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This paper aims to contribute to the development of the European Union (EU) regulatory environment for sustainability reporting by analyzing how materiality is defined in the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and by examining the added value and challenges of legalizing reporting and materiality requirements from both regulatory and practical company perspectives. It provides insights on whether this is reflected by EU pharmaceutical companies and to what extent companies report information on their materiality analysis process.

Doctrinal analysis was used to examine regulatory instruments. Qualitative document analysis was used to analyze companies’ reports. The added value and challenges were examined using a governance approach. It focused on legalizing reporting and materiality requirements, with a brief extension to corporate management and organization studies.

Materiality has evolved from a vague concept in the NFRD toward double materiality in the CSRD. This was reflected by the industry, but reports revealed inconsistencies in materiality definitions and reported information. Challenges include lack of self-reflection and company-centric perceptions of materiality. Companies should explain how they identify relevant stakeholders and how input is considered in decision-making.

Managers must consider how they conduct materiality assessments to meet society’s expectations. The underlying processes should be explained to increase the credibility of reports. Sustainability reporting should be seen as a corporate governance tool.

This work contributes to the literature on materiality in sustainability reporting and to the debate on the need for a holistic, society-centric approach to enhance the sustainability of companies.

This study is centered on the identification of the most appropriate Technology Adoption (TA) model for investigating the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies within pharmaceutical and related enterprises. The aim is to facilitate a smooth transition to advanced technologies while concurrently achieving environmental sustainability.

Selection of a suitable TA theory is carried out using a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach incorporating PIvot Pairwise RElative Criteria Importance Assessment (PIPRECIA) and Fuzzy Measurement of alternatives and ranking according to Compromise solution (F-MARCOS) methods. A group of three experts is formulated for the ranking of criteria and alternatives based on those criteria.

The results indicate that out of all six TA models considered unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model gets the highest utility function value, followed by the technical adoption model (TAM). Further, sensitivity analysis is conducted to confirm the validity of the MCDM model employed.

Challenging times like COVID-19 pointed out the importance of technology in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. TA studies in this area can help in the identification of critical factors that can assist pharmaceutical firms in their efforts to embrace emerging technologies, enhance their outputs and increase their efficiency.

The novelty of this research lies in the fact that the utilization of a TA theory prior to its implementation has not been witnessed in existing scholarly literature. The utilization of a TA theory, specifically within the pharmaceutical industry, can assist enterprises in directing their attention toward pertinent factors when contemplating the implementation of emerging technologies and achieving sustainable development.

The authors propose a blockchain platform for managing clinical trial data to enhance data validity, integrity, trust and transparency in the pharmaceutical research process. The authors also provide an extensive review of how blockchain technology supports the business processes of clinical trials.

A systematic literature review was conducted to identify the existing applications of blockchain in pharmaceutical process management. A conceptual design for a blockchain infrastructure to address clinical trial challenges is developed by outlining the entire clinical trial value chain and identifying the coordination and communication among its stakeholders. A stakeholder analysis is conducted to ensure that the clinical trial processes satisfy the requirements and preferences of each stakeholder.

The proposed blockchain platform offers a promising solution for enhancing integrity, trust and transparency in the clinical trial process. Additionally, blockchain can help streamline communication and collaboration between stakeholders by enabling multiple parties to access and share data in real time, lowering the possibility of delays or errors in data analysis and reporting.

The proposed blockchain platform can benefit patients by empowering them to have better-controlled access to their data and by allowing researchers to maintain adherence to reporting requirements. Additionally, the platform can benefit granting agencies, researchers and decision-makers by ensuring the integrity of clinical trial data and streamlining communication and collaboration between stakeholders.

This study builds on existing blockchain applications in pharmaceutical process management by developing a blockchain framework that can address clinical trial concerns from an integrated perspective.

Business models (BMs) are becoming increasingly crucial for value creation in the healthcare sector. The study explores the conceptualization and application of BM concepts within the healthcare sector and investigates their evolution in emerging economies (EEs) and developed economies (DEs). This study aims to uncover these two contexts' shared characteristics and unique variances through a comparative analysis.

The paper systematically investigates and consolidates the literature on healthcare by employing the antecedents, decisions and outcomes (ADO) framework and finally examines 71 shortlisted articles published between 2003 and 2022.

The recognition of the BM within healthcare is increasing, both in EEs and DEs. EEs prioritize value creation and capture through cost efficiency, while DEs focus on innovation. Key theories employed include a resource-based view, the network theory and the theory of innovation. Case studies are commonly used as a methodology. Further research is needed to explore the decisions and outcomes of BMs.

The study adopts stringent filtration and keyword criteria, potentially excluding relevant research. Future researchers are encouraged to broaden their selection criteria to encompass a more extensive range of relevant studies.

Beyond comparing and highlighting gaps in BMs between EEs and DEs, benchmarking DE's healthcare business models (HBMs) helps healthcare organizations in EEs align their practices, mitigate risks and establish efficient healthcare systems tailored to their specific contexts. The study adopts stringent filtration and keyword criteria, potentially excluding relevant research. Future researchers are encouraged to broaden their selection criteria to encompass a more extensive range of relevant studies.

The study analyzes HBMs using an SLR framework perspective and provides practical implications for academicians and practitioners to enhance their decision-making.

The ecosystem concept has attracted attention in information system research to explain business competition, innovation and many other emerging phenomena. Existing studies focus more on a single ecosystem type or a single ecosystem goal and pay little attention to the ecosystem’s evolution. The objective of the study is to investigate the factors that impact the evolution of the information ecosystem (IE) to gain a better understanding of strategic thinking.

The IE involves many actors, so the multi-case study approach is conducted with purposeful sampling to recruit all the significant ecosystem actors. The collected qualitative data are analyzed by coding data, exploring data relationships and structuring pattern steps; institutional theory is used as a theoretical framework.

The results demonstrate that industry practices, laws and regulations, new actors and the mimetic pressure of outsourcers drive the growth of the ecosystem. Strategy intention, cost pressure and normative pressure all contribute to the IE’s evolution.

The concept of ecosystems has attracted attention in information system research. The study investigates the factors contributing to the evolution of the IE from an institutional theory perspective. Our suggestion is that new players can find a niche in offering information technology (IT)/ information services (IS)-related solutions to survive in the ecosystem; however, they need to pay attention to the normative pressure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on company innovation, specifically centering on the quantity and quality of innovation. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of whether the epidemic inhibits innovation and the role of digital transformation in mitigating this negative impact.

The paper uses a quasi-experimental study of the COVID-19 pandemic and constructs a differential model to analyze the relationship between the epidemic and firm innovation in three dimensions: total, quantity and quality. The paper also uses a difference-in-difference-in-differences model to test whether digital transformation of firms mitigates the negative impact of the epidemic and its mechanism of action.

The results show that COVID-19 significantly reduced the overall level of firm innovation, primarily in terms of quantity rather than quality. Furthermore, this study finds that digital transformation plays a pivotal role in mitigating the pandemic’s adverse impact on innovation. By addressing financing constraints and countering demand insufficiency, digital transformation acts as a catalyst for preserving and fostering innovation during and after the pandemic.

This study extends the current research on the pandemic’s impact on firm innovation at the micro level. It offers valuable insights into strategies for fostering digital transformation among Chinese enterprises in the post-pandemic era.

This study aims to extend and explore patterns and trends of research in the linkage of big data and knowledge management (KM) by identifying growth in terms of numbers of papers and current and emerging themes and to propose areas of future research.

The study was conducted by systematically extracting, analysing and synthesizing the literature related to linkage between big data and KM published in top-tier journals in Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus databases by exploiting bibliometric techniques along with theory, context, characteristics, methodology (TCCM) analysis.

The study unfolds four major themes of linkage between big data and KM research, namely (1) conceptual understanding of big data as an enabler for KM, (2) big data–based models and frameworks for KM, (3) big data as a predictor variable in KM context and (4) big data applications and capabilities. It also highlights TCCM of big data and KM research through which it integrates a few previously reported themes and suggests some new themes.

This study extends advances in the previous reviews by adding a new time line, identifying new themes and helping in the understanding of complex and emerging field of linkage between big data and KM. The study outlines a holistic view of the research area and suggests future directions for flourishing in this research area.

This study highlights the role of big data in KM context resulting in enhancement of organizational performance and efficiency. A summary of existing literature and future avenues in this direction will help, guide and motivate managers to think beyond traditional data and incorporate big data into organizational knowledge infrastructure in order to get competitive advantage.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first study to go deeper into understanding of big data and KM research using bibliometric and TCCM analysis and thus adds a new theoretical perspective to existing literature.

The purpose of the study was to examine the factors that are important for strengthening university–industry collaboration (UIC). This study also investigates the outcome of UIC in the light of creativity, skill, knowledge, and research work.

A survey method has been used to collect data for the study. This study applied a purposive judgmental sampling technique where particular types of respondents like university faculty members and the top officials of the organizations were selected who are knowledgeable and can provide the desired information. The current study used the structural equation modeling method to analyze the data. In the first stage, this research assessed the demographic factors of the respondent. Then this study conducts confirmatory factors analysis and convergent and discriminant validity and reliability test. Finally, the hypotheses are tested by using nonparametric.

This study finds that knowledge transfer mechanism, governmental factors, organizational design factors, technology transfer and the collaborative network has a significant impact on strengthening UIC, which ultimately facilitates creativity, knowledge creation, skills development and supply of graduate according to the requirement of the industry, good research work.

The current study identified some important determinant that has a substantial influence on strengthening UIC. According to the study organizational design, government, technology, collaborative network and mechanism for knowledge transfer play very crucial roles in strengthening collaboration that ultimately increases the creativity, skills, knowledge and research capability of graduates.

To adapt to the rapidly changing market environment, firms must constantly adjust and change their knowledge base to develop new technologies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the improvement path of firms’ breakthrough innovation from the perspective of knowledge recombination in the context of dynamic change in the knowledge base. By analyzing the influencing mechanism of environmental dynamism on the relationship between the two, this paper provides a theoretical foundation for managers to make knowledge recombination decisions under a dynamic external environment while further enriching the firm’s innovation achievements.

Using data from 220 manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock from 2010 to 2018, an extensive panel data set was constructed to investigate the effect of knowledge recombination, which was divided into recombination creation and recombination reuse, on firms’ breakthrough innovation. In addition, the authors differentiated environmental dynamism as market dynamism and technological dynamism and then examined its moderating role in the above relationships.

The research results show that various recombination behaviors of knowledge elements have a differentiated effect on firms’ breakthrough innovation presented as follows: Knowledge recombination creation is significantly positively correlated with firms’ breakthrough innovation, while knowledge recombination reuse is significantly negatively correlated with firms’ breakthrough innovation. In addition, environmental dynamism has a considerable moderating effect between knowledge recombination and firms’ breakthrough innovation further, emphasizing that the moderating effect on different types of knowledge recombination behaviors is significantly distinct.

First, given that this study refers to several Chinese noted databases to collect second-hand data for empirical analysis, future research could use first-hand data by collecting questionnaire survey and interview to provide a more practical and detailed research conclusion. Second, the authors focused on the contextual variable to explore the moderating role of environmental dynamism on the relationship between knowledge recombination and breakthrough innovation. Nevertheless, the indirect effects of other internal factors were not discussed. The authors advocate future studies to involve other moderators from employee social and phycological perspectives, such as trust in colleagues in the proposed theoretical models in this study.

This study is conducive for managers to attach great attention to knowledge management practices in the firm and to understand the critical role of knowledge recombination in affecting innovation performance under dynamic environmental changes. Moreover, this study provides practical guidance and serves as a reference for firms to strengthen their knowledge recombination ability as full utilization of existing knowledge elements and exploration of new knowledge values.

Primarily, from the perspective of dynamic changes in the knowledge base, this paper explores how the knowledge recombination behaviors affect firms’ breakthrough innovation, thereby enriching and extending the relationship theory between knowledge recombination capabilities and breakthrough innovation, while new and valuable ideas are provided in the study of issues related to the firms’ breakthrough innovation; Moreover, this study analyzes the moderating effects of diverse types of environmental dynamism on the relationship between knowledge recombination and firms’ breakthrough innovation from a multi-dimensional perspective proposing that the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on different knowledge recombination behaviors are distinct.

In this global digital era, health-care companies are increasing their presence on the internet through branded content that serves as a connecting link between customers and brands. However, there is a limited understanding of branded content’s impact on customers. Thus, this paper aims to empirically analyse customer engagement for branded content in the health-care sector.

The factors impacting customer engagement for branded content were identified and analysed using the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory approach to get their significance and the cause and effect relationship.

It emerged that co-creation is the most significant factor, having a substantial relationship with all other factors. It is substantiated that health-care companies can increase the intensity of customer engagement by delivering more authentic and relevant content and having an appealing look in a time-bound manner. This will increase the usefulness and entertaining value of the content.

The research findings contribute to the customer engagement dimension in the health-care sector and help the companies construct effective branded content leading towards higher customer engagement.