Sabrina Bonomi

Knowledge sharing and value co-creation: designing a service system for fostering inter-generational cooperation

This paper highlights the necessity of knowledge transfer and sharing between young and old people, to avoid skills and expertises loss by the organizations and for co-creating value. The paper depicts how the use of a digital platform providing a common place in which people act and interact could facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience between these two generations, thus fostering value co-creation. A case study describing the “5020 project” is presented in which this kind of a digital platform is developed. In this scenario, mixed work groups, composed by young and old people, are created, in which people, working together, share the knowledge acquired in the past (respectively at school and on the job by experiences), co-creating value and providing good solutions to requests of enterprises.

E-Health and Value Co-creation: The Case of Electronic Medical Record in an Italian Academic Integrated Hospital

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 information [1], the paper aims to explain the benefits of the electronic medical record (EMR) and its business and organizational impacts in an Italian Academic Integrated Hospital. The research method is based on a case study and on connected semi-structured interviews. The qualitative study shows the co-created value, i.e. the impacts of introduction and development (consolidation) of EMR on efficacy and efficiency of the organization, on data collection and processing, error reduction, sustainability of SSN (national health service) and especially the better quality of services to the citizens.

Service Ecosystems for the Common Good: A Case of Non-profit Network Organization

Service systems’ capabilities to generate (positive or negative) externalities and their impact at the societal level has remained under-investigated so far. This study addresses this gap and explores how an innovative organizational architecture based on (i) a network of competent actors, (ii) an (ICT-enabled) platform serving as a network commons and (iii) a shared institutional logic and worldview enables the emergence and evolution of a service ecosystem with strong positive externalities. It was conducted an in-depth longitudinal study (2013–2016) on an ICT-enabled community of IT professionals, aimed to provide unemployed professionals with employment opportunities while also providing small and micro enterprises and non-profit organizations with affordable, high-level IT services. The case-study shows that the presence of non-profit organizations in the service ecosystem strongly influences the service ecosystem’s institutional logic and worldview and facilitates sustainability-oriented self-organizing throughout the ecosystem.

Network organisations for externality challenges: how social entrepreneurship co-evolves with ICT-enabled solutions

This study aims to investigate how network forms of organising, information technology-enabled solutions, as well as their institutional context, co-evolve in social entrepreneurship. The results of an in-depth longitudinal study on a food donation organisation suggest that: 1) social entrepreneurship manifests itself through a network-shaped organisational form, which is mainly expected to catalyse the transformation of externalities into successfully manageable commons for societal benefit; 2) social entrepreneurship evolves dynamically through specific organisational features and success factors, which are effectively understandable by leveraging the joint explanatory power of the theory of the commons and the theory of sustainability transitions; 3) these theories also provide sound conceptual tools to explain how information and communication technologies (ICTs) co-evolve with the social entrepreneurship organisation, its business model, and the institutional context.

Improving the Introduction of Electronic Health Record: Lessons from European and North American Countries

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 observation among countries underscores the value that can be co-created by the interaction between doctors, nurses, and patients. Certainly the technology has an important role in this value co-creation, facilitating the exchange of information, reducing errors, and enabling more effective and appropriate treatments. We present finally the concrete case of Kaiser Permanente, showing how the interaction between the healthcare providers, patients and demonstrating the ensuing value in improved health for people.

Innovation for Sustainable Development by Educating the Local Community. The Case of an Italian Project of Food Waste Prevention

Service oriented perspectives represent an opportunity of innovation and an answer to current challenges for social welfare, sustainable development and everyday life. The prevention of food waste requires new networked and collaborating competences, in the light of the increasing inefficiencies of modern economic growth models and the improvement of new paradigms for sustainable development. This research presents the case of a project that, while addressing food waste at the level of several organizations throughout the supply chain, implemented a recovering process to reduce food impairment. The project (R.e.b.u.s.) applies the efficiency system originally developed for school and university canteens to other food donors. In order to support this project, a far-reaching educational program for sustainable development was started in schools, universities and through public events. By educating the local community and enhancing processes that drive a change in behaviour, this initiative proved essential for the successful prevention of food waste.

IT Managers’ Relations and Value Creation: Complementary Insights from Four Theoretical Standpoints

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 of the importance of IT managers’ relationships, are not sufficient, and could be usefully complemented by at least two further important theories: Lawrence and Lorsch’s view of organisational differentiation and integration, and the cyclical model of organisational learning proposed by Zollo and Winter. Therefore, this study presents the contribution of these four theoretical approaches (RBV, business-IT alignment, organisational integration, and cyclical organisational learning) to explaining the importance of IT managers’ relationships. For each theory, two propositions are deduced. The eight resulting propositions are briefly compared, in order to highlight the importance of theoretical cross-fertilisation and integration for a better scientific understanding of IT management value.

Organizational Engines for Smart Territorial Networks: The Case of an Initiative for Food Waste Reduction

High technologies, and ICTs in particular, offer crucial opportunities to address many dramatic problems of today’s territorial systems. What are the possible new organizational forms and organizational eco-systems that enable a more effective exploitation of these emerging opportunities? What are the key (and possibly new) managerial challenges implied? In this paper, we explore these issues through a longitudinal case study of a smart organization (SO) aimed at preventing food waste through the re-distribution of surplus food to associations that assist socially disadvantaged people. We find that only the cross-fertilization between research streams that have remained separated so far (smart cities/regions/communities; institutional entrepreneurship; and socio-ecological/socio-technical systems) could offer a satisfying explanation for the phenomena we observed. We conclude by suggesting that the emerging SOs, enabled by ICTs, can work as organizational engines allowing positive techno-institutional innovation for the common good. Therefore, the development of effective SOs could be a very relevant issue for organization and management studies for the years to come.