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Despite extensive research into their identity, women entrepreneurs still struggle to identify themselves as entrepreneurs and encounter role models. This study shows that one explanation for this struggle is misalignment in the discourses on women entrepreneurs’ identity. Misalignments and fragmentations in discourses on identity prevent women entrepreneurs from finding discursive material with which to lay solid foundations for the social construction of their identity. By comparing and contrasting the academic discourse with the discourse from interviews with women entrepreneurs between 2012 and 2017, this study provides evidence that the discourses on women entrepreneurs’ identity are misaligned. This misalignment may depend on the tendency in academia to address gaps in the literature and devote less attention to revisiting, in new empirical contexts, issues that have been considered in prior studies. This study also highlights several issues that are framed in widely divergent ways in the two discourses. The presence of several such misalignments helps explain current difficulties that women encounter in identifying themselves as entrepreneurs.

In un’epoca caratterizzata da una crescita esponenziale della produzione di dati digitali, che vanno a costituire il cosiddetto “Universo Digitale”, la ricerca accademica e gli studi manageriali non hanno ancora pienamente verificato se questi dati possano essere trasformati in informazioni di valore per i processi decisionali e portare benefici in termini di performance organizzative. La risposta a questa domanda non è immediata, infatti la sovra-abbondanza di dati può portare anche ad una paralisi decisionale, causata dall’eccessivo lavoro analitico necessario a trasformare i dati in informazioni utilizzabili nel processo decisionale; questo è particolarmente evidente quando l’analisi dei dati non è supportata da processi e competenze adeguate all’attuale scenario. Questo studio ha l’obiettivo di chiarire se e come l’utilizzo dei dati digitali all’interno dei processi decisionali possa portare un effettivo vantaggio competitivo alle aziende che strutturano i loro processi e sviluppano le competenze per diventare leader nella trasformazione dei dati digitali in informazioni di valore per le scelte operative e strategiche. Per investigare quest’aspetto si è sviluppato un modello teorico che è stato testato empiricamente attraverso una ricerca basata su questionari inviati ad un campione rappresentativo di aziende italiane. Il testo presenta quindi i risultati della ricerca e le implicazioni manageriali relative allo sviluppo dei processi di digital analytics all’interno delle organizzazioni.

PurposeThe authors investigate the role of people-related Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, specifically metaperceptions, in hearing care students' vocational decision-making. In Italy, audiologists are health professionals and must hold a degree in hearing care. They operate according to clinical principles but must also develop marketing and commercial skills. While employers take these aspects for granted, the expectations of hearing care students often differ from reality. Thus, the authors aim to investigate the vocational expectations of hearing care students.Design/methodology/approachA survey was distributed to 600 hearing care students. Multiple regression analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals was employed to test the hypotheses.FindingsStudents who perceived audiology as their calling were more interested in the clinical aspects than the marketing and commercial aspects of audiology. Moreover, those desiring a meaningful career path in audiology were more interested in becoming a store owner or franchisee.Social implicationsUniversities and recruiters should consider the influence of relevant others' metaperceptions on students' self-perceptions of their aptitudes for different careers. Universities should assist students to identify aptitudes that are relevant to career-related decision-making. In this context, people-related TQM can help students avoid incorrect aspirations and expectations.Originality/valueThis study is the first to investigate the role of metaperceptions from a people-related TQM perspective. Metaperceptions play a crucial role in determining the correct course of study as well as job satisfaction and expectations.

The increasing relevance of societal challenges has recently brought social entrepreneurship to the fore due to its capacity to leverage entrepreneurial processes to achieve social value while ensuring profits. In this study, we apply an experimental research method to analyse the concept of social entrepreneurship comprehensively. More specifically, we develop bibliometric analysis and web crawling techniques to gather information related to social entrepreneurship from Scopus and Wikipedia. We conduct a comparative network analysis of social entrepreneurship’s conceptual structure at academic and non-academic levels. This analysis has been performed considering scientific articles’ keywords and Wikipedia webpages’ co-occurrences, enabling us to identify four different thematic clusters in both cases. Moreover, plotting the centrality and density of each cluster on a bi-dimensional matrix, we have sketched a strategic diagram and provided the thematic evolution of this research topic, based on the level of interaction among clusters, and the degree of cohesion of keywords in each cluster. This paper represents one of the first attempts in the entrepreneurship literature to shed light on the conceptual boundaries of a research topic based on the analysis of both a scientific and an open-source knowledge database. Our results reveal similarities and discrepancies between those two different sources of knowledge, and outline avenues for future studies at the intersection between social entrepreneurship and the research domains of digital transformation, performance measurement, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and ethics. We also call for a further conceptualisation of social entrepreneurship in the face of the increasing complexity that characterises grand challenges. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11365-021-00783-1.

Digital transformation (DT) at the micro level implies organizational changes in roles, individual skills, leadership styles, and managerial approaches. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the individual attitudes and behaviors that lead to DT in organizations. Thus, we investigated DT at the micro level to explain the individuals who manage DT. For this, we developed a multiple-case study of 38 Italian firms by analyzing data regarding seven large firms and 31 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to allow for cross-case analysis. Our findings suggest that approaches differ for managers in SMEs and large firms. In large firms, a “digital transformation conductor” (often called “chief digital officer”) oversees DT processes, whereas in SMEs, there is a “digital transformation peer-tutor” approach to DT. A bottom-up, informal, persuasive, and empathic approach characterizes the peer tutor. However, in large firms, a conductor approach is used to drive the necessary changes.

This paper aims to shed light on the actual rate of new venture death in the context of a high level of digital entrepreneurship. Using three different country-level databases, it investigates how different combinations of socio-cultural propensity towards entrepreneurship, exposure to digital media, and digital infrastructure lead to entrepreneurial death. Longitudinal data on 23 European countries are analyzed employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs-QCA). The findings suggest that, in a context characterized by the presence of high levels of socio-cultural propensity toward entrepreneurship and exposure to digital media and in the absence of high levels of technological and human digital infrastructure, the associated outcome will be a high level of entrepreneurial death for new ventures.

The 4th industrial revolution or Knowledge Age enhances the transition to knowledge-driven organizations that rely on data, technologies and learn how to manage all the variables involved in their digital transformation (DT). How should firms manage their knowledge during their DT is an underdeveloped research issue, especially in the SMEs' context. Employing a mixed inductive-deductive approach, this multiple case-study of 35 SMEs tries to shed light on which are the critical knowledge factors required to support and hinder DT in SMEs' context.

Purpose The debate over intuitive vs analytical decision-making styles began almost 40 years ago and had yet to deliver definite answers. The debate – however – has led to divergent theoretical stances and empirical results. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of these information processing styles in customer-related decision-making in the context of mobile technologies. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses are derived from the contrasting theoretical propositions and empirical evidence present in the debate around decision-making styles. The study also introduces and investigates the moderating role of environmental dynamism (ED). Analyses and results are based on survey research that involves 251 managers with responsibility for organizational decision-making processes. Findings The study’s findings suggest that both intuitive and analytical styles are relevant in the actual context characterized by mobile technologies. Intuition still plays a central role in managers’ decision-making processes, but when the industry environment is highly dynamic analytical information processing also plays an essential role in supporting organizational responsiveness and performance. Practical implications This study can help managers in reconsidering the way in which they employ analytical or intuitive information processing activities inside their decision making at different levels of ED. Originality/value The novelty of this paper relies on testing hypothesis simultaneously developed by both the theoretical stances favorable to intuitive and to analytical information processing. Besides, it tests these hypotheses in the actual empirical context characterized by a transformed scenario in terms of data availability.

Over the last decade, social media has evolved from being an interesting technology used mainly for corporate communication and public relations into a proper business tool. One of the most promising areas in this field is employing social media as a source of information and knowledge to deepen the understanding of technological discontinuities and changes; however, this area remains largely unexplored. Thus, this study addresses this shortcoming by investigating the role of social media analytics in the activities and processes that make sense of social media data to enhance the technological opportunism capability, which is defined as the organizational capability to sense and respond to technological changes. The empirical results are obtained using a mixed-methods approach, supporting the existence of a positive and significant relationship between social media analytics deployment and technological opportunism. Further, they highlight the role of marketing and information technology integration and employee skills as significant antecedents.

PurposeThis article aims to understand whether and how a digital transformation strategy (DTS) can strengthen the relationship between network organizations and the generation/regeneration of their business network commons (BNC). Further, it investigates the role of the DTS in managing the BNC, a critical source of business network success.Design/methodology/approachA two-year longitudinal case study of an Italian business network operating in the wine sector was conducted.FindingsThis study provides theoretical insights into the digital, sustainable shift of a business network. On combining a network's business strategy and its DTS, digital resources are a key driver to promote BNC regeneration. A DTS undertaken to manage, regenerate and preserve the BNC can positively affect organizational variables, such as participatory architecture, and the network-level organizational integration and can help in preventing opportunistic behaviors affecting the BNC. Moreover, the DTS supports quality and social responsibility.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focuses on an Italian case and its findings are hence not generalizable. It would be interesting to study sustainable business networks' digital shift in different socioeconomic contexts as well as in different industry settings.Practical implicationsNetwork SMEs and other stakeholders (institutions, competitors and consumers) can foster the transition from a “business-as-usual” strategy to a long-term strategy for digitalized management of common resources.Originality/valueThe study is at the intersection of, and contributes to, several research streams. It contributes to the digital transformation literature by adding information on the positive externalities of digitalization in the social and economic environment. It also contributes to the early streams of organizational and managerial literature on the BNC.

This paper investigates the role of crucial technological and social factors in enhancing or undermining vaccine coverage rates at the country level worldwide. Employing five country-level databases, it explores how different combinations of technology diffusion (that is, social media penetration) and social conditions (functional literacy and attitude toward science) affect the level of vaccine coverage. The analyses are based on two built ad-hoc longitudinal datasets of 36 and 40 countries worldwide, employing a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs-QCA) approach. The findings highlight that, at the country level, the absence of high social media penetration, combined with an above-average level of functional literacy and positive attitude toward science, enable vaccine coverage to reach the level recommended by health institutions and authorities.

This study explores how ICTs and the Internet are influencing, and being influenced by, the evolution of institutions, organizations and workflows that play a role in scholarly work. Based on a literature review and a structured analysis of 8 carefully selected web sites, this study explores: (i) the evolving business models of scientific journals; (ii) the new competitive dynamics triggered by open access and article-level metrics; (iii) the traditional and emerging forms of peer review; and (iv) the emerging ICT-enabled changes in research workflows. The findings depict a highly complex and dynamic scenario, in which different scholarly communities, with their respective institutional and organizational environments, are experimenting different ICT-based arrangements and solutions, which are dramatically widening the range of possible activity systems through which scientific knowledge is created, exchanged, evaluated and leveraged. JEL classification: M10, M15, Keywords: Research workflow, Scholarly commons, Academic publishers, Publish or perish, Open scientific data, Academic libraries, Academic incentives, Digital publishing

This paper aims at exploring the impact of green food on consumers&rsquo, purchase attitudes toward a hotel stay and on consumers&rsquo, behavioral intentions (i.e., intention to visit the hotel, intention to offer positive recommendations to others and willingness to pay a premium price), focusing on an Italian perspective where the food is a worldwide famous cultural element. This research employed a survey sent out by email to a database of contacts provided by an Italian company that operates in tourism. Data collection was completed in four weeks and the initial dataset counted 3586 of target respondents. A total of 302 surveys were completed and the data were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM). Firstly, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed, followed by a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) that leads to the estimation of the structural model. The results show that personal beliefs toward green food are positively associated with respondents&rsquo, purchase attitudes toward green food. Moreover, stronger purchase attitudes toward green food lead to more favorable purchase attitudes toward hotels that offer green food, further substantiating the investigation about whether or not consumers&rsquo, attitudes employ similar concerns on sustainability for their daily purchases as well as for vacation products and services. In turn, the latter purchase attitudes are positively associated with individual behavioral intentions toward hotels that offer green food.

I social media hanno generato nuove modalità di interazione e coinvolgimento dei cittadini e delle organizzazioni nella produzione dei servizi pubblici. Esse vengono qui analizzate e classificate, mostrando come l’amministrazione pubblica possa assumere nuovi ruoli e funzioni con una partecipazione dei cittadini sempre più attiva e rilevante.

Negli ultimi 10 anni l’interesse manageriale verso le piattaforme Social Media (SM) è cresciuto esponenzialmente, ma in molti casi all’interesse iniziale è seguita una certa disillusione rispetto all’utilità dei SM. Recentemente la ricerca accademica ha ipotizzato che i SM possano avere un ruolo importante nel supportare i processi di innovazione. Anche in questo caso le evidenze empiriche sono state contrastanti mostrando una relazione negativa tra il livello di utilizzo dei SM, per ottenere informazioni utili allo sviluppo di soluzioni tecnologiche, e il livello di innovazione dell’organizzazione. Questo studio va a investigare la relazione tra i processi di SM Analytics e la capacità organizzativa di percepire e rispondere al cambiamento tecnologico, adottando un modello di ricerca più esteso che consideri anche le variabili individuali e organizzative a supporto di questi processi. Le informazioni raccolte dai SM possono infatti supportare la reattività organizzativa al cambiamento, a condizione di: implementare i processi analitici necessari a raccogliere, filtrare, e analizzare le informazioni rilevanti; sviluppare le capacità individuali e le competenze organizzative necessarie a supportarli.

The digital era is changing consistently the previous marketing scenarios and actual issues have to be addressed in order to close the capabilities gap created by digital innovations. Different authors call for theoretical and empirical contributions that cope with the issues brought out by the digitalization of marketing channels and the consequent ever increasing volume of digital data. This study develops a theoretical framework and propositions through a reframing and reconceptualization of previous theoretical constructs from managerial and marketing literature. The resulting model offers insights about organizational processes and capabilities needed to cope with the actual fast changing, but at the same time, data-rich environment.