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In the last decades, the advent of digital technologies such as the 3D printing impacted the craft firm's business, and the merge between tradition and modernity gave rise to innovative manufacturing logics. By means of qualitative research, the aim of this chapter is to investigate business directions taken by Italian companies in manufacturing context and to understand the role of the 3D printing in these companies. To achieve this research objective, we conducted a case study analysis of 3DiTALY, an Italian company operating in 3D printing business. Our findings provide original insights regarding the digital production, which has reversed the economic logic of traditional manufacturing. 3D printing is a cultural revolution stands in antithesis to a hyper-specialized society where people only perform the activities for which they have expertise. Digital fabrication has shortened the supply chain and reduced related costs by allowing people to independently produce what they need.

Objectives. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the global economy to facing an unprecedented crisis that has negatively impacted most industries and pushed several companies to rethink the way they develop and maintain their relationships with their stakeholders. Quickly spreading across the globe, the virus generated a world pandemic with repercussions still difficult to estimate. In Italy, as in the rest of the world, the impact of this pandemic has affected all sectors of the society, especially the economic one generating an unprecedent stock reaction (Baker et al. 2020). Nowadays, it is difficult to establish the severity of the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on marketing, as the economy is today starting to recover after several weeks of lockdown. During the lockdown period, digital communications and online platforms have been key to maintain and develop business and personal relationships. In this context, communications, and information technology (IT) and social media represent key channels to invest in, as they are transforming the ways in which individuals and companies search for information and interact with one another (Kietzmann et al. 2011). In the last decades, a radical change entails the growing influence of digital technologies in customer purchasing decisions (Lingqvist et al. 2015). Hence, in this study we focus on the digital technologies role in marketing activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our research (1) provides insights into the current marketing automation and sales technologies implemented by companies,(2) assesses the level of integration between physical and virtual touchpoints and cross...

This study focuses on the role of dynamic capabilities (DCs) in the internationalisation process of fintech startups, which operate in a rapidly expanding industry exhibiting substantial growth and development.

The rapid diffusion of the Covid-19 worldwide has accelerated the need for companies to address the sustainability issue at different levels, as nowadays the attention of stakeholders with respect to this theme has grown considerably. As a result, companies had to set up CSR communication strategies to build and strengthen their legitimacy and reputation. Among the communication channels to convey messages of firms’ CSR initiatives, social media are becoming increasingly important and, particularly, Twitter is the social media platform where more CSR-related content is generated. By adopting the theoretical lens of constitutive communication of organization, the aim of this paper is to investigate with a textual approach how the CSR communication in the energy sector has evolved in the post Covid-19 scenario. Specifically, our attention will be focus on: (1) the exploratory analysis based on the hashtags; (2) the identification of CSR communication topics and (3) the proposal of topics network in order to discover subgroups of topics. Findings of this research show that the CSR communication on Twitter has undergone changes compared to the pre Covid-19 era. Particularly, we identified 11 CSR related-topics which, as the proposed topic network demonstrates, are interconnected. On the one hand, our results corroborate previous research regarding some CSR-related issues; on the other hand, we identified some topics such as safety, people and work which have exploded in Twitter conversations in the post Covid-19 scenario. Finally, this study provides managerial implications for professionals dealing with CSR communication, digital communication and social media marketing activities.

Viviamo tempi contraddittori, difficili da interpretare e governare razionalmente. Da un lato, infatti, nella realtà di tutti i giorni osserviamo il diffondersi di meccanismi pervasivi di spersonalizzazione, in cui protagonisti sono macchine, algoritmi, dati e altri dispositivi digitali che condizionano gli uomini con cui entrano in contatto. Al tempo stesso, però, prendono corpo processi di innovazione e di esplorazione del possibile che sono invece presidiati da persone, dando così luogo a forme più o meno rilevanti di ri-personalizzazione dei processi economici e delle relazioni sociali. Sulla scorta di casi studio che sono stati sviluppati in collaborazione con CFMT (Centro di Formazione Management del terziario), questo volume affronta il tema della ri-personalizzazione del business focalizzandosi su quattro direttrici di riflessione: l’innovazione partecipata, la connessione digitale, la creazione di sensi e significati e la ri-personalizzazione attraverso l’esperienza. L’approccio proposto travalica il percorso lineare dal vecchio al nuovo, per attraversare invece le asperità e i conflitti tipici della transizione. L’ambivalenza tra vecchio e nuovo, tra conoscenza replicativa e generativa, tra autonomia delle persone e impegni collaborativi nelle reti è infatti assunta come l’elemento costitutivo della ri-personalizzazione in corso.

In recent years, the context of B2B relationships has changed rapidly with the advent of new technologies that are reshaping the space dimension of business interactions and the time frame in which they occur. Notwithstanding the magnitude of this evolution, the literature only partially captures the implications of value creation in the B2B digital context, leaving the contextual nature of value to remain vague and described mainly at an abstract level. This lack of a micro-foundation of value creation in context also makes its management exceedingly difficult. This study proposes a conceptual model that explains value creation in the digitally interconnected B2B business environment. Our analysis of 34 qualitative interviews with B2B managers showed the importance of a granular examination of value creation in context by identifying its dimensions and processes. At the same time, we showed the need to combine a micro theoretical focus with the transition to a more holistic and systemic view.

Digitalization is one of the most important phenomena of our era, impacting not only on consumer companies but increasingly on business to business companies too. The effects of digitalization are manifolds: growing number of touch points among interacting actors, greater information fluidity, contents dematerialization, among others. All these elements are generating higher complexity, which, in turn, requires coordination. Starting consideration of this study assumes that the importance of boundary objects – the ones that allow to communicate and coordinate the perspectives of various constituency – increases in a digitalized environment. By analyzing three case studies - Salesforce.com, Buzzdetector, and Nearit - the paper identifies the functions of boundary objects in digitalized business relationships: promoting socialization and meanings coordination; simplify complexity; humanizing objects; storytelling; boost creativity; engage in a broader experience; promote flexibility and contextualization.

This article advances a conceptualization of service innovation as socially constructed through resource integration and sensemaking. By developing this view, the current study goes beyond an outcome perspective, to include the collective nature of service innovation and the role of the social context in affecting the service innovation process. Actors enact and perform service innovation through two approaches, one that is more concerted and another that emerges in some way. Each approach is characterized by distinct resource integration processes, in which the boundary objects (artifacts, discourses, and places) play specific roles. They act as bridge-makers that connect actors, thereby fostering resource integration and shared meanings.

Boundary objects consist of devices, artifacts, and images that support the construction of meaning by different actors (Carlile, 2002, 2004). By acting and interacting, people even transform subjective meanings into artifacts, assigning meaning to reality, and thereby constructing it. Boundary objects translate, coordinate, and align the perspectives of different parties (Klimbe et al., 2010), but with their plasticity, they remain both adaptable to local needs and robust enough to maintain a common identity across different uses (Mele, Sebastiani and Corsaro, 2018). This paper explores the role of cognitive technologies as boundary objects in digital space. An interactive, qualitative, case-study approach is adopted to gain insights into the phenomena described. Starting from the idea that social construction and sensemaking process that transform spaces and create a “sense of place” (Parsons et al., 2017: 143), we show the way cognitive technologies perform inmost cases as boundary objects enacting actors’ interactions and sensemaking in digital space.