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The objective of this paper is to propose a taxonomy of sustainability communication (SC) topics that provide digital content managers with a guide for setting a sustainability content agenda and for fostering stakeholder engagement mechanisms on environmental, social and economic issues that increasingly characterize conversations on social media of all stakeholder groups.

Taxonomy is a conceptual and qualitative way used to classify and represent the corporate sustainability (CS) domain of knowledge. The taxonomy categories of SC topics are both theoretically and empirically derived, combining an in-depth literature review with a thematic content analysis of 300 web pages of the corporate websites of the top ten sustainable brands selected in “The 2019 GlobeScan-SustainAbility Leaders Survey.”

The analysis of the results led to the construction of a hierarchical dictionary of tags that categorizes all sustainability topics based on a new, four-dimensional conceptual structure: planet, people, profit and governance. Each dimension is organized in four groups of sustainability themes, which, in turn, group multiple topics, considered the smallest communication unit to develop the SC content.

The taxonomy provides a concise and immediate conceptual framework on all those topics of broader interest, which, suitably modulated, can act as touch points with several groups of stakeholders. Drawn upon the best practices of thematic organization of SCs via the web, the taxonomy represents a guide for programming an editorial plan based on environmental, social, economic and governance issues from a sustainability content marketing perspective. The taxonomy of sustainability topics also finds application as a framework for a content intelligent system, providing a dictionary of tags that can be used for the indexing and retrieval of SC web content.

The study represents the first attempt at reaching a taxonomic organization of the sustainability aspects from a communicational perspective, supporting a new way of thinking and managing SC in the digital realm. Moreover, the results highlight, for the first time, that the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) theory, applied to corporate communications, lacks the governance aspect, which is essential to pursue sustainability consistently and effectively.

In response to environmental uncertainty, organizations rely on independent, empowered teams to increase their responsiveness to change. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how objectives and key results (OKRs) can contribute to creating a shared vision which keeps the different, empowered teams aligned.

Through a qualitative study, this paper develops a conceptual model of how OKRs lead to a shared vision. The authors interview professionals in nine organizations differing in size and industry who recently introduced agile, focusing on the main hurdles encountered and benefits obtained from the methodology.

The findings confirm that OKRs are an effective goal-setting methodology and suggest that their successful implementation builds on the new ways of organizing introduced by the agile methods. Moreover, the findings suggest that OKRs contribute to developing a shared vision and increase the alignment: first, the organizational vision becomes clear and its definition is participatory; second at the team level, individuals align around a shared team vision through participative definition of objectives.

The contribution of the paper is two-fold: this study provide an overview on the methodology, which is diffused from a practice perspective, but has not yet been addressed from a theoretical point of view. And this study connects OKRs to extant theory on goal-setting and vision development. This study shows they act as a coupling mechanism which helps empowered and independent teams together.

This paper describes how a pre-service teacher’s knowledge and pedagogy changed as she documented her reflective practice while teaching arts-integrated lessons in a fifth-grade classroom during her pre-service teacher preparation program. The pre-service teacher spent three-months conducting an action research project in collaboration with a university mentor.

This paper explores what she and her mentor learned as she prepared arts-integrated lesson plans based on the four studio structures for learning and analyzed them along with identifying and documenting evidence of deep learning through field notes and video recordings.

Analysis of field notes, video recordings and lesson plans led the authors to take a deeper look at where the four studio structures for learning overlapped in the teaching event. In the data the intersections of the four studio structures shared a pattern of increased evidence of deep learning for the students. This paper describes the phenomenon in the classroom at various points of intersection.

This action research study is preliminary, and the findings are suggestive of further research that would require indexing what deep learning looks like and gathering and analyzing student data.

It is recommended that teachers use the four studio structures to integrate the arts in their classrooms and to enhance and encourage creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, character and culture and as teachers work toward deep learning for students.

This case shows how a university partnership provides fertile ground for educators of all skills and experience to participate in the expansion of the field of education as well as personal and professional development.

Older people living in nursing homes have complex care needs and frequently need specialists’ advice and support that can be challenging to deliver in a rural setting. The aim of this paper is to describe a model of integrated care in a rural area supported by a nurse case manager.

A real-world evidence study of people living in Ribes de Freser nursing home, was conducted between specific timeframes in 2019 and 2022, comparing the casemix and outcomes of a traditional care model with the integrated interdisciplinary model.

The integrated care model led to a significant reduction in transfers to the emergency department, hospitalisations, outpatient medical visits and a reduction in the number of medicines. In addition, the number of residents receiving end-of-life care at the nursing home showed a substantial increase.

This case study contributes valuable evidence supporting the implementation of an integrated model of nurse case manager support in nursing homes, particularly in the rural contexts, where access to specialist medical staff may be limited. The findings highlight the potential benefits of person-centred integrated care for older adults, addressing their complex needs and improving end-of-life care in nursing home settings.

This paper aims to propose an integrated methodology for evaluating academic spin-offs (ASOs) for supporting both the development phase and performance evaluation. The ASOs have peculiar characteristics compared to other start-up companies and the debate on their evaluation is still open.

The proposed methodology, adopting a lean approach, faces the typical problems that characterize the growth of an ASO: the excessive attention to the technological aspects with respect to the commercial and managerial ones; and the need for evaluation systems that try to evaluate all risk areas and to highlight any misalignment. The methodology was built also starting from the results of an Erasmus + research project, co-funded by the European Commission, called spin-off lean acceleration.

The methodology proposes to monitor the main risk areas (market, technological, implementation, governance and financial). For each of these areas, at first, a framework and a checklist are proposed for supporting the qualitative assessment of the potential of each areas. In the second part, a set of metrics for monitoring the performances and to understand if the spinoff is developing in the right direction is proposed. Moreover, the methodology was applied to the spin-offs at the University of Calabria (Italy), and the paper reports the first results obtained.

A new canvas model (lean acceleration canvas), more specific and suited to the context of ASOs, was developed and tested. A lean approach has been adopted also for understanding the weakness of traditional methods. The proposed methodology could be used by the technology transfer offices in their institutional activity of supporting ASOs.

Since many global path planning algorithms cannot achieve the planned path with both safety and economy, this study aims to propose a path planning method for unmanned vehicles with a controllable distance from obstacles.

First, combining satellite image and the Voronoi field algorithm (VFA) generates rasterized environmental information and establishes navigation area boundary. Second, establishing a hazard function associated with navigation area boundary improves the evaluation function of the A^* algorithm and uses the improved A^* algorithm for global path planning. Finally, to reduce the number of redundant nodes in the planned path and smooth the path, node optimization and gradient descent method (GDM) are used. Then, a continuous smooth path that meets the actual navigation requirements of unmanned vehicle is obtained.

The simulation experiment proved that the proposed global path planning method can realize the control of the distance between the planned path and the obstacle by setting different navigation area boundaries. The node reduction rate is between 33.52% and 73.15%, and the smoothness meets the navigation requirements. This method is reasonable and effective in the global path planning process of unmanned vehicle and can provide reference to unmanned vehicles’ autonomous obstacle avoidance decision-making.

This study establishes navigation area boundary for the environment based on the VFA and uses the improved A* algorithm to generate a navigation path that takes into account both safety and economy. This study also proposes a method to solve the redundancy of grid environment path nodes and large-angle steering and to smooth the path to improve the applicability of the proposed global path planning method. The proposed global path planning method solves the requirements of path safety and smoothness.

Failed deliveries (i.e. deliveries not accomplished due to the absence of customers) represent a critical issue in B2C (Business-to-consumer) e-commerce last-mile deliveries, implying high costs for e-commerce players and negatively affecting customer satisfaction. A promising option to reduce them would be scheduling deliveries based on the probability to find customers at home. This work proposes a solution based on presence data (gathered through Internet of Things [IoT] devices) to organise the delivery tours, which aims to both minimise the travelled distance and maximise the probability to find customers at home.

The adopted methodology is a multi-method approach, based on interviews with practitioners. A model is developed and applied to Milan (Italy) to compare the performance of the proposed innovative solution with traditional home deliveries (both in terms of cost and delivery success rate).

The proposed solution implies a significant reduction of missed deliveries if compared to the traditional operating mode. Accordingly, even if allocating the customers to time windows based on their availability profiles (APs) entails an increase in the total travel time, the average delivery cost per parcel decreases.

On the academic side, this work proposes and evaluates an innovative last-mile delivery (LMD) solution that exploits new AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based technological trends. On the managerial side, it proposes an efficient and effective novel option for scheduling last-mile deliveries based on the use of smart home devices, which has a significant impact in reducing costs and increasing the service level.

Business process re-engineering (BPR) initiatives are complex endeavours which require many factors to ensure success. However, most studies focus on the organisational processes and improvement within the organisation itself and less on the project team and management dynamics. The study aimed to identify factors that enabled the completion of a BPR, in a technical firm, based on reflections on the project management style.

The study entailed a descriptive and interpretive case study with reflections from project team members. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis.

Findings revealed that critical success factors for BPR in a technical firm include project leadership and sponsorship, organisational culture and attributes, team dynamics and the nature (activities), and duration of the process.

The findings will benefit project managers in improving their competence and project success through reflective practice. The identified factors could be used in future projects of a similar nature and size to improve how organisations execute BPR projects.

The study used reflections to identify success factors for BPR in a technical firm.

Current literature argues that citizen engagement platforms must be used to gather citizens’ feedback to provide improved quality of services to citizens. However, limited studies consider the challenges faced by practitioners at the local level during the incorporation of those feedback for continuous service improvement. As a result, these services fail to fulfil the need of citizens. The purpose of this study is to structure the relationship between citizens’ feedback and continuous service improvement to meet the need of citizens.

Design science research methodology has been adapted under which a case study approach has been followed to investigate one of the citizens’ engagement platforms in Ireland.

The results from this study highlighted that practitioners faced challenges (e.g. capacity, risk and constraints) in terms of fulfilling the needs of citizens and there is a lack of structured approach to continuously provide improved services to them.

This study provides a structured approach in the form of a process model to showcase how citizens’ feedback can be incorporated for continuously providing improved services to the citizens.

This research provides a prescriptive view to assist municipalities during the incorporation of citizens’ feedback for continuous service improvement while addressing the challenges they face during this process.

This paper proposes a process model based on the guidelines of the open group architecture framework enterprise architecture and the collaboration with practitioners that would assist local authorities in continuously providing improved services to the citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for planning and controlling the design process in companies that design, manufacture and assemble prefabricated engineer-to-order (ETO) building systems. This model was devised as an adaptation of the Last Planner® System for ETO multiple-project environments.

Design science research, also known as prescriptive research, was the methodological approach adopted in this research. An empirical study was carried out at the design department of a leading steel fabricator from Brazil, in which the proposed model was implemented in six different design teams.

The main benefits of the proposed model were shielding design work from variability, encouraging collaborative planning, creating opportunities for learning, increasing process transparency, and flexibility according to project status. Two main factors affected the effectiveness of the implementation process commitment and leadership of design managers, and training on design management and project planning and control core concepts and practices.

Some limitations were identified in the implementation process: similarly to some previous studies (Ballard, 2002; Codinhoto and Formoso, 2005), the success of constraint analysis was still limited; some of the metrics produced (e.g. ABI, causes of planning failures) have not been fully used for process improvement; and systematic feedback about project status was not properly implemented and tested.

The main contributions of this study in relation to traditional design planning and control practices are related to the use of two levels of look-ahead planning, the introduction of a decoupling point between conceptual and detail design, the proposition of new metrics for the Last Planner® System, and understanding the potential role of visual management to support planning and control.