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The purpose of this paper is to analyze why people have become suppliers in the sharing economy (SE) as Uber drivers in a developing country.

From a background on SE, car sharing and gig economy, the authors carried out a qualitative research. The analysis was based on 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with Uber drivers, and on the authors’ participant observation as Uber drivers and passengers in the third largest Brazilian city, Belo Horizonte.

Empirical evidence shows that becoming an Uber driver is more a matter of solving unemployment on a more permanent way rather than a search for a temporary and flexible work to supplement income. Although there are benefits related to flexibility, income and social interactions, negative externalities identified herein lead to the conclusion that the overall work relations and conditions are negative.

Much in the literature of the SE is focused on understanding consumer behavior; this research, on the contrary, is focused on understanding producers, which indicates an incipient perspective. The contributions of this paper show that the SE merges into different distributive decentralized means of production that are seeing as profit/income generated from shareable assets.

Although ecosystems have been researched extensively over the past decade, we know little about how they should be organised. Focusing on a knowledge ecosystem comprising a university and a regional strategic network (RSN), this paper aims to describe and discuss the mechanisms for knowledge development in knowledge ecosystems.

This paper studies the integration of a university into a Swedish RSN. Data were collected through interviews with representatives of the university, the RSN and all firms comprising the RSN. A qualitative content analysis helped to detect mechanisms for knowledge development.

Two reinforcing mechanisms for knowledge development in the knowledge ecosystem are identified: structure and openness, which relate to insight and outlook, respectively. The findings also indicate a knowledge division, with the university representing the transfer of knowledge capabilities as a linear process, whereas the content-related knowledge is collaborative.

This paper contributes to research on knowledge ecosystems by describing how their organisation is based on a number of contradictions (structure and openness, insight and outlook, linearity and collaboration) to accomplish the development of knowledge capabilities and content-related knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature regarding the open innovation management approaches that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use to access digital technologies and incorporate them into their organizational processes. The research question is: What organizational and process-level managerial actions do SMEs take to successfully access and implement digital technologies within their organizational processes?

Using Guertler et al.'s (2020) Action Innovation Management Research (AIM-R) framework, this study examines the digital transformation experiences of 10 European SMEs to gain insights into the managerial actions that foster successful digital transformation.

The findings of the paper reveal two major contributions. First, a digital transformation roadmap for SMEs is proposed, with a focus on accessing external resources and reconfiguring internal ones to ease their digital transformation journey. Second, three distinct paradoxes that influence the digital transformation process in SMEs are highlighted, providing useful insights into the challenges and tensions SMEs face during this journey.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the digital transformation of SMEs by examining the managerial actions required for successful technology adoption and revealing the paradoxes that may emerge during this transformative process. The findings form the basis for future research, deepening our understanding of digital transformation in SMEs and providing actionable advice to managers and practitioners navigating this journey.

This paper aims to analyze the digital servitization (DS) process with the paradox theory lens. The purpose is to catch how intra- and inter-organizational tensions generate complexity along a DS journey to find “where” and “when” industrial companies can intervene to face them.

The methodology is a qualitative, in-depth single case study, which longitudinally explores the DS strategy of a manufacturer along with three phases of development: design, implementation and assessment.

The analysis reveals six intra- and inter-organizational tensions in DS and provides insights on tensions’ origin and how to face them. A theoretical framework on DS complexity and an empirical framework on tensions’ origin is produced.

The research combines service and organizational paradox literature. Together with a longitudinal methodology, it results in a spatial and temporal analysis of DS, from which theoretical and managerial implications are drawn.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how organisational activities that formally provide employees with work autonomy explain the performance of open innovation (OI).

The study reports the results of mediation analyses conducted on the basis of survey data from 307 firms.

The economic benefits of both inbound and outbound OI are fully captured only if firms provide employees with time, freedom and independence. The results show that employee autonomy fully mediates the relationship between openness and innovation sales, while the adoption of inbound OI is positively associated with the introduction of new products.

The opening of innovation induces managers to provide employees with discretion, as OI requires high levels of flexibility and experimentation.

The paper addresses theoretically and empirically the role of job design in the implementation of OI, while also distinguishing between the effects of inbound and outbound practices on innovation performance.

Prior research has highlighted the pervasive importance of digital technologies in business and societal settings, but their enabling role in digital transformation, and effective forms of organization to address tensions that arise during attempts to promote it, have been insufficiently explored. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why tensions affect clusters established to foster digital transformation.

Empirical data were acquired through a qualitative exploratory holistic single case study, focused on the Swedish Cluster of Forest Technology. This included interviews with informants, selected by homogeneous purposive sampling, and event observation to investigate the personal perspectives of representatives of every company engaged in the cluster, followed by a thematic analysis of their comments.

The case study revealed three major tensions, between knowledge flow, collaboration and competition, but also others that were interrelated with those major tensions, related to matters such as trust and protection of intellectual property, power equality and hierarchy, and networks that must be managed in digital transformation efforts.

The paper extends understanding of the tensions that arise, and their management, in digital transformation processes.

This research aimed to conceptualize organizations as open and purposeful systems to study how organizational culture (OC) influences firms' Innovative Performance (IP). The authors proposed goal setting and internal integration/external adaptation paradox as central to explaining OC's mediating and suppressing effects on IP.

The authors collected data from 372 Costa Rican organizations and analyzed them with structural equations. This research used the Denison Model instead of the usual typology-based approaches.

The mission had a direct and high impact on IP. The mediated effect via adaptability was also elevated, as well as the suppressor effect through consistency. There was no effect on IP of involvement. According to these results, the Open and Rational Systems Framework emerge as the main theoretical explanatory concepts.

Disaggregating the OC through a performance-oriented dimensional model makes it possible to study the dynamics between the elements that compound it and facilitate integrating these findings with other research streams.

The purpose of this paper is to propose to move from the organization as an association of individuals to communities of persons.

This is primarily a conceptual paper. However, it nevertheless underlies very practical aspects.

An organization should recognize each person within it as a human whom we must take the time to know, and with whom we must interact sincerely. One that only focuses on performance-related goals would not perform well. Indeed, it would increase situations that would generate significant stress and therefore significant costs. To conceive of the generalized complexity of persons makes it possible to manage with the paradoxes and the uncertainties related to the human species, in all conscience. Thus, it is possible to move from diversity management to a management for diversity, where we recognize the contribution of the differences of each person to the organization and where everyone can influence the other.

This paper emphasizes theories and practices that seem non-efficient whereas it is the contrary.

The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.

First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.

This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.

This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.

Most scholars acknowledge the role of firm-stakeholder relationship for enabling corporate sustainability (CS), but existing literature tends to apply a superficial understanding of interaction. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge by challenging classical stakeholder theory with fundamental insights from the IMP perspective, which in turn leads to a deeper conceptualization of interactive CS.

A typology framework is developed through an abductive research design grounded in the concepts of actors, resources, and activities. The authors illustrate the potential of the framework through a longitudinal case study. The empirical case revolves around an initiative for recycling of plastic material in a partly beforehand established supply chain, and the study reveals three main findings.

First, recycling solutions can result in major technological challenges. For example, using recycled material can jeopardize industrial quality standards. Second, third-party stakeholders represent critical knowledge and competence that can remedy technological challenges. Finally, R&D projects are important means for developing firm-stakeholder relationships.

The paper introduces IMP concepts to the CS debate, which can illuminate the emerging literature on tensions and paradoxes related to CS phenomena. Further research is needed on the role of non-business actors as capacity generators for social and environmental change in traditional business networks.

The proposed framework can be used to analyze why some stakeholders (individuals and groups) turn into contributing actors in inter-organizational relationships, while others remain latent.

This paper illustrates the usefulness of actor bonds, resource ties and activity links as explanatory concepts. Moreover, developed relationships in terms of collaboration and networks represent a capacity to change, which is overlooked in current CS debates.