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This research aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable hospitality and tourism by applying social network analysis to identify sustainable tourism business networks and untangle the role of cognitive and geographical proximity in their formation.

Data mining and machine learning techniques were applied to data collected from the websites of tourism companies located in northeastern Italy, namely, the Veneto region. Specifically, the authors used Web scraping to extract relevant information from the internet.

The results support the existence of geographical clusters of tourist accommodation providers that are linked by strong cognitive proximity based on sustainability principles that are well communicated via their websites. This does not appear to be greenwashing because companies that have agreed on sustainability principles have also implemented concrete actions and tend to signal these actions through a variety of sustainability certifications.

The results may guide tourism managers and policymakers in developing tourism initiatives directed at the creation of fruitful collaborations between similarly oriented organizations and methods to support clusters of sustainable tourism accommodation. Identifying sustainable tourism networks may assist in the identification of potential actors of change, fueling a widespread transition toward sustainability.

In this study, the authors adopted an innovative methodology to detect sustainability-oriented tourism business networks. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to simultaneously explore the cognitive and geographical connections between tourism businesses.

This paper explores how exaptive innovation process might be considered a useful innovation model in constraint-based environments. Through an in-depth case study, it illustrates clearly the antecedents of exaptation processes, which are particularly relevant in rapidly changing environments requiring new solutions under time and resource constraints.

The authors adopt a single case study approach that is particularly suitable in case of an inductive research design, which is required because of the novelty of the topic. The research is inspired by the use of the snorkeling mask EASYBREATH, commercialized by the giant Decathlon, as a medical device, a respirator to treat patients affected by coronavirus in Italy. The authors organized the evidence according to a novel taxonomy grounded in the literature.

The case study stimulates reflections on the existence of some antecedents to the exaptive innovation process in constraint-based environments: (1) the availability of specific actors in the innovation process; (2) the creation of platforms of interaction between people with different competences, nurtured by collective bottom-up financing systems; (3) the role of the community of makers, in particular, and of the 4th industrial revolution, in general, for creating enabling technologies; (4) multidisciplinary individual background of key actors in the innovation process is crucial to ensure the exaptive path to be in place.

This work has some limitations, due to the choice of limiting the analysis to a single case, nevertheless, it offers a first glance on a new technological trajectory available in constraint-based environments.

The case study results underline the importance of new digital collaboration platforms as knowledge multipliers, and illuminate on the potential of the fourth manufacturing revolution, which, through new technologies, creates opportunities for distributed forms of innovation that cross long distances.

Drawing on resource orchestration theory, this paper aims to empirically investigate the relationships between digital transformation (DT), triple-A supply chain capabilities (i.e. agility, adaptability and alignment) and sustainable performance. The research focuses on the pharmaceutical industry, which best represents a business environment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

Data were collected at different echelons of a globally oriented pharmaceutical supply chain, with the focal company located in the Netherlands. Empirical data were analyzed with partial least squares – structural equation modelling.

The findings reveal that DT enhances the triple-A supply chain capabilities. Nevertheless, not all three capabilities are necessary to improve overall sustainable performance. The results highlight that, among the three, only supply chain agility and adaptability significantly mediate the relationship between DT and sustainable performance.

This research supports the literature affirming that not all the triple-A supply chain capabilities equally affect sustainable performance. Moreover, it deepens the understanding of how orchestrating the triple-A capabilities at a firm level fosters overall sustainable performance, facing resource scarcity and investments in DT.

This paper explores the Adoption of Technological Innovation (ATI) in the healthcare industry. It investigates how the literature has evolved, and what are the emerging innovation dimensions in the healthcare industry adoption studies.

We followed a mixed-method approach combining bibliometric methods and topic modeling, with 57 papers being deeply analyzed.

Our results identify three latent topics. The first one is related to the digitalization in healthcare with a specific focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The second one groups up the word combinations dealing with the research models and their constructs. The third one refers to the healthcare systems/professionals and their resistance to ATI.

The study’s sample selection focused on scientific journals included in the Academic Journal Guide and in the FT Research Rank. However, the paper identifies trends that offer managerial insights for stakeholders in the healthcare industry.

ATI has the potential to revolutionize the health service delivery system and to decentralize services traditionally provided in hospitals or medical centers. All this would contribute to a reduction in waiting lists and the provision of proximity services.

The originality of the paper lies in the combination of two methods: bibliometric analysis and topic modeling. This approach allowed us to understand the ATI evolutions in the healthcare industry.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of simulation laboratory on continuing education engineering students’ academic performance.

The investigation consists of establishing the student learning levels then mapping the student learning levels (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation) through program outcomes with appropriate evaluation components. 270 continuing education students enrolled during six years were selected to be observed as part of this study. These students were divided into two subgroups, one with 135 students who were offered simulation lab (G2) and the other 135 students were not offered simulation lab (G1) in this investigation. Subsequently, a comparative analysis was carried out on these two groups to assess the student performance in multiple evaluation components with respect to student learning level and program outcome achievement.

It was identified that student performance in the application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation learning levels has improved for the group with simulation lab, and no change or minimal change was observed for the group without simulation lab. It was revealed that the simulation lab practice problems needs to be aligned with the theoretical concepts in the course to get a better performance from the students.

The study was conducted in one of the leading institutes with 270 students’ performance observed over a period of six years. It is the comprehensive work done on a complete program with data collated over a period of six years in multiple courses and multiple assessments.

This study aims to address the question of what coordination mechanism can be used for cultural production and, in particular, for the governance of music culture production. The authors locate their reflection within the specific institutional innovations introduced in Italy in 2017, focusing on the idea of shared administration and the public–private collaboration instituted in Trentino (a province located in northern Italy) in support of its cultural policy.

This study focusses on the Trentino’s music school system. This includes 13 organisations (musicians’ cooperatives as well as associations of musicians and students, plus one municipal school which do not overlap with the public school system). To analyse shared administration features, the authors rely on selected information from 50 interviews with Trentino Music Schools (TMS) teachers and administrators, and on the proceedings of the 1994 music school conference organised by the schools at the time when this novel educational system was created.

To offer an innovative educational service, the public actor (Provincia Autonoma di Trento [PAT]) and the schools (TMS) have developed a strong interdependence at the different levels of decision-making: PAT needs organisations that are sufficiently structured and organised to respect requirements of transparency and accountability, as well as educational standards, whereas TMS need public funding to maintain their service accessible for users, good labour conditions and be financially sustainable. Likewise, the success of TMS in educating thousands of students every year, including additional teaching programmes funded by PAT within general public schools, has contributed to decrease the exclusion from music education, raise interest in young people for music and fed enrolment in TMS as well as in the public schools related to the conservatoire filière. Conclusions emphasise the existence of a polycentric system of music culture production which needs to acknowledge the risk of being trapped in a static disequilibrium, while recognising change and the need to support and promote a culture of cooperation among schools and across layered institutional levels over time.

Further research can observe this system of cultural production over time, to appreciate changes and organisational tranformations, while introducing comparative analysis with other systems in different regions.

The relationship between the public and private sectors to design, organise and manage activities of collective interest (in the social, cultural, sporting and other fields) can increasingly become an effective and efficient alternative to the traditional bureaucratic as well as to the competitive method. For this to happen, however, all actors involved must be aware not only of areas of efficiency but also of inefficiency. To remedy the latter, corrective measures will have to be introduced. For example, fostering and improving “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione” means giving all stakeholders involved the opportunity to actively participate. Should the number of participants increase, more discussion fora could be set up because one alone may not be sufficient to foster maximum involvement, to enhance different points of view, to allow for intersectoral and multidisciplinary interpretations and responses.

The system governance based on co-programming and co-design has allowed – despite limitations – to pursue educational purposes and thus well-being for the users, as well as for the teachers and the community as a whole. The continuity of this educational and cultural action has been guaranteed by the economic and financial sustainability of the schools, which is highly dependent on the public actor funding personnel costs, and in turn tied to the number of students (demand) attending each school. Actors embedded in the system need to build awareness of industry and cultural changes and knowledge of how to introduce more adaptive capacity. This points towards the need for strengthening networking capacity and collaboration among schools and other relevant stakeholders.

The case presented is a unique system of music culture production in Italy, and its governance has never been addressed by previous studies. It provides an application of shared administration to which public administrations and communities can learn to improve access to music culture and education. For public and private organisations to take advantage of the method of “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione”, to make the production of a meritorious good more efficient and to favour its maximum accessibility, this study considers the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, or the areas of efficiency and inefficiency, for which new measures will have to be introduced.

A faculty development program (FDP) introduced postsecondary instructors to a module focused on the food–energy–water (FEW) nexus, a socio-hydrologic issue (SHI) and a sustainability challenge. This study aims to examine factors influencing faculty interest in adopting the instructional resources and faculty experience with the FDP, including the gains made during the FDP on their knowledge about SHIs and their self-efficacy to teach about SHIs, and highlighted characteristics of the FDP.

Data from n = 54 participants via pre- and post-surveys and n = 15 interviews were analyzed using mixed methods.

Findings indicate that over three quarters of participants would use the curricular resources to make connections between complex SHIs, enhance place-based learning, data analysis and interpretation and engage in evidence-based decision-making. In addition, participants’ experience with the workshop was positive; their knowledge about SHIs remained relatively constant and their self-efficacy to teach about SHIs improved by the end of the workshop. The results provide evidence of the importance of institutional support to improve instruction about the FEW nexus.

The module, purposefully designed, aids undergraduates in engaging with Hydroviz, a data visualization tool, to understand both human and natural dimensions of the FEW nexus. It facilitates incorporating this understanding into systematic decision-making around an authentic SHI.

The spatial development of urban areas affects the characteristics of landscape as well as people’s aesthetic perception of it. Specifically, sprawl results in an urban morphology which is diametrically opposed to the compact city model and which assumes several kinds of patterns: for example “striped”, “ribbon” or “leapfrogged” urban development. Assessing urban morphology in spatial terms is crucial to urban policy, while landscape metrics are the key to a comprehensive understanding of different urban development patterns. The purpose of this paper to design and test an urban morphology indicator (UMI) for the Lombardy Regional Landscape Plan.

The paper describes an UMI that can be used to identify the heterogeneity of built-up patterns according to urban porosity, fragmentation and patch shape. This UMI is a result of Esri ArcGIS 10.3 “grouping analysis” which works by applying a spatial statistical metric for clustering geometries in a given geographical area.

Morphological analysis was used in regional urban development policies with a view to minimising impact on surrounding ecosystems and preserving the natural environment and landscape. It defines 28 different urban morphology patterns in the region, which are divided into systems, polarities and urbanised units.

The proposed methodology differs from those traditionally used in qualitative/descriptive landscape planning and supports the identification of morphological features with quantitative statistical and spatial data, allowing a fine-scale assessment of complex metrics.

This paper aims to analyze the characteristics and performance of university–industry (U-I) collaboration for knowledge transfer in relation to environmental sustainability, considering for both parties of the collaborations.

The study is explorative in nature, based on an original data set of more than 350 U-I research and consultancy contracts signed by more than 70 professors specializing in environmental sustainability-related academic disciplines at the University of Padova (Italy) for the period 2008-2012. A mixed-method approach is adopted. Social network analysis and regressions are used to explore the impact of U-I on performance considering for characteristics of the firms, the professors and the collaboration. Interviews with key informants at University of Padova is used to complement and validate the emerging evidence.

Results suggest that U-I positively impacts the performance of firms, but not of professors. Indeed, the hypothesis that professors’ performance (measures in terms of academic publications) is positively associated with academic engagement is not supported. On the contrary, firms’ financial performance is positively associated with U-I collaboration focused on knowledge transfer for environmental innovation; the higher the contracts activated the better the economic performance.

While most previous research has focused either on the university or the firm side of U-I, this study looks at both sides and focuses specifically on engagement in green contracts. The analysis of the geographical scope of U-I collaborations contributes to the growing body of literature by outlining geography’s role in U-I collaborations related to sustainability.

The provision of accommodation devices is said to aid organizational inclusion of employees with a disability. However, devices that are meant to enable might only partially facilitate productivity, independence, and social inclusion if these devices are not accepted by the user's workgroup. The authors outline a conceptual model of accommodation device acceptance through a sociomaterial lens to suggest conditions influencing workgroup device acceptance.

To build the model, the authors draw upon the sociomateriality and disability literature to frame accommodation devices as experienced in ongoing interactions, representing the goals, feelings, and interpretations of specific workgroups. The authors also unpack attributes of devices—instrumentality, aesthetics, and symbolism—and propose how each of these can pattern social conduct to influence device acceptance. The authors then draw upon the disability literature to identify attributes of workgroups that can be expected to amplify or diminish the effect of device attributes on device acceptance in that workgroup.

The conceptualization, which the authors illustrate with examples particular to visual impairment, presents implications for who and what serves as a gatekeeper to accommodation device acceptance and thereby workgroup inclusion.

Prior research has focused on conditions under which devices are requested by users or made available by organizations, undergirded by the assumption that devices are well-specified once provided and that they operate relatively predictably when used in various workgroups. The authors focus instead on what happens after the device is provided and highlight the complex and dynamic interaction between an accommodation device and the workgroup, which influences device and user acceptance.