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The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to support decision-makers in selecting information systems (ISs) and knowledge management systems (KMSs), by taking into consideration factors and perspectives which influence the choice.

The framework has been built on a hierarchical structure, where selection criteria and sub-criteria are defined and compared, and where alternatives are established and evaluated according to the software market trends. The application of the framework to an empirical study in two leading organizations in Jordan is provided as a validation of the proposed framework.

The paper presents and applies a methodological framework, based on the analytic hierarchy process approach, to support decision-makers in the choice and in the implementation of an IS.

Future research could address the implementation of the framework within a selected industry. Successively, the framework could be utilized to make a comparison among the selected KMSs of more organizations.

The framework is innovative in so far it can be practicably implemented in every business context, as criteria and sub-criteria cover most of the needs of any organization. It can therefore be considered as a holistic approach for supporting decision-makers in the selection process of an IS.

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 evolution of organization, management and production processes is moving towards complexity. The ever growing competition presses firms to give intangible internal and external exclusive resources the utmost attention. The improvement of the performance, through the retrieval of resources, neither available internally nor achievable autonomously, can be reached by going beyond traditional firm boundaries and by enforcing an external relationship system: proliferation of networks, partnerships, and inter‐organizational collaborations should be, consequently, triggered. The purpose of this paper concerns the evaluation of knowledge impact on relationships among the members of an inter‐organizational collaboration. It also aims to suggest conditions for the improvement of knowledge management in different types of knowledge‐based inter‐organizational collaborations.

Critical success factors of the networked organizations have been defined. Distinctive characteristics, that cannot be disregarded, whatever the environment, have been singled out from literature analysis; successively, they have been arranged into a classification schema to design knowledge‐based collaboration types. Properties of knowledge and peculiarities of knowledge management processes (identification, creation, storage, sharing/distribution, application, and capitalization/refinement) have been assessed according to the types of the collaborations.

The theoretical framework can be applied by network managers to adopt the most favourable knowledge management strategy and process, independent of the distinctive characteristics of the collaborations.

The paper provides a theoretical framework to arrange the knowledge‐based inter‐organizational collaborations into an innovative classification schema on the basis of their cognitive, strategic and structural aspects.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework which defines, analyses and assesses the intellectual capital (IC) value drivers (VDs) to increase the value creation of an organization.

The proposed framework is composed by an arrangement of procedural steps. In the first step IC VDs are selected by reason of their relevance and of their occurrences in recent literature. Then, an assessment of the VDs is carried out on the basis of their strategic importance and of their inter-relationships with otherVDs. Finally, an index is constructed from the combination of the static and dynamic characteristics of the selected VDs.

This integrated framework provides managers with the possibility of monitoring the response of IC performance to their strategic decisions and helps them to adjust and improve measures to reach the prefixed objectives. Managers’ perception is the fundamental input to the assessment of the contribution of the IC to the value creation process.

The modality of building the proposed synthetic index innovates the assessment of IC from a quantitative point of view. The framework offers a high degree of flexibility both in defining and managing IC and in assessing each IC value driver in dependence of any variations in market scenery and of any external or internal input of innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology to assess the capacity of communities of innovation (CoI) to improve the value creation process. The methodology consists of a sequence of successive steps, which aim at identifying the characteristics, the influence, and the relationships between the intellectual capital (IC) elements, and finally evaluating their performance.

The proposed methodology has been defined through the joined activity of academic researchers, experienced consultants, and community managers and is grounded on an interview‐based approach. The methodology has been implemented into the CoI of Finmeccanica, the Italian leading company in the industry of high technology for aerospace, defence and security.

The methodology has been shown to be suitable in singling out the factual contribution of every IC element and its direct and indirect influence on the economic performance of the CoI.

The implementation of the methodology into the CoI of Finmeccanica has encouraged the development of a more distributed leadership which has supported the dissemination of new knowledge. The building of a sort of “knowledge marketplace” has aimed to foster a systemic open innovation by exchanging continuous learning activities from inside and outside the organization and attracting excellence into the network of CoIs.

This paper aims to discuss the individual participation and involvement affecting the user engagement in social media and to answer the following research questions: Is it possible to measure the individual participation and involvement of social media within organizations? Which factors should be analysed in order to increase the individual participation in social media? Which KPIs should be selected in order to increase the user ' s engagement and increase individual participation in social media? Can social media in a company be measured in terms of their impact on KM?

This paper presents a case study that describes how Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to monitor and manage the applications of social technologies, which include many tools facilitating the participation and collaboration on the web. The case study was applied to the information and communication technology area of Eni S.p.A., which is an integrated energy company active in over 70 countries in the world.

Based on the indications obtained from the case study, a methodology is proposed to select and develop the appropriate KPIs in order to manage and monitor the application of social technologies. The methodology turned out to be able to monitor collaboration and knowledge sharing activities among employees and to incentivize participation and involvement of employees who use the company ' s social media.

Organizations can use the suggested methodology as a guideline for managing and monitoring social media inside a company. The possibility of continuously modifying the adopted social media tool by means of corrective actions together with the possibility of adapting the KPIs to new situations make the present methodology an efficient management approach to take on the multifaceted activities of a social media environment.

Few case studies dealing with the applications regarding the implementation and management of social technologies within organizations have been carried out. Similarly, even if some empirical studies have been proposed to analyse what motivates and prevents employees from sharing their knowledge through social media, there appears to be a lack of studies which have taken into consideration the evaluation of the actual benefits in terms of individual involvement and participation, knowledge sharing and increase in performance.

This paper aims to define a theoretical model that assesses and measures the intangible asset contribution to company performance. The model keeps in focus the most meaningful elements that reflect the success factors, crucial to company business strategy and value creation.

The model adopts a hierarchical structure. The strategic intangible assets of the company have been divided into value drivers; a series of measurement indicators have been selected to describe the characteristics of each aspect of the intangible company performance. The measurements obtained from numerical indicators, which express the totality of the results achieved by the organizational strategies, are combined to create the hierarchical assessment index (HAI), by assessing quantitative and qualitative company features, through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

The HAI identifies the sources of added value and competitive advantage in each business context; it traces the subordination of every element on company performance, and singles out those intangible assets that improve the company performance, at every level of the hierarchy.

The HAI provides guidelines to understand what are the key intangible factors to create the value of the company and suggests the implementation of corrective strategies.

The HAI is the expression of the combination of the objective measurements of intangible assets with the subjective contributions by the managers. In fact, besides the numerical results of the performance of every element in the hierarchical structure, the managers' opinions about the significance of their performance are also considered. Thus, objective and subjective evaluations jointly contribute to suggest the way to achieving the expected objectives.

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 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.