the ICAs’ costs and benefits and exploring their causes. Furthermore, it suggests which should be the ICAs deserving primary attention in order to have the best impact on value creation.

The paper investigates IC in SFFs, thus contributing to fill a remarkable gap in IC literature.

The aim of this article is to expound a holistic intellectual capital index. Moreover, the paper presents its implementation within a real estate organization.

The index is calculated on the basis of 14 structured interviews synthesized through the analytic hierarchy process, min–max normalizations and weighted sums.

The authors estimate a holistic intellectual capital index and show that an analysis of its components may allow identifying discordances within the organization about the contributions of its value drivers.

The proposed index may be used in a medium-/long-term research to measure the evolution in the organizational intellectual capital and its relation with the top management’s initiatives and the competitive environment changes.

The proposed methodology may integrate the reports prepared for shareholders and stakeholders and provide the top management, with an in-depth understanding of the different perceptions of the organizational human resources.

The authors discuss a holistic index of intellectual capital that allows considering both the performances of the intellectual capital components and the interdependencies among them and also their strategic contribution to the value-creation process. In addition, they propose a novel descriptive statistical analysis of the assessment and management of IC-index components to draw indications for the top management.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the recurrences in the empirical evidences that link open innovation (OI) actions and innovation performance in European countries. It provides managers with useful strategic suggestions, emphasizes the limitations of the state of the art, and recommends future directions of research.

The authors systematically reviewed empirical articles linking OI actions and innovation performance in European countries, published on peer reviewed journals from January 2003 until May 2013. The authors organized the evidences according to a novel taxonomy grounded in the literature.

The paper shows an increasing interest in the research of empirical evidence regarding OI and innovation performance. Nonetheless, evidence of the role played by outbound OI activities are extremely rare. The authors found that process innovations are more likely to benefit from coupled OI activities rather than inbound activities. Moreover, the effect of coupled depth actions on both product and process innovation performance was always positive in the reviewed articles. The authors also discuss how scholars measure innovation performance, pointing out the criticalities.

The paper allows analysing the empirical evidences found in the literature, emphasizing the limitations of the state of the art and recommending future directions of research.

The systematization of the empirical evidences found in the European literature provides managers with useful strategic suggestions to improve their organizations’ innovation performances.

The paper contains a complete and extensive analysis of empirical OI literature with respect to European countries. The articles and their findings are organized according to a novel taxonomy useful to identify evidences and recurrences in a synoptic manner.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the most prominent research areas connected with “Big Data” and propose a thorough definition of the term.

The authors have analysed a conspicuous corpus of industry and academia articles linked with Big Data to find commonalities among the topics they treated. The authors have also compiled a survey of existing definitions with a view of generating a more solid one that encompasses most of the work happening in the field.

The main themes of Big Data are: information, technology, methods and impact. The authors propose a new definition for the term that reads as follows: “Big Data is the Information asset characterized by such a High Volume, Velocity and Variety to require specific Technology and Analytical Methods for its transformation into Value.”

The formal definition that is proposed can enable a more coherent development of the concept of Big Data, as it solely relies on the essential strands of current state-of-the-art and is coherent with the most popular definitions currently used.

This is among the first structured attempts of building a convincing definition of Big Data. It also contains an original exploration of the topic in connection with library management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether intellectual capital affects the probability that a particular firm will default. The authors also test whether including intellectual capital performance in bankruptcy prediction models improves their predictive ability.

Using a sample of US public companies from the period stretching from 1985 to 2015, the authors test whether intellectual capital performance reduces the probability of bankruptcy. The authors use the VAIC as an aggregate measure of corporate intellectual capital performance.

The findings show that the intellectual capital performance is negatively associated with the probability of default. The findings also indicate that the bankruptcy prediction models that include intellectual capital have a superior predictive ability over the standard models.

This paper contributes to prior research on intellectual capital and firm performance. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to show that the benefits of intellectual capital extend from superior performance to long-term financial stability. The research can also contribute to bankruptcy studies. By using a time frame covering decades, the findings suggest that intellectual capital performance measures can be included in bankruptcy prediction models and can effectively complement traditional performance measures.

This paper highlights that intellectual capital is associated with long-term financial stability and a lower bankruptcy risk. Firms realising the potential of their intellectual capital can produce a virtuous circle between higher performance and greater financial stability.