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This study aims to investigate how dynamic tensions between performance measurement system (PMS) uses enable organizations to achieve both exploitation and exploration and enhance firm performance.

The authors collected survey data on 153 Italian companies. Scales for each construct were validated through an exploratory factor analysis. Data on firm performance were cross-validated by using lagged accounting data. The authors tested our hypotheses using hierarchical ordinary least squares regressions, together with bootstrapping procedures for the test on mediation.

A diagnostic use of PMS has a positive association with both exploitation – e.g. reductions in total costs and lead times – and exploration, e.g. introduction of new products and extension of product ranges. The dynamic tension created by a joint diagnostic and interactive use has the strongest association with organizational ambidexterity, measured as the multiplicative interaction between exploration and exploitation.

If an organization or business unit is mainly pursuing exploitative goals, a mainly diagnostic use of PMS would be most suitable. If goals are both exploitative and explorative, a mix of diagnostic and interactive uses would be most effective.

This research helps reconcile conflicting views in the literature. The diagnostic use of PMS, far from acting as a “negative force,” appears to be necessary to guide opportunity search and to establish an appropriate scope for exploration-related activities. The authors’ focus on the uses of PMSs shows that ambidexterity is achieved through managerial capability, rather than just through the introduction of systems and structures.

The purpose of this paper is to provide arguments and empirical evidence that different knowledge sharing behaviours – i.e. sharing best practices, sharing mistakes, seeking feedbacks – are promoted and enabled by different types of knowledge assets, and differently affect employees’ innovative work behaviours.

The research framework includes four sets of constructs: employees’ innovative work behaviour, knowledge sharing, knowledge assets, psychological safety. The literature-grounded hypotheses were tested collecting data from healthcare professionals from three hospice and palliative care organisations in Italy. In all, 195 questionnaires were analysed using structural equations modelling technique.

First, findings show that the linkage between knowledge assets and knowledge sharing is both direct and indirect with psychological safety as relevant mediating construct. The linkage between relational and structural social capital and seeking feedbacks and sharing mistakes is fully mediated by psychological safety. Second, findings show that each dimension of knowledge sharing affects the different dimensions of employees’ innovative work behaviour – i.e. idea generation, idea promotion, idea implementation – in a distinct manner. While sharing of best practices influences all of them, seeking feedbacks affects idea promotion and sharing mistakes influences idea implementation.

The results provide operations managers with a clearer picture of how to pursue improvements of current operations by leveraging on knowledge sharing among employees through the creation of numerous, high-quality interpersonal relationships among employees, based on rich and cohesive network ties.

This study, by adopting a micro-level perspective, offers an original perspective on how knowledge assets and knowledge sharing initiatives may contribute to the engagement of innovative work behaviour by employees.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive framework for the study of indoor air quality (IAQ) in hospitality premises. The goal is to identify the drivers of air pollution, both at the exogenous and endogenous level, to generate insights for facility managers.

The complexity of hospitality premises requires an integrated approach to properly investigate IAQ. The authors develop an overarching framework encompassing a monitoring method, based on real-time sensors, a technological standard and a set of statistical analyses for the assessment of both IAQ performance and drivers, based on correlation analyses, analysis of variance and multivariate regressions.

The findings suggest that the main drivers of IAQ differ depending on the area monitored: areas in contact with the outdoors or with high ventilation rates, such as halls, are affected by outdoor air quality more than guestrooms or fitness areas, where human activities are the main sources of contamination.

The results suggest that the integration of IAQ indicators into control dashboards would support management decisions, both in defining protocols to support resilience of the sector in a postpandemic world and in directing investments on the premises. This would also address guests’ pressing demands for a broader approach to cleanliness and safety and support their satisfaction and intention to return.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study developing a comprehensive framework to systematically address IAQ and its drivers, based on a standard and real-time monitoring. The framework has been applied across the longest period of monitoring for a hospitality premise thus far and over an entire hotel facility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of comprehensive performance measurement systems (PMS) – i.e. measurement systems that comprise financial and non-financial indicators, and which also consist of indicators related to different aspects of an organisation’s operations – in the relationship between strategy and company performance.

Survey data of top managers of large European companies were collected and analysed by means of exploratory factor analyses and hierarchical regressions in order to validate the proposed hypotheses.

This research shows that different strategies lead to the use of different types of performance indicators. Also, it finds that the utilisation of a comprehensive PMS enables the implementation of both differentiation and cost-leadership strategies. Specifically, a comprehensive PMS positively mediates the effect of differentiation strategy on organisational and innovative performance, and of cost-leadership strategy on organisational performance.

Further research could be undertaken in other contexts and consider additional factors, such as the structure, maturity and different uses of PMS, and the cost of measuring performance. Qualitative studies could examine the role of PMS in dynamic environments, as well as the evolution of PMS during strategic transitions.

Greater consideration should be given to the utilisation of different types of performance indicators when implementing and re-formulating strategy.

This study clarifies the links between strategy and performance measurement, and it is the first to identify the mediating effect of comprehensive PMS between strategy and company performance.

The purpose of this paper is to enter the debate on the antecedents of knowledge exploration and exploitation by investigating the role of social capital and environmental dynamisms. The contribution is grounded on existing insights that no empirical evidence exists on the link between social capital and exploration/exploitation behaviors.

The model considers three social capital dimensions – structural, relational and cognitive. It also considers the moderation effect of environmental dynamism on the link between social capital and knowledge exploration and exploitation. Head physicians from Italian hospitals were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. The data set consists of 174 observations, analyzed using seemingly unrelated regression techniques.

This research provides evidence of the positive effect of structural, relational and cognitive social capital on knowledge exploration and exploitation – thus adding to a literature which has thus far concentrated on contextual and structural properties. Cohesive and strong ties are instrumental to gain access to external knowledge assets and stimuli, and to recombine the knowledge available within the unit.

The results can support hospital managers in designing initiatives that recognize the centrality of network ties for strategies of continuous improvement. Social networks represent the locus in which hospital units can identify and acquire knowledge from outside and the locus in which knowledge can be shared and recombined. Managers should encourage initiatives that support systematic connections among units.

This research provides evidence of the positive effect of structural, relational and cognitive social capital on knowledge exploration and exploitation – thus adding to a literature which has thus far concentrated on contextual and structural properties. Cohesive and strong ties are instrumental to gain access to external knowledge assets and stimuli, and to recombine the knowledge available within the unit. The results adds to conflicting evidence on environmental dynamism –shown here to exert a direct positive impact on exploitation and exploration, as well as to moderate the link between relational and structural social capital and exploration.

This study aims to offer new insights to further the understanding on the relevance of engaging employees in knowledge sharing behaviours in order to improve current operations.

The authors' conceptual model proposes a direct relationship between knowledge sharing behaviours and employees' innovative behaviour, moderated by employees' perception of social capital. Six hypotheses were developed from the literature, grounded and tested among 198 employees of four hospices and palliative care organisations (H&PCOs) for dying cancer patients. All constructs were measured using multiple‐item scales that were adapted from previous related studies. The authors' hypotheses were tested using seemingly unrelated regression (SUR).

This study has three main results. First, the authors found a positive role of knowledge sharing behaviours in affecting sharers' innovativeness, in terms of propensity and capacity to promote and implement new ideas. Second, sharing best practices and sharing mistakes are two distinct drivers of individuals' innovativeness. Third, individuals' perceptions of social capital have a relevant moderation effect on the linkage between knowledge sharing and innovative behaviour.

Past research posited that knowledge sharing is convenient for others, and possibly at the expense of sharers' best interest. The authors' research was grounded on a different notion of knowledge sharing as: a self‐interested behaviour, which individuals deploy to generate a norm of reciprocity among knowledge recipients, which might create future benefits in the short term; and an improvement process, which individuals can use to translate new ideas into workable innovations.

The aims of this research are: to develop and test an evaluation model of the intangible resources related to the employees; to value the impact that these intangible resources have on individual work attitudes such as job satisfaction and turnover propensity.

Two surveys were conducted in 2005 and 2006 for employees of a leading Italian company in the agricultural food sector. A structural equation modelling methodology was used to define the quantitative measures of the system of resources and to determine the relations among the different constructs.

It was found that the items adopted in the study capture the constructs of human capital and structural capital and, moreover, these two dimensions positively affect individual work attitudes such as job satisfaction and turnover.

The measurement system developed in this research can be used in any firm that seeks to measure the intangible resources related to employees. The system represents a tool that may support managers in planning and control of human resource investments of the firm. One of the main limitations is that the study is based on surveys of employees, so it only enables comparison among different departments, production plants, professional category or seniority within the company. Moreover, the indicators used are not measured objectively, making it difficult for any inter‐company comparison.

The research has the following objectives: to contribute to a clear understanding of the present social commitment of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), analyzing the characteristics of CSR in them; making it easier to identify, develop and spread the instruments suitable to the SME specific demands in the creation of social value.

Surveys a set of SMEs, belonging to different industrial fields and operating on the Italian territory in the region Emilia Romagna.

On the basis of the analysis carried out in the paper, it has been possible to identify the principal managerial instruments used by the companies for the creation of social value and to identify those companies (approximately 63 percent of the reference sample) that adopt an integrated social responsibility approach. The majority of SMEs analysed have therefore perceived the social responsibility concept and welcome it, not only because they have moral or ethical reasons for doing so, but also because they maintain that this contributes to the growth of the company's own value.

As there is no integrated approach, there exists no model in the literature that summarises the expectations of the stakeholders and the associated categories of value for these expectations. The “grid of values” developed in the present study constitutes a first level of such a model and a useful reference for the development of future research.

In the opinion of the authors, two aspects characterize the contribution of the present research methodology: the integrated approach towards all the interlocutors; and the analysis and development of “value classes” to measure the creation of social value.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between strategy implementation, performance measurement and strategic alignment within a highly diversified group of firms.

A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches was used, and data were gathered in two different periods. In the first phase, preliminary interviews were followed by a survey across all the firms of the group and by semi‐structured interviews in four companies. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted four years later to explore changes in both strategy and performance measurement systems (PMSs).

This research contributes to the debate on the appropriateness of introducing PMSs as formal management control mechanisms. The analysis of data led to three main findings. First, the introduction of IT systems and specific governance mechanisms alone enabled the implementation of strategy across the group only to a limited extent. Second, the lack of a comprehensive PMS appeared to have negative effects on both the formulation and implementation of strategy. Third, following a phase of substantial expansion, both strategy and measurement systems had to be changed to provide a greater sense of direction and to gather data on non‐financial aspects of the business.

This research considers the case of a group of firms, which aimed to achieve strategy implementation and alignment without introducing a comprehensive PMS. This paper provides empirical evidence of the potential limitations of such an approach, and illustrates the changes to strategy and performance measurement made by the company considered.

The premise on which the stakeholder approach toward employees is based is that stakeholder management actions bring a strengthening of internal legitimacy and therefore the possibility of creating better working conditions that will lead to improved company competitiveness in terms of intangible resources developed by company employees. The aims of the paper are: to determine and to measure the system of resources of value developed by employees of a company that has developed a stakeholder management policy; to create a model that permits the company to evaluate the factors which have a major effect on the development of such a system; and to define the applications of the tool as a company's performance measurement and control system.

In order to pursue these aims two surveys were conducted in 2005 and 2006 on the employees of a leading Italian company in the agricultural food sector. Structural equation model methodology and multivariate analysis were used to define the quantitative measures of the system of resources and to determine the role played by stakeholder management policies in the development of the intangible resources.

The authors found that the company's social policies have a significant influence, even though its intensity varies, on most of the resources analyzed, and in particular on trust, job satisfaction, networking and communication, ability to work in a group and low turnover propensity. These results confirm the strong link between the resources of value developed by employees and the social strategy of the company.

The measurement system developed in this research can be used in any firm that wants to measure the intangible resources related to employees and represents a control tool that may support managers in planning and control the social investments of the firm.