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Via embracing the idea that one who directly experiences a problem is keener to develop more innovative solutions, local governments have started to engage smart communities in the innovation of public services’ delivery. Even if the meaning of “smart community” generally refers to the community participation in the innovation of public services for urban living, local governments have predominantly stimulated the participation of their citizens. But innovative ideas can potentially spring out also from the insiders. The purpose of this paper is to find the managerial and technological issues that public managers have to consider when planning an internal smart community initiative.

For this purpose, the authors analyse the case study of the Municipality of Turin that developed a participatory smart community project named Innova.TO, through the theoretical lens of sensemaking (Weick, 1979; Weick et al., 2005).

Results show that there are three main aspects to be considered when implementing smart community initiatives in local governments.

Even if there is the potential, the engagement of public employees in a smart community of innovators is not straightforward, and several complexities may challenge its success. Moreover, real-life examples and empirical studies are still episodic. As a consequence, if it is concretely possible to build a smart community of innovators inside a local government still remains a question, to which this paper aims to respond.

This study aims to identify and categorize the barriers and motivators to value co-creation and to establish its theoretical link with the five axioms of value co-creation.

The study used a qualitative approach based on a bibliographic literature review for identifying barriers and motivators of value co-creation. Subsequently, this study grouped those barriers and motivators into three categories. It further linked those barriers and motivators with five axioms of value co-creation using the grounded theory.

Results based on the categorization of barriers show that the first category “organization and system-related barriers” is associated with Axioms 1, 2 and 5 of the service-dominant logic. The second category “customer-oriented barriers” is associated with Axioms 2, 4 and 5. The third category of barriers “social environmental and economic barriers” is related to only Axiom 3. Results based on the motivators show that the first category “organization and system-related motivators” is associated with Axioms 2 and 4. The second category of “customer-oriented motivators” is associated with Axioms 1, 2, 3 and 5. The third category of motivators “social environmental and economic motivators” is related to Axioms 3 and 5.

These results provide insights to managers for eradicating barriers from the value co-creation process by emphasizing strategic intrusion into those axioms that contain a high percentage of barriers. Similarly, it also provides insights to managers for expediting motivators of value co-creation by strategic intrusion based on the axioms that contain a high percentage of motivators. Overall, this study will serve for greater value co-creation by eradicating barriers and promoting motivators. This study also provides a theoretical foundation for future studies intended to establish a theoretical connection between the barriers and motivators with value co-creation in other industries.

This study is novel in terms of identifying barriers and motivators of value creation by categorizing those identified barriers and motivators into three sub-categories. This study is the first one for linking barriers and motivators with five axioms of value creation for a micro-level policy formulation.

The purpose of this study is to recognize the facilitators and inhibitors of value co-creation in the industrial service environment.

First, a systematic literature review (SLR) based on the systematic search flow (SSF) method was conducted, using six databases. Then, the content analysis proposed by Bardin (2011) was used to analyze the selected papers from SLR.

The authors identified a total of 11 facilitators and four inhibitors of value co-creation in industrial services. The findings show that concerning facilitators, the involvement of actors and synergy among participants reported a higher presence. As for the inhibitors, incompatibility among actors and actors' inexperience in the context of value co-creation were the ones that registered the most frequency.

Even though the SLR covered a large proportion of the studies available, this research may not have enabled a complete coverage of all existing peer-reviewed papers in the field of value co-creation in industrial services.

This study assists managers in enhancing the performance of the value co-creation process. This is because, by knowing both the facilitators and inhibitors, managers can have an improved understanding of this process, thereby pondering these elements on the elaboration of their strategies and decision-making.

This study is one of the first attempts to recognize both the facilitators and inhibitors of value co-creation in industrial services.

To address the growing pressure to foster effectiveness, sustainability and quality of life, local governments have focused on developing policies and initiatives designed to make their cities smarter. Despite the growing attention paid to this issue, an important but under-investigated issue is represented by the smart city governance. In this regard, in light of the claimed need for collaboration, the purpose of this paper is to investigate why and how different institutional works carried out by multiple actors may explain the way in which collaborative governance can be constructed in the context of a smart city.

A rich in-depth case study has been carried out exploring the experience of a smart city in the north of Italy. The study explores the institutional works done by multiple actors (Lawrence et al., 2013) and their influence on the governance of the smart city.

Collaboration is perceived to be instrumental in making a city smart, during the design and implementation phase, while generating new challenges that must be overcome by an integration of the political, technical and, especially, cultural work of the collective actors involved.

Despite governance is recognized as a crucial factor for realizing a smartness-orientation, it is scarcely investigated. The main value of the current research is thus its contribution to overcome this gap providing new empirical evidence on the role of multiple actors in the smart city context.

The study aims to underscore the initiatives taken by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in spearheading their drive towards creating “smart” cities.

The study uses a qualitative approach by invoking documentary analysis supplemented by responses provided by 13 interviewees from public and private sector.

All the six GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) are keen on building upon their infrastructure to push their “smart city” agenda which would go a long way in furthering the economic diversification objective of their region besides improving the quality of public services.

Hitherto, research has been focused on appreciating the “smart city” initiatives of developed countries; this study seeks to build upon the literature on “smart cities” by contextualizing the research setting in the developing countries. Second, the study shows that with the ongoing oil prices crisis in the GCC, the “smart city” initiatives of the countries are conceived as possible avenues of economic diversification and competitiveness.

The research aims to provide a longitudinal case study to understand how digital transformation can be embedded in municipal reporting frameworks. The central role of such technology becomes increasingly evident as citizens demand greater transparency and engagement between them and governing institutions.

Utilising a longitudinal case study methodology, the research focusses on Turin’s Integrated Popular Financial Report (IPFR) as a lens through which to evaluate the broader implications of digital transformation on governmental transparency and operational efficiency.

Digital tools, notably sentiment analysis, offer promising avenues for enhancing governmental efficacy and citizenry participation. However, persistent challenges highlight the inadequacy of traditional, inflexible reporting structures to cater to dynamic informational demands.

Embracing digital tools is an imperative for contemporary public administrators, promoting streamlined communication and dismantling bureaucratic obstructions, all while catering to the evolving demands of an informed citizenry.

Different from previous studies that primarily emphasised technology’s role within budgeting, this research uniquely positions itself by spotlighting the transformative implications of digital tools during the reporting phase. It champions the profound value of fostering bottom-up dialogues, heralding a paradigmatic shift towards co-creative public management dynamics.

The purpose of this paper is to compare “how we see ourselves” vs “how others see us” when communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in US pharmaceutical companies.

Data were collected as follows: CSR reports from the companies themselves and Business Press reports from the Lexis-Nexis database. NVivo content analysis was used to compare CSR communication by companies and the Business Press. This analysis was comprised of almost 10 million words. Comparisons of Carroll’s framework, including the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic categories between CSR reports and the Business Press, were done. Additional analysis was done to discern individual, organizational, and societal patterns of communications. Return on assets was computed for companies that have formal CSR reports and those that do not.

The analysis of documents containing almost 10 million words allowed the following conclusions: companies communicate more about their economic and philanthropic activities, and the Business Press communicates more about their legal and ethical activities. The companies and the Business Press communicated similarly about individual CSR. The organization communicated more about organizational topics, and the Business Press communicated less about societal topics.

This paper makes both substantive and methodological contributions. Its substantive contribution allows an understanding of what pharmaceutical companies need to do to fully communicate their CSR activities. Its methodological contribution is in suggesting that content analysis be used in understanding communication patterns. A levels of analysis approach allowed the discernment of individual-oriented, organizational, and societal-oriented communication patterns.