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Popular media suggests that technological advancement will continue to have a dramatic effect on work, but it is difficult to distinguish between the hype surrounding this and the actual potential impacts. This study examines what the evidence is in relation to the impact of emerging technologies on work and the role of the human resource (HR) function in helping employees and organisations to navigate these changes. Evidence suggests that the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, are being employed by organisations to automate simple and repetitive tasks as well as to make complex decisions quickly and more accurately via predictive algorithms. In addition, emerging technologies are increasingly being used to support the implementation of more flexible working practices such as virtual work and gig work. However, this will present a number of challenges for HR professionals, who will need to help employees to update their skills to compete in the future world of work, and to find ways to address the possible negative effects of increased connectivity and precarious working arrangements on employee wellbeing.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence regarding the relationship between the level of comprehensiveness of a performance measurement system (PMS) and its respective organizational effectiveness. The extant literature has highlighted that a PMS may successfully contribute to the implementation of the organizational strategy, with the balanced scorecard (BSC) serving as an exemplar of a strategy performance management tool and playing a primary role to this end. However, the reasons for the overall high rate of failure in the implementation of the BSC remain unexplained and, to date, little empirical research exists regarding the design of PMSs such as the BSC and its constituent elements.

Using a survey of 103 Italian managers, the paper advances a model describing a comprehensive BSC design, after identifying the key attributes from the performance management literature. Data were analyzed using cluster analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Results suggest that organizations are implementing the BSC following two different approaches, which vary from a less comprehensive to a more comprehensive design. More importantly, the BSC design explains variation across three organizational effectiveness measures: improvements in translating the organizational strategy into operational goals, understanding cause–effect relationships and enhancing internal communication among employees.

The paper builds on and extends the previous literature on performance management in two ways. First, via a literature review, it introduces a model describing a comprehensive BSC design, which includes 12 attributes. Second, it demonstrates that organizational effectiveness varies positively with the level of comprehensiveness of the BSC design.

Research on the characteristics of Generation Z in the United Kingdom is sparse and thus this generation is largely unknown. However, it is likely that the characteristics of Generation Z in the United Kingdom largely represent a continuation of the trends in attitudes and expectations seen over Generations X and Y. This is a group that has grown up to have high expectations of employment, including a desire for interesting and meaningful work, regular feedback, employee voice and participation, work–life balance and the development of marketable skills. As this cohort of the population was born into an environment with Web 2.0 technology and social media, they are also constantly connected. However, in the past two years, this group has continued its development against the backdrop of political and economic uncertainty due to the United Kingdom’s forthcoming exit from the European Union. More research is needed in order to establish the impact of these events on the younger generation’s attitudes, and those of subsequent age cohorts.

Today, about 30 per cent of European existing buildings can be entitled as “historical buildings”. Nowadays, their energy retrofit is important to reach the ambitious European CO₂ emissions’ reduction objectives. The purpose of this paper is to outline a methodology to investigate the potential energy savings and the enhancement of historical buildings’ liveability by acting only on their operation, so that the building fabric could be maintained as much as possible as the original evidence.

The paper describes the framework’s theoretical phases and their application in two real case studies. The methodology was conceived with a pre-test and post-test design approach.

The research demonstrated that the elaborated methodology is flexible and allows the adoption of different energy retrofit strategies for the different cases.

Limitations arise out of the circumstance that the methodology is based on occupants and technicians willingness to engage in the strategies, so it is not possible to quantify its efficacy ex ante.

Practical implications can be found in the way of addressing energy retrofit strategies through a user-centric approach with minimum impact on the building itself.

At the same time, the methodology has a strong social aspect with its potential to change people’s attitudes towards energy usage and behaviour.

This study not only represents the first attempt of applying a systematic energy retrofit strategy based on occupants and technicians behavioural change in historic buildings, but also is one of the first studies dedicated to occupants’ comfort and behaviour assessment in this context.

The wide development of digital platforms permitted the birth of new financing modalities, namely, crowdfunding, where the crowd of individuals and investors can supply the necessary financial resources for venture creation and growth. While the extant literature has focused on analyzing the dynamics and features of crowdfunding campaigns, few studies have focused on understanding how crowd investors decide which ventures to invest in and which factors influence their decision-making process. Due to this gap, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the choice to invest in an equity crowdfunding campaign, by defining a set of indicators useful to evaluate the risk of the campaign.

An empirical research study of Italian equity crowdfunding campaigns has been conducted to identify quantitative indicators useful for evaluating the risk in a crowdfunding campaign.

Findings demonstrate that the risk indicators proposed to represent important gauges that investors can usefully consider ex ante to assess the degree of riskiness of the investment in the equity crowdfunding campaign.

The limitations of the study regarding the size of the sample that is small due to the necessity to extract enough information in pre and post-equity campaigns. Also, the lack of historical data is another limitation.

The originality of the studies relies on the proposal of quantitative indicators for the evaluation of the risk in equity crowdfunding campaigns for “crowd” investors to reduce information asymmetries.