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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue about generation of public value through smart technologies and strategies. The key argument is that smart technologies have the potential to foster co-creation of public services and the generation of public value in management processes, based on the collaborative, social and horizontal nature of these smart technologies. Understanding these processes from a public management perspective is the purpose of this paper and the rest of the special issue.

The approach to this paper is a theoretical and conceptual review, whereas practical implications both for scholars and practitioners arise from the review of the literature and the conceptual approximation to the notion of smartness in technologies and government. This approach is rooted in the potential of the latest smart technologies and strategies to transform public administrations and to better understand and cope societal problems.

The conceptual and theoretical perspective of this paper offers ideas for future developments. The content of this paper shows that new smart technologies and strategies will shape, and will be shaped by, the future of public organizations and management. This paper illustrates the process of change in public value generation over time, as a result of different public management paradigms (from traditional public administration to new public management), but also different types of technologies (from mainframes to websites and social media and beyond). The empirical evidence of the articles of this special issue supports this conclusion; that open and collaborative innovation processes developed under this emergent technological wave could become encouraging transformative practices in the public sector.

The theoretical and conceptual nature of this paper needs further empirical research to validate some of the discussed assumptions and ideas.

Although this paper is oriented to present the main contents of the special issue, it also provides an original approach to the theme of public value generation using smart technologies and strategies in public sector management.

While it is known that digital transformation facilitates data flow in supply chains, its importance on green supply chain management (GSCM) has not been investigated concisely. This paper aims to expand the theory of digital transformation in GSCM by investigating the interconnections between these concepts and providing an integrative view of a smart green supply chain management (Smart GSCM).

This adopts a configurational perspective on digital transformation and supply chain management (SCM) to investigate the different dimensions of Smart GSCM and their contribution to green performance. Therefore, this paper analyzes data from 473 manufacturing companies using regression techniques.

The results show how smart supply chain contributes to green performance through managing green relationships (external GSCM activities) and establishing green operations (internal GSCM activities). Furthermore, this paper finds partial mediating effects for external and internal GSCM activities on green performance. These findings show that smart supply chain (i.e. digital transformation strategy and front-end technologies, supported by several back-end technologies) is directly associated with higher levels of GSCM. It is specifically associated with one of the internal dimensions of green operations, namely, green purchasing activities. Hence, the findings suggest that digital transformation alone is insufficient to achieve green performance, needing a GSCM configuration to mediate this effect.

This study calls attention to how managers should integrate these at least three different perspectives of SCM: digital transformation, external relationships and internal operations to increase green performance.

As the main contribution, this study provides a configurational and holistic understanding of the different dimensions and mechanisms in Smart GSCM.

To meet customers' expectations on shorter lead times, high product availability, flexibility, and variation in delivery and return options, retailers have turned their attention to warehousing and are making big investments in technology. Currently, technology providers are pushing for smart warehousing, a new and under-researched phenomenon. This study aims to conceptualize the term and examine pathways toward implementing smart warehousing.

An exploratory survey was administered to 50 leading Swedish retailers in varying segments. A two-tailed t-test for equality of means was used to detect significant differences between current and future states.

The study found that future smart warehouses will be automated, autonomous, digital, and connected, but that retailers will follow different paths along this journey, driven by contextual trends, e.g. sales growth, wider product assortment, shorter lead-time offerings, and integration of brick-and-mortar and online stores. Interestingly, the study revealed that many of the retailers that aim to create smart warehouses in five years are not the retailers with the most developed technology today.

The paper operationalizes smart warehousing in two dimensions: degree of automation and degree of digitalization and connectivity of information platforms. Based on the findings, 16 theoretical propositions are put forth that, based on contextual factors, explain different pathways for retailers to implement smart warehousing.

The empirical insights and theoretical discussions provide practically useful guidance, including outlined trends, for selecting and benchmarking automation and complementary technologies in warehouse operations.

This paper conceptualizes and operationalizes smart warehousing – an original approach. It is also one of the first to investigate the technological transformation in retail warehousing empirically, explaining how and why retailers choose different pathways toward smart warehousing.

This paper aims to explore how customer involvement unfolds in the development of a smart product. Smart product development poses new challenges to firms. In particular, the buyers’ and users’ involvement has shown novel dynamics in smart product development. These peculiarities are linked with the specific characteristics of the digital technology embedded into the smart products. This study’s rationale is to analyse the frictions arising from potential divergent objectives between the focal firm and its customers when digital technologies are embedded in traditional products.

This study adopted an explorative and qualitative approach to investigate new emerging dynamics of customer involvement during technological development. A coffee machine producer is selected as a case study to uncover new insights and a novel perspective on the phenomenon of customer involvement in smart product development. Data analysis followed an abductive approach that allowed to identify the dimensions of friction emerging during the technological development process.

The case study analysis depicts that smart product development presents novel customer involvement dynamics. In particular, this study abductively identifies dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and buyers/users. Friction arises in the technological interface between the actors involved. These dimensions of friction address the complexities of developing technology in terms of smart products with customer involvement. This study suggests that embedding of technology into an existing product might change how customers are involved.

Even though customer involvement in product innovation has been extensively studied in management literature, this paper focused on a new type of innovation, smart products. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have yet empirically explored customers’ involvement while embedding digital technologies into existing products to create smart products. In particular, this study sheds light on the dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and the actors of the business network. This study unfolds novel contributions to the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing literature on technological development.

The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.

The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.

Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.

Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.

Industry 4.0 (I 4.0) consists of numerous digital technologies applied in organizations strategically to add value to the customer. Different organizations have varying degrees of technological capability and strategic flexibility. This paper aims to explore the relationship between technological capability and strategic flexibility on successful implementation of I 4.0.

A qualitative study using a grounded theory approach is conducted on 34 senior managers from Europe and North America who have implemented I 4.0 participated in this study through a theoretical sampling frame.

This study finds that technological capability and strategic flexibility have an impact on the successful implementation of I 4.0. The study also finds that different dimensions of technological capability also impact I 4.0. The interactive effect of strategic flexibility and technological capability is also noted. The study also develops a framework for successful implementation of I 4.0.

This study can be used by managers while implementing I 4.0 to devise a strategic roadmap for acquiring technological capability with I 4.0 technologies. Besides, it will help the managers to consider the bidirectional relationship between technological capability and strategic flexibility while formulating I 4.0 strategy for successful implementation of I 4.0 in their organizations.

Previous studies have examined the importance of I 4.0 technologies. However, this study extends the previous works by suggesting how technological capability and strategic flexibility can help in the successful implementation of I 4.0.

This research aims to propose the development of a model that identifies, in essential services, the determining factors affecting the technological advances offered by different smart technologies in supermarket retail channels that influence citizens' quality of life, amidst the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The data were collected using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey (n = 469). The authors applied the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to test the hypotheses, along with the partial least squares (PLS) method for estimating latent variables and combining with the necessary condition analysis (NCA) method.

According to the results of the NCA method, the results were adequate, and more attention should be paid to the quality of life construct after finding the bottleneck point of 50%. In this sense, adaptive resilience was characterized as the main necessary predictor construct for quality of life. In addition, Generation Z and Millennials have the highest frequency of use in all smart technologies, with “assisted purchase” being the most widely used.

Finally, the effect of the pandemic changed the consumption routine with supermarkets, not being a mere option but a necessity in the context of a smart city.

As a result, the proposed model was consistent, showing that all direct and indirect SEM paths were validated, highlighting data security and privacy and resilience issues. In addition, the NCA method complemented the procedures performed in the SEM phase.

This study aims to develop a comprehensive adoption model that combines constructs from various theories and tests these theories against each other. The study combines a technology acceptance model, innovation diffusion theory and risk theory. It develops this model in a smart home applications context.

The study is based on an online survey consisting of 409 participants, and the data are analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Each theory provides unique insights into technology acceptance and numerous constructs are interrelated. Predictors from innovation diffusion and risk theory often display indirect effects through technology acceptance variables. The study identifies risk perception as a major inhibitor of use intention, mediated through perceived usefulness. Results reveal that the most important determinants of use intention are compatibility and usefulness of the application.

Studies which do not examine different theories together may not be able to detect the indirect effects of some predictors and could falsely conclude that these predictors do no matter. The findings emphasize the crucial role of compatibility, perceived usefulness and various risk facets associated with smart homes.

This study broadens the understanding about the necessity of combining acceptance and adoption drivers from several theories to better understand the usage of complex technological systems such as smart home applications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of innovation in smart service systems to conceptualize how actor’s relationships through technology-enabled interactions can give birth to novel technologies, processes, strategies and value. The objectives of the study are: to detect the different enablers that activate innovation in smart service systems; and to explore how these can lead dynamically to the emergence of different innovation patterns.

The empirical research adopts an approach based on constructivist grounded theory, performed through observation and semi-structured interviews to investigate the development of innovation in the Italian CTNA (Italian acronym of National Cluster for Aerospace Technology).

The identification and re-elaboration of the novelties that emerged from the analysis of the Cluster allow the elaboration of a diagram that classifies five different shades of innovation, introduced through some related theoretical propositions: technological; process; business model and data-driven; social and eco-sustainable; and practice-based.

The paper embraces a synthesis view that detects the enabling structural and systems dimensions for innovation (the “what”) and the way in which these can be combined to create new technologies, resources, values and social rules (the “how” dimension). The classification of five different kinds of innovation can contribute to enrich extant research on value co-creation and innovation and can shed light on how given technologies and relational strategies can produce varied innovation outcomes according to the diverse stakeholders engaged.

Blockchain technology was developed to synchronize the data and transactions over the supply chain network and connected nodes. This paper aims to show how blockchain technology can enhance flexibility and agility in supply chain operations. The integration of blockchain and other recently developed technology can help deal with supply chain uncertainties and other challenges being faced by the industry.

Through an extensive literature review of existing research papers and conversation with supply chain managers, barriers and challenges in the supply chain were identified. Some elements were researched of blockchain technology that can be used to resolve some challenges. Blockchain technology and other technologies integration is developed for implementation in supply chain for better visibility and efficiency of supply chain.

The challenges in the supply chain are categorized, and the solution is given through the integration of blockchain and other technologies like Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. The integration shows the execution of tasks through blockchain and various technologies in supply chain.

Blockchain in supply chain is finding its strong place in India when compared to developing nations. There is a need for technology experts, supply chain managers and consumers to understand blockchain’s importance. Challenges faced by industries to use blockchain may be analyzed further with real-life industry case studies.

This research helps enterprises in successful execution of smart technologies in their supply chains. This research helps enterprises in successful execution of smart technologies in their supply chains. Managers and practitioners may use the models developed in real-time implementation. The technologies are described in detail to help the practitioners select the best suitable for their organization.

Digital supply chains are finding the way in industries due to lean and efficient nature. It is beneficial to use the smart technologies to make supply chain green and sustainable.

The implementation of the digital supply chain and its challenges are discussed in the research paper. This will work as a platform for research in the area of technologies for supply chain.