Alessandro Zardini

University of Verona | UNIVR · Department of Management

The relationship between remote work and employee well-being represents a long-standing debate in the management literature, and it has been rekindled by the remote work adoption forced by COVID-19 lockdowns. Previous literature has shown that remote working can enhance flexibility and work–life balance under certain conditions. However, it can als...

Innovation boosts economic growth, and one of the most critical factors when considering innovation-driven growth is the role of disruptive innovation, which is hailed as a lodestar by leaders of both small and large firms. However, little is known about the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and digitalization strategy in enhancing or hinder...

Despite the literature on social innovation (SI) in ecosystems growing considerably in recent years, what makes an ecosystem a facilitator for transformative SI remains unexamined, particularly indeveloping and emerging countries. Our research aims to fill this literature gap by determining which combination of characteristics—stemming from stakeho...

Purpose To further extend the understanding of the aggregating functions of an entrepreneurial business network, this paper attempts to explore the antecedents enabling the organisation of diverse entrepreneurs to engage in a collaborative inter-firm business network project. This paper also elucidates the development of the relational capabilities...

This paper investigates public services’ (PSs) resilience during turbulent times, such as COVID-19, to contribute to relevant academic calls that aim at identifying which combination of factors might lead PSs to develop resilient approaches during crises, despite them suffering from intrinsic management and organizational flaws. Therefore, we adopt...

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...

Grounded in dynamic capabilities theory, this study investigates the impact of firms' technological orientation (TO) on their resilience to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic (RTC). The mediating role of the maturity of their digital strategy (MDS) to this relationship is also considered. To do this, we conducted an online survey of 186 fi...

This study investigates linguistic devices and discursive strategies employed by online social movement organizations (SMOs) in attempts to deinstitutionalize long-standing, institutionalized behaviors. The research draws from an in-depth analysis of public discourse within anti-vaccine online communities in Italy and contributes to the social move...

In the global talent management (TM) field, scholars are calling for distinct and extended human resource (HR) architecture and systems facilitating the management of local talent. To answer to these calls, we adopted a stakeholder theory perspective that responds to five main criticisms of talent management in emerging markets (EMs). Based on that...

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 atti...

This study discusses how the role of entrepreneurship in addressing the so-called “grand challenges” (e.g., poverty, inequality, pollution, climate change) is evolving and could further evolve, based on the ongoing conversation in the scholarly community. To develop the discussion, we conducted the following steps: (1) a computer-aided semantic ana...

A sound governance fosters the capacity of a nonprofit to meet the needs of the community by allowing local stakeholders to be represented on boards and to participate in decision-making through different mechanisms. This study explores the possible combinations of these mechanisms that lead to a high capability of acting for the community (substan...

Cooperation and competition are often viewed as incompatible, antagonistic forces, thus are operationalized as two extremes on a continuum. However, they can coexist and even enable each other, thus may be operationalized as orthogonal constructs. We address this contradictory phenomenon by developing a more granular view of the cooperation–competi...

Purpose This paper aims to examine and overcome the barriers to the widespread adoption of blockchain technology, introducing a novel concept of sustainability in the fashion supply chain. Design/methodology/approach This work is an exploratory study of a well-known fashion company operating in the Veneto region (Italy). Data extracted from interv...

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 entrepreneuri...

This study examines the impact of big crisis data on the contradictions, trust and perceived value of social media crowdsourcing in pandemics. The study also examines the impact of contradictions on trust and the perceived value of social media crowdsourcing. Finally, the study explores the impact of trust on the perceived value of social media cro...

Purpose This study investigates (1) the processes through which social enterprises develop resilient organizational logics and (2) the key resilience factors in the organizational logics of successful social enterprises. The organizational logic is conceptualized here as the dynamic system of roles, rules and social expectations that result from th...

This study proposes an original configurational view of the organizational logics of business networks. It develops a set of 18 operationalizable propositions, clustered around a typology of six networking logics, that allow to measure the extent to which each networking logic is active at the level of a specific network organization. In addition,...

Purpose Within a very short period of time, the worldwide pandemic triggered by the novel coronavirus has not only claimed numerous lives but also caused severe limitations to daily private as well as business life. Just about every company has been affected in one way or another. This first empirical study on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on...

Blockchain implications within the sustainability domain are rapidly arousing the interest of researchers and institutions. However, despite the avalanche of articles, papers, and recently published books, innovation in the blockchain domain is still heavily influenced by light literature, such as news, articles, opinion posts, and white papers. La...

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 an...

Objective Information technology-based innovation is playing an increasingly key role in healthcare systems. The use of three-dimensional (3D)-printed bone fracture replicas in orthopaedic clinical practice could provide a new tool for fracture simulations and treatment, and change the interaction between patient and surgeon. We investigated the ad...

Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) are challenging the traditional food system by leveraging concepts such as self-organisation and self-management aiming to shorten the food supply chain and give customers more power. The process of re-connection between producers and customers facilitates new ways of managing and sharing knowledge across the networ...

The literature on the subject of corporate social responsibility and environmental management in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has theorized about the different factors influencing the propensity of business owners/managers towards sustainability. However, the varying results and some gaps in these previous studies have highlighted the...

This paper aims at exploring the impact of green food on consumers’ purchase attitudes toward a hotel stay and on consumers’ 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...

The contribution of a single firm to sustainable development is largely dependent on the firm's perceptions of the advantages of sustainability strategies and consequent practices. The relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance has been heavily debated, with mixed results. Our research is aimed at defining...

This study introduces the concept of business network commons as valuable, fragile resources that are available for partnering firms' collective use but that also require users' engagement and collaboration to be protected and/or (re)generated. Building on the theory of commons and the literature on self-organizing networks and organizational field...

Scholars investigating the importance of effective IT managers’ relations tend to rely on two mainstream theoretical approaches: the resource-based view (RBV) and sister theories, on the one hand; and the business-IT alignment view, on the other hand. This study proposes that these two theories, although very effective in explaining several aspects...

Healthcare processes are by nature complex, mostly due to their multidisciplinary character that requires continuous coordination between care providers. They encompass both organizational and clinical tasks, the latter ones driven by medical knowledge, which is inherently incomplete and distributed among people having different expertise and roles...

Despite the impressive growth of smart city initiatives worldwide, an organizational theory of smart city has yet to be developed, and we lack models addressing the unprecedented organizational and management challenges that emerge in smart city contexts. Traditional models are often of little use, because smart cities pursue different goals than t...

Organisational integration between intra- and inter-organisational sub-systems is an important factor of operational coordination, innovation and strategic effectiveness. So far, scholars have mainly focused on the organisational integration of three sub-systems: production/operations, marketing/sales, and research & development. This study investi...

Healthcare processes are intrinsically complex and multidisciplinary. In order to maintain acceptable levels of assistance quality, reduce costs and limit the variability of medical practice outcomes, care provision plans must rely on structured and standard procedures. Business process modeling suitably responds to the need for a clear, iterative...

The contribution of a single firm to the overall sustainability context is largely dependent on its perceptions about the advantages related to its sustainability strategies and consequent Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. The relationship between Corporate Social Performance (CSP) and Corporate Financial Performance (CFP) has been l...

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) has many advantages and its introduction is, at the moment, in different stages of progress in various European countries. Reasons such as historic paths, elements and procedures of her affect the progress stages, including issues of law, politics and economics strengths and weakness of national systems. A shared...

Firm performance in turbulent business environments strongly depends on the adaptive (re)generation of the firm's business model. However, studies on the enablers of business model innovation are sparse. This study leverages the literature on dynamic capabilities, on organizational ambidexterity/vacillation, and Lewis's view of organizational parad...

The study investigates how governance mechanisms can affect community representation within nonprofit organizations, focusing on Italian Bank Foundations where the community is on board by law. To investigate what governance arrangements increase substantive and symbolic representation, the study adjusts Guo and Musso’s framework by considering sev...

In the last years the use of the information communication technology (ICT) has become a leading driver of managerial reform in the public sector [1] and in particular in the healthcare system [2]. In particular, the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is one of the most studied ICT systems in the healthcare management literature. Using the Zaharia et...

Can an information technology (IT) infrastructure contribute to competitive advantage and firm performance, even if this infrastructure follows IT standards and best practices, and is then neither rare nor inimitable as a re- source? This study leverages the dynamic capability view and the underpinning evolutionary theories of routines, learning, a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how the relational capital of the information technology (IT) department creates value in organizations. In addition, the paper presents a multi-dimensional scale to measure and manage relational capital in the IT department. Design/methodology/approach – In the first, explorative phase of th...

The growing importance of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in raising the social and economic development of a local community has increased the number of research studies related to NPO governance mechanism features to understand territorial needs. In this sense, the representation of the local community within boards is a governance tool that allo...

The development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and recent communication regulatory framework innovations for law and accounting firms are the main drivers for the redefinition of communication processes. Nevertheless, in Italy there is reluctance in adopting communication strategies focused on advertising, public relations and...

The objective of the paper is to study the use of service science to create a systematic service innovation in the health environment. Starting from the basic abstraction of service science, which is considered as value co-creation when people, technology and value propositions are connected by internal and external service systems and shared infor...

Testing the relationships among dimensions of representational legitimacy, this study provides insights on community representation within Italian bank foundations (IBFs), where the community is considered the main stakeholder by law. In order to investigate what governance mechanisms increase substantive and symbolic representation, the study adju...

Outsourcing is a managerial procedure whose success needs clarification regarding the long-term relationship between customer and supplier. The authors’ aim is to examine simultaneously the client’s and supplier’s perspectives through the psychological contract that, by assimilating the contents of the legal contract, focuses on (1) the implicit (n...

A growing stream of studies is concentrating on IT management value, i.e. on how value is created not (only) through IT investment and deployment, but (also, or mainly) through the way IT is idiosyncratically managed by each specific organization. This implies that the capabilities, behaviors and organizational role of CIOs and IT managers could be...

The purpose of this research is to analyse the organisational becoming produced by the implementation of the digitalised system for the Request and Medical Reports of Radiologic Examinations inside the Academic Integrated Hospital of Verona (AOUI) and by the related effects on the actors who interact with it. This system represents a module that wi...

The paper aims to analyze the new trends in the public administration’s way of doing government business. Specifically, it takes stock of the various actions developed to modernize the administrative and management structures of public companies (PA) and their outcomes. The modernization effort is the result of two macro actions: public administrat...

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has become a primary lever of national and international public administration reform (Moon, 2002). The adoption and use of ICT by public organisations to facilitate the administration and delivery of citizen services is defined by the literature as 'e-government' (Grönlund, 2004a). An IT-en...

In this theory-building research, we seek to understand how the emerging systems of e-intermediation influence the evolution of novel inter-organizational networks. We chose Yoox, a leading e-intermediary in the fashion industry, as an exemplary case. We found that the core technological capabilities of the e-intermediator, rather than deterministi...

Going global has become more than just a strategy; it is essential to ensuring revenues and firm survival, especially for organizations that function in saturated, highly competitive markets. Because small firms often lack the internal resources, competencies, information, capital, and managerial experience needed to expand globally, they tend to r...

What drives the behaviors of banks and their customers in time of profound changes? The modern economic crisis has significantly affected consumers' willingness to invest and made them more price sensitive, more rational in their decision making, and thus more challenging for banks to serve. Considering these relevant changes, banks have pursued pr...

The Italian Public Administrations during the last years were involved in a long term-process of reform to "reinvent" the public sector in accordance with the New Public Management (NPM) principles. The last change was realized with the law 150/2009 that introduced the "performance" cycle in the Italian public sector. The Italian Army is involved i...

Over the last years, Italian public administrations have been involved in a long-term reform process with the aim of “reinventing” the public sector in accordance with new public management principles. The Italian Army, along with other public organizations, has been engaged in the implementation of a performance management system as stated by Ital...

The last reform program in the Italian public sector was realized by legislative decree 150/2009 that introduced the performance cycle, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the public organizations. The performance and its evaluation is one of new public management (NPM) pillars [1]. Control and accountability play an invaluable role in t...

The research question of this study attempts to identify which are the enabling factors for the adoption of a sourcing SaaS (Software as a Service) model for Business Intelligence applications. The objective of this paper is to propose a model containing enabling factors for the adoption of BI solutions. We seek to expand on the Benlian et al. mode...

The research question of this study attempts to identify which are the leading factors for the adoption of a sourcing Software as a Service model for Business Intelligence applications. The objective is to build a model containing enabling factors for the adoption of BI solutions. We seek to expand on the Benlian et al. model [1] which is based on...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the correlation between competitive advantage, associated with the improvement of the decision-making process, and knowledge management through Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platforms. As a result of our study we found that ECM platforms can be seen, as Decision Support Systems as they increase the quan...

This article provides an analysis of the correlation between a competitive advantage derived from improved decision-making processes and knowledge management through enterprise content management (ECM) platforms. Therefore, it expands literature on knowledge management and explicates the relationships among knowledge management systems, ECM systems...

Organisations are facing an incredibly increasing amount of content to be efficiently captured, organised and archived. As a result, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has emerged as a top business priority during the past years. However, only a few academic reports present common guidelines for evaluating and justifying the choice for a certain E...

Abstract The make-or-buy dilemma,represents one of the most important topic in the IS research field. The IT function, in fact, has been one of the first business areas to be outsourced. Inthis paper, we consider the outsourcing process not only as an economic decision driven by efficacy or efficiency but a real strategic move, driven by new busine...

The purpose of this contribution is to clarify whether ontologies and, in particular, ontological engines really foster the process of centralization of purchases among the enterprises, and if a reduction in the number of potential suppliers causes a reduction in transaction costs, thus containing the amount of differentiated contractual procedures...