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The purpose of this study is to explore the knowledge network-based intellectual capital of corporate universities and its co-evolution process with knowledge management activities.

An exploratory and multiple case study was conducted, investigating three Chinese corporate universities. Grounded theory was used for data analysis.

This paper finds that the intellectual capital of corporate universities comprises teacher network capital, knowledge process capital and knowledge ba. The steering wheel model is established through the synergistic interaction and promotion among these three types of intellectual capital. The interaction between intellectual capital and the knowledge network within corporate universities constructs the intellectual capital network, which plays the roles of coordinator, knowledge gatekeeper and innovation bridge. The intellectual capital of corporate universities is characterized by sequential inertia. Moreover, the intellectual capital and intellectual capital network are aligned with knowledge management activities at each stage of corporate university development, interacting and following the principles of ladder evolution.

A significant contribution of this paper lies in applying the concept of intellectual capital within the fourth-stage ecosystem to a broader range of knowledge networks. By exploring the dynamics and network of intellectual capital in corporate universities, especially the role of intellectual capital networks and the synergy between intellectual capital and knowledge management activities, this study enriches the existing research on knowledge management and intellectual capital of corporate universities. Furthermore, it advances the development of knowledge management promotion in corporate universities from a new perspective of intellectual capital.

The paper aims to analyse the meaning and extension of discretionary power of social service professionals within network-based interventions.

Empirically, the paper is based on a case study of a network-based policy involving private and public organisations in the Northeast of Italy (Province of Trento).

The paper identifies netocracy as a social policy logic distinct from bureaucracy and professionalism. What legitimises netocracy is neither authority nor expertise but cooperation, the activation of connections and involvement, considered “good” per se. In this framework, professionalism and discretion acquire new and problematic meanings compared to street-level bureaucracy processes.

Based on a case study, the research results cannot be generalised but pave the way to further comparative investigations.

The paper reveals that the position of professionals in netocracy is to some extent trickier than that in a bureaucracy because netocracy seems to have the power to encapsulate them and make it less likely for them to deviate from expected courses of action.

Combining different literature streams – street level bureaucracy, professionalism, network organisations and welfare governance – and building on an original case study, the paper contribute to understanding professionalism in welfare contexts increasingly characterised by the combination of bureaucratic, professional and network logics.

This study aims to investigate the organisational structure to exploit data analytics in the educational sector. The paper proposes three different organisational configurations, which describe the connections among educational actors in a national system. The ultimate goal is to provide insights about alternative organisational settings for the adoption of data analytics in education.

The paper is based on a participant observation approach applied in the Italian educational system. The study is based on four research projects that involved teachers, school principals and governmental organisations over the period 2017–2020.

As a result, the centralised, the decentralised and the network-based configurations are presented and discussed according to three organisational dimensions of analysis (organisational layers, roles and data management). The network-based configuration suggests the presence of a network educational data scientist that may represent a concrete solution to foster more efficient and effective use of educational data analytics.

The value of this study relies on its systemic approach to educational data analytics from an organisational perspective, which unfolds the roles of schools and central administration. The analysis of the alternative organisational configuration allows moving a step forward towards a structured, effective and efficient system for the use of data in the educational sector.

Although there have been a considerable number of studies regarding subsidiary role typology in multinationals’ management literature, there appear to be few studies that consider knowledge-based role typology from the network-based perspective. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap and extend the study of Gupta and Govindarajan (1991). Thus, the study focuses on answering the following research question: Do subsidiaries have different roles in terms of knowledge flows within a multinational company (MNC)?

This empirical study has been carried out as an explorative single case study. An MNC with 15 foreign subsidiaries headquartered in Turkey, which operated in the manufacturing of household appliances and consumer electronics, has been selected as the case. Knowledge transfer is analyzed in this MNC from the network perspective.

Four role typologies are detected for subsidiaries of the MNC: collector transmitter, collector diffuser, converter transmitter and converter diffuser.

Findings of this study are specific to this case. Testing the findings in a sample consisting of subsidiaries of MNCs producing transnational products may contribute to the generalizability of these roles.

This study offers potentially important findings for MNC managers to use. First, in this study, knowledge flows' route could be defined within MNCs’ dual network. Second, role typologies could inform MNC managers to design their MNCs’ knowledge network.

The suggested typologies are expected to more accurately define the roles of subsidiaries within contemporary MNCs which are accepted to be transformed from hierarchical structures to network-based organizations.

Traditional perspectives of manufacturing strategy tend to focus internal transforming activities, including how transformed resources are handled and the relations with other value‐creating operations inside and outside the firm. Manufacturing management evolved as a discipline with little clear alignments with business strategy and firm positioning. Even manufacturing strategy is often delimited to the boundaries of the firm and its dyad relations to collaborating actors such as suppliers and distributors. This paper aims at exploring and demonstrating what a network perspective can add to the understanding of manufacturing management and strategy.

The research design is built on principal reasoning of future manufacturing strategy. Articles and conference papers together with over 25 years of field studies constitute the empirical base. An industry was chosen to demonstrate the application of the research framework of horizontal and vertical technologies.

The analysis indicates that manufacturing occurs within open‐production systems here called extraprises as an extension to enterprises with their inside the firm focus. Taking a network perspective, it is suggested that a conceptual framework of horizontal and vertical technologies offers a fruitful conceptualization to identify the content and meaning of future manufacturing strategy.

The network theory conceptualization takes the view of manufacturing systems a further step beyond systems theory and contributes a richer framework for manufacturing strategy research.

It is argued that future directions of manufacturing strategy will gain from taking a network perspective using network theory with its foundations in actors, resources, and activities.

This chapter reviews three analytical perspectives – ‘structural’, ‘network’ and ‘cultural’ – on the study of power and their implications for theorizing elites. It builds on this initial theoretical review by developing a critical realist approach to the study of organizational elites out of the structurally based perspective identified in the first section of the chapter. The explanatory potential of this critical realist approach is then illustrated through two case studies of ruling elites embedded in contrasting historical, political and social contexts. The final section of the chapter provides a discussion of the wider implications of these case study analyses for understanding and explaining the ‘new feudalism’ which is emerging in advanced political economies and societies.

This paper aims to review and summarize the findings of research dedicated to studying the process of building sustainable business models (BM) triggered by development of COVID-19 pandemic.

Bibliometric analysis is performed to identify the papers most relevant to the topic. The authors review the findings of more than 50 papers from Scopus database published between 2020 and 2022 dedicated to studying BM during COVID-19 pandemic, as well as papers dedicated to sustainability phenomenon and most cited BM research.

The paper identifies the gap in defining BM sustainability and contributes to better understanding of this phenomenon by demarcating it from traditional environment-based United Nations agenda. It also describes why network-based approach to BM helps to better address sustainability aspects. The paper demonstrates how representation of a networked BM by three levels of analysis (namely, structure of a BM, interaction mechanism between BM actors and results of their interaction) is organically connected to the key milestones of the value creation process (value definition, value creation, value distribution and value capture) and shows how these three levels can be used to analyze and structure the practical changes proposed in COVID-19-oriented BM. Finally, the paper summarizes key findings of the studies dedicated to BM during the pandemic and structures key insights in relation to building sustainable BM.

The results of the paper contribute to developing theory around BM sustainability as well as provide insights for business practitioners on how to adjust BM during the crisis. At the same time, many insights shown in the paper are industry specific, which limits their generalizability, as well as consequences of the pandemic are still not fully clear. Therefore, the authors argue that future research should be primarily focused on developing generalizable measurement frameworks to evaluate the antecedents, process and results of BM adaptation.

The paper strengthens theoretical foundations for the research focused on BM sustainability and helps businesses to better manage the adaptation in the fast-changing environment.

The purpose of this study is to conceptualize the business model from a value network perspective and to investigate how top managers' individual characteristics contribute to business model innovation.

On the basis of upper echelons theory and contingency theory, this study empirically examines the micro‐macro link between top managers' human and social capital and firm business model innovation.

Using survey data collected from 146 Chinese firms, the findings indicate that both top managers' managerial and entrepreneurial skills and managerial ties significantly lead to business model innovation. Furthermore, the interaction between entrepreneurial skills and managerial ties enhances, yet the interaction between managerial skills and managerial ties inhibits business model innovation.

By proposing a value network‐based definition for the business model, this study provides additional insights into the current debate on the definition and architecture of business model. Further, the current study contributes to an emerging body of business model research by demonstrating, for the first time, that a manager's individual characteristics can both directly and interactively drive business model innovation in the context of emerging economies.

This study aims to explore the impact of carbon neutral announcements on “stock market value” of publicly listed companies in China.

The event study approach is adopted. Market, market-adjusted, Carhart four-factor model and a cross-sectional regression model are employed to examine the impacts of carbon neutral announcements on “stock market value” of Chinese companies based on data from 188 carbon neutral announcements.

Carbon neutral announcements positively impact Chinese shareholder value. Carbon neutral announcements at the strategic level have a more positive and significant impact on Chinese stock market value. Innovative carbon neutral announcements do not significantly cause Chinese stock market reactions. Companies have more positive and significant stock market reactions when the companies make carbon neutral announcements that reflect high supply chain network resilience and heterogeneity and strong supply chain network relationships.

The findings uncover the business value of carbon neutral activities and provide operations managers in developing countries insights into how to improve enterprises' market value by actively implementing carbon neutral activities.

This paper is the first trial to apply an event study to examine the relationship between carbon neutral announcements and Chinese stock market value from the perspective of announcement level and type and supply chain networks. This paper introduces corporate reputation theory and enriches the application of corporate reputation theory in the field of low-carbon environmental protections and supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the systemic importance of industry in the world economic system under the system-wide event – the crisis of 2008-2009, by viewing this system as a weighted directed network of interconnected industries.

First, the authors investigate this crisis at three different levels based on network-related indicators: the “macro” global level, the “meso” country level, and the “micro” industry level. This investigation not only provides evidence for the systemic influence, that is, systemic risk, of the crisis, but also reveals the contagion mechanism of the crisis, which supports the stress testing. Second, the authors use a network-related business intelligence algorithm, the combined hyperlink-induced topic search (HITS) algorithm, to measure the contribution of a given individual industry to the overall risk of the economic system or, in other words, the systemic importance of the individual industry.

The HITS algorithm considers both the market information and the interconnectedness of the industries. Based on the stress testing, the performance of the combined HITS is compared with the purely market-based systemic risk measurement. The results show that the combined HITS outperforms the baseline in finding the top N systemically important industries.

The combined HITS algorithm provides a novel network-based perspective of systemic risk measurement.

Measuring the systemic importance based on the combined HITS algorithm can help managers and regulators design effective risk management policies. In this respect, the work initiates a research direction of studying the systemic risk in a business system based on a network-related business intelligence algorithm because the business system can be viewed as an interconnected network.