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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how financial service providers cross‐sell combined bank and insurance service offerings in a business‐to‐business context with the aim of increasing understanding on the creation of corporate customer value through cross‐selling.

A qualitative study of eight providers, augmented with interviews among eight of their small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) customers, form the empirical basis of the study.

Financial service providers anticipate a shift from separate sales events towards one‐stop shopping and from unilateral provision of non‐related products towards consideration of hybrid products in the SME segment. SME customers, who tend to acquire their banking and insurance services as non‐related products from separate providers, do not fully support these trends. The results are partly explained by the absence of customer loyalty programs and non‐existent provision of hybrid products in the business‐to‐business context.

The research is focused on the financial industry within one country and bound to SME customers, limiting the generalizability of the findings.

The results imply that financial service providers should develop their one‐stop shopping concept in the SME segment by creating a customer loyalty program that would reward customer companies according to the use of multiple products in their total portfolio. Additionally, the possibilities of introducing hybrid products solely for business customer use should be further investigated.

This study is the first to show how business customers perceive the value of cross‐buying bank and insurance services, presenting a reminder to managers about the importance of recognizing their SME customers' value expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how insurances can be used in the management of human capital risks. The issue is highlighted in the context of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

Building on literature on intellectual liabilities, the paper provides a comprehensive picture of human capital related risks, emphasising their effects on SMEs. The issue is analysed empirically through a qualitative case study of an insurance company.

The paper divides the identified human capital risks into insurable and uninsurable risks, determining a specific insurance solution for each insurable risk. Based on the results, pension, accident, health, life, liability and crime insurances are the most useful types of insurances for the management of human capital risks.

The generalisability of the findings is limited by the methodological choice. As the study is conducted from the viewpoint of an insurance provider, it does not consider the effectiveness of the suggested insurances in practice. Thus, more empirical studies on the approach are called for.

This paper creates a basis for the better recognition of the various human capital risks in companies and describes how insurances can be applied for the management of these risks.

In addition to considering human capital risks as an entity, the paper contributes to the research on knowledge asset protection by examining a practical risk management method for these risks. According to the authors' knowledge, insurances have not been introduced in this context before.

Nowadays organizations have realized that knowledge, its effective use and the fast acquisition and utilization of new knowledge represent the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. In fact, an effective exploitation and management of knowledge resources are the basis of the development of those capabilities that ground the organization's capacity to deliver successfully targeted value propositions. During recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the processes of management of knowledge resources. Currently the debate on knowledge management processes is still lively. The dynamics which link knowledge processes to value creation, the valuation of their impact on organizational performance and the role of some organizational and technological resources as enablers or restraints of successful knowledge management emerge as relevant topics to be investigated. This introduction to the special issue aims to develop some theoretical and managerial reasons explaining the importance of an effective management of knowledge processes to deal with the uncertainty, change, and turbulence of the current socio‐economic scenario.

The approaches, evidences and insights discussed in this introduction are largely based on the discussion of the topics of the conference “International forum on knowledge assets dynamics” organized in June 2010 in Matera, Italy. At this conference, leading experts discussed the challenges and practices of measuring and managing knowledge resources to support value creation and business performance improvement of organisational systems.

The outcomes of this introduction and of all the contributions to the special issue reflect the emerging discussion about the role of knowledge processes and, more generally, of the management of knowledge resources, in value creation. This discussion is largely focused on the dynamics at the base of the translation of knowledge processes and resources into value, highlighting properly approaches and tools or application in different contexts of analysis.

This introduction, as well as all the contributions to the special issue, deal with different aspects which are important in the discussion both of the role played by knowledge processes in achieving outstanding organisational performance and the approaches, tools, methods and techniques to structure, organize knowledge resources and optimize their use in order to support effective organizational processes execution and value creation.

Depressive disorder has been defined by increasingly specific neurophysiological mechanisms and features during the past two decades. At the same time, depression has grown into an epidemic proportion and become a major public health problem. Consequently, the scope of depressive experience and conduct has also widened and the meaning of depression has multiplied and become equivocal. This chapter analyses how this tension is handled in current Western mental health care. The focus of the study is the role of neuroscientific views in mental health reasoning and practice. The empirical case is the mental health discussion in Finland from the late 1980s to the present day. The analysis of the historical change in understandings of depression in Finnish psychiatry and mental health care provides a view of the relevance of neuroscientific models in defining depressive illness and outlining diagnostic and treatment practices. Moreover, the analysis brings forth the relationship of neuroscientific concepts to other ways of defining depression – epidemiology, diagnostic classification, psychodynamic and other psychological theories – within clinical reasoning. A conclusion to be drawn from the analysis of the Finnish case is that neurobiological concepts of depression have only limited influence on the ways in which the disorder is conceived within the practical context of mental health care. It seems that the idea of depression as a multi-factorial disorder remains a good enough conceptual framework for clinical practice. Even the influence of neurosciences on treatment is still somewhat marginal. Within current practices of depression management, it is not the brain that is treated but risks, symptoms, and persons.