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This paper explored the relationship between the embeddedness of a firm’s managerial values and corporate financial performance in Swiss small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by developing a conceptual maturity model of managerial values (MM-MV). The MM-MV articulates the extent to which managerial values are embedded within organizations, allowing the analysis of the interrelationship between the degree of values-embeddedness and financial performance in SMEs. The findings suggested that as managerial values become more embedded, financial performance increases; therefore, SMEs exhibiting highly embedded managerial values such as customer-minded, team spirit, innovation-driven reliability, persistency, competency, and engagement tend to financially outperform SMEs that have not fully embedded managerial values throughout the firm.

This study aims to explore if corporations that publicly disclose more information about their managerial values are also more organizationally authentic in enacting these values.

A maturity model of managerial values is used that ordinally ranks a corporation’s level of managerial values enactment using corporate annual reports. The samples of corporations’ corporate reports are qualitatively content analyzed, and the outcomes are statistically tested.

The findings indicate that as an organization voluntarily discloses more information about its corporate values, it tends to be more likely to enact their espoused values, and their corporation’s level of organizational authenticity increases.

This study suggests an approach to benchmark a corporation’s level of organizational authenticity using public information, and by doing so, contributes to both policy and practice by offering a framework to compare organizational authenticity between public corporations by their sector, size or the age of the corporation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of managerial values in improving the effectiveness of employee performance management (EPM).

The research has been conducted as a conceptual study, in which EPM criteria are compared to managerial values and the related maturity model. A thorough review of the EPM and values literature identified relevant and significant works.

Despite copious extant literature on EPM, the process is riddled with persistent problems, particularly concerning the manager’s enthusiasm to adequately implement EPM and its subsequent effectiveness. A managerial grounded values framework is, therefore, proposed. Using a circular approach that is assisted by a values maturity model, it serves as a charter that guides the supervisor’s actions, goals, choices, decisions and attitudes; principles that are very much at the heart of an effective EPM process. Curiously, managerial values and EPM have not generally been connected.

This values-based circular framework contributes to the effectiveness of the EPM process and thus to a positive EPM experience that motivates, enhances engagement and guides personal development. When enacted individual values and EPM are linked, they are argued to lead to sustained superior financial performance.

This study makes an important and novel contribution to the performance literature by using a values-based maturity model to improve the effectiveness of the EPM process.

The public sector is one of the least addressed areas of intellectual capital (IC) research. Universities are an interesting area of investigation because they are considered critical players in the knowledge-based society. The purpose of this paper is to develop a more general, flexible and comprehensive “IC Maturity Model” for Universities (ICMM), a framework for defining and implementing IC measurement and management approaches, as part of the whole strategic management of universities. Thus, the ICMM proposes a staged framework to initiate a step-by-step change within a university based upon its current level of IC management maturity. The different steps of maturity might be an answer to cope with the huge diversity of European universities, some of which have strong managerial orientation, while others follow collegial forms of governance.

The research approach is based on what has been called the “third stage” of IC research (Dumay and Garanina, 2013), focused on the practices of IC approaches rather than on its theoretical conceptualisation. The ICMM has been developed under the “Quality Assurance in Higher Education through Habilitation and Auditing” project framework, initiated by the Executive Agency for Higher Education and Research Funding of Romania (EUFISCDI). Three Mutual Learning Workshops (MLWs) were organised as a mean to bring together 15 international experts and practitioners to share their views and experience on IC reporting and setting up task forces.

An ICMM, which is a flexible model of implementing IC approaches within public universities, is developed. The ICMM provides a theoretical continuum along which the process of maturity can be developed incrementally from one level to the next, moving from IC data collection, awareness of IC, adjustment of IC specific indicators, measurement of IC, reporting of IC, interpretation and decision making, strategy and planning.

Future research needs to conduct empirical studies in universities to generalise the effectiveness of the ICMM model and guidelines for implementation.

The ICMM provides a staged framework to initiate a step-by-step change within a university based upon its current level of IC management maturity and its IC value creation dynamics. It allows universities to follow different paths, not necessarily a linear sequence.

Although several methods for IC measurement and management exist, most of these cannot accommodate the trade-off between the comparability aims and the efforts to capture the institution’s uniqueness when designing an IC model.

This paper aims to provide an easy-to-use yet powerful tool to assess the organizational readiness to adopt effective Smart Working (SW). In light of this main objective, based on the current state of research, the study develops a maturity model to assess the SW organizational readiness (SWOR). The SWOR maturity model consists of three dimensions, each of them further detailed into two sub-dimensions. A tool was developed to make use of the model.

The SWOR maturity model was converted into a Web-based questionnaire that includes 54 questions based on 44 items to operationalize the model sub-dimensions. The questionnaire was used in a survey conducted at the Local Health Authority (ASL) of the province of Bari (Italy).

Several implications derive from the present study. From a managerial perspective, the SWOR maturity model supports companies in the as-is analysis of processes, technologies and human resources, which are the enablers of an effective SW, and in the development of a roadmap to achieve a desired “to-be” situation.

Despite recent studies on SW have identified the key drivers that affect the success of SW implementation, there is a lack of models and tools that help companies become aware of the actions and investments to be taken to move towards an effective SW adoption. Even the analysis of the literature on maturity models reveals a gap in the research related to the assessment of SW organizational readiness. The present paper tries to overcome these limitations.

The objective of this paper is to explore, describe, and explicate the processes which are related to the strategic planning for technology management, and to provide beneficial suggestions for China's high technology enterprises to promote technology management capability.

In this paper, a model for strategic planning for management of technology is developed, which is expected to be used to provide effective processes of articulating strategic planning. The model involves several key points including defining the current situations of technology management, determining the objectives of managing technology, and designing the approaches for the promotion of technology management capability. Capability maturity model (CMM) and fitness landscape theory are applied in this model to construct useful analysis tools. The model is used to make the strategic planning for management of technology of China's high technology enterprises. A survey of 43 high technology companies in China is conducted. Technology management maturity model (TMMM) is employed to assess the technology management maturity level, and fitness landscape of technology management is developed to explore the routines of promoting technology management capability.

The authors find that there is still much room for China's high technology enterprises to improve their technology management capability, since the average technology management maturity is only in the managed level. And the maturity of quality management is lower than that of organization management and resource management, and so quality management should have more importance attached to it, promoting holistic technology management capability. All such findings imply that our research makes theoretical contributions to technology management and strategy related literature with significant managerial implications.

The paper contributes to technology management literature by constructing the model of strategic planning for technology management, viewing it as the roadmap of the development of technology management, explaining three interrelated points and illustrating three processes. Second, the paper uses fitness landscape and NK model to explore the routines of promoting technology management capability.

The paper proposes a maturity assessment method to measure the state of maintenance practices in a company.

The method assumes that a maintenance department is evaluated in terms of its managerial, organizational and technological capabilities. By its adoption it is possible to analyse the maturity level reached by a company, in order to classify the criticalities in its maintenance processes; a company can also make a benchmark with the best companies of a reference sample.

The paper presents the method as a support to identify the levers to improve the maintenance management system. The method is demonstrated on a company whose maturity is assessed before making a benchmark against a sample of other manufacturing companies located in the Northern Italy.

The paper presents a scoring method for maturity assessment and a procedure to use it in order to identify the criticalities in maintenance processes and to subsequently drive the improvement of the maintenance management system. The paper should be useful both to researchers and maintenance professionals interested in using new methods for long‐term planning in maintenance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a supply chain risk management (SCRM) maturity model combined with a fuzzy TOPSIS classification method to evaluate and sort an organization into a pre-defined maturity level.

An axiomatic and prescriptive research method guided this study. Therefore, it proposes a prescriptive approach of maturity classification based on a theoretical SCRM maturity model combined with a multi-criteria decision technique.

The results of a pilot application indicated a consistent classification and the value of the model for diagnosing flaws and pointing directions for improving operational and disruption risk management. Its comprehensiveness allows applying it to supply chains of several industry sectors.

The proposed model does not include all possible risks and could be revised in further developments. Also, adjustment of the maturity profiles of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model requires a learning process from practical applications.

The adoption of the risk management maturity grid by practitioners may bring the benefit of a more objective and comprehensive evaluation of risk management processes in the supply chain context.

An immediate social implication derives from the improvement actions that may result from the diagnosis of risk management vulnerabilities identified in the pilot application. In general, the proposed model has the potential to reduce risks, improve results and contribute to economic sustainability.

The maturity grid and decision model integrate overall aspects of risk management, bringing together managerial concepts to deal with a variety of supply chain operational risks. The combined multi-criteria classification procedure to sort the maturity level of an organization is also a novelty.

This study aims to develop a modular and prescriptive digital transformation maturity model whose constituent elements have conceptual integrity as well as reveal the priority weights of maturity model components.

A literature review with a concept-centric analysis enlightens the characteristics of constituent parts and reveals the gaps for each component. Therefore, the interdependency network among model dimensions and priority weights are identified using decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL)-based analytic network process (ANP) method, including 19 industrial experts, and the results are robustly validated with three different analyses. Finally, the applicability of the developed maturity model and the constituent elements are validated in the context of the manufacturing industry with two case applications through a strict protocol.

Results obtained from DEMATEL-based ANP suggest that smart processes with a priority weight of 17.91% are the most important subdimension for reaching higher digital maturity. Customer integration and value, with a priority weight of 17.30%, is the second most important subdimension and talented employee, with 16.24%, is the third most important subdimension.

The developed maturity model enables companies to make factual assessments with specially designed measurement instrument including incrementally evolved questions, prioritize action fields and investment strategies according to maturity index calculations and adapt to the dynamic change in the environment with spiral maturity level identification.

A novel spiral maturity level identification is proposed with conceptual consistency for evolutionary progress to adapt to dynamic change. A measurement instrument that is incrementally structured with 234 statements and a measurement method that is based on the priority weights and leads to calculating the maturity index are designed to assess digital maturity, create an improvement roadmap to reach higher maturity levels and prioritize actions and investments without any external support and assistance.

This paper proposes an SME oriented Industry 4.0 maturity framework to explore the interplay between manufacturing processes, performance measurement system and management practices (PMM). Given that the fourth industrial revolution, famously referred to as Industry 4.0, is a new paradigm for manufacturing firms, it is crucial to know the ‘as-is’ state or maturity of SMEs' manufacturing processes and link it with their PMM. Despite the availability of numerous maturity models, no previous study has tried to link the maturity of manufacturing processes with performance measurement and management.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study and the lack of theoretical base for Industry 4.0 maturity and PMM interaction, especially in the SME context, a multiple case study approach has been adopted due to its robustness and effectiveness under such circumstances.

There is a strong interplay between the maturity of manufacturing processes and PMM. The firms that have invested in their manufacturing processes have also developed performance measurements. Overall, performance measurement is more developed than performance management practices.

The characteristics of the interplay between the maturity of manufacturing processes and PMM are summarized in three main propositions. Moreover, the study provides practitioners with an assessment framework to help SMEs evaluate the current state of their manufacturing processes and PMM to highlight the areas of improvement towards the I4.0 expedition.