Exploring Digital Resilience

Older persons and carers benefit from the use of healthcare robots. Many scientists and academics have looked at using robotic technology to assist both elderly individuals and their caregivers. We provide a contemporary overview of care robotics through a survey of the literature and an in-depth analysis of published articles. We discuss what we know about the use of assistive robots in elderly care, their benefits, and potential hurdles in this research. We investigate how assisted healthcare robotics can help to shift the nursing function's unsettled resource-demand balance. We review recent research on the use of care robots from a sociotechnical viewpoint, which examines human-machine interactions and focuses on results that may or may not be beneficial to the setting. Principles of responsible autonomy and adaptation with the goal of performing tasks that are meaningful. These humanoid resources perform a variety of physical, cognitive, and social duties in order to help people live healthier lives. We concentrate on the current and future difficulties of healthcare robots, as well as how such technology might benefit healthy aging, healthcare personnel, particularly nurses, and our healthcare system as a whole. Despite the potential benefits, we conclude that adoption of care robots is still limited. We pave the road for identifying elements of adoption that may influence the adoption process using the sociotechnical lens.

Disruption in our society demands collective rather than isolated efforts. In order to address societal challenges, organizations are increasingly called to innovate across organizational boundaries. Literature on open innovation, however, has mainly focused on the organizational-level, neglecting the individual-level, or what has recently called ‘the human side’ of open innovation. This study sheds light on the microfoundations of open innovation by unveiling the micro-level foundations of relational capabilities from the analysis of a multiple embedded case study on five SMEs operating in Northern Italy. Results suggest perspective taking, balancing skills, and negotiation skills as individual-level features that aggregate at a higher level through a dynamic process. By doing so, this study contributes to the discourse on microfoundations of organizational capabilities for open innovation.

Electronic human resources management (e-HRM) as a field has been developed on an exploratory basis, thus lacking theoretical foundations. Research into its theoretical underpinnings is therefore needed. Research orchestration theory (ROT) is an expansion of resource-based theory. It considers managers’ roles in the selection and configuration of resources, and it aims to explain the process of achieving a competitive advantage and exploiting the dynamic capabilities of resource configuration. This study is based on Strohmeier’s [34] framework and focuses on the configuration of e-HRM and its underlying elements: actors, strategies, activities, and technologies. We propose ROT as a solid foundation for the empirical investigation of e-HRM.

Citizen science is a set of methodological approaches aimed at engaging general public in the processes of co-production and sharing of scientific knowledge to face societal needs and environmental challenges. Its main fields of application concerns environmental sciences, earth observation and urban planning, by introducing human and socio-cultural perspectives into technical and scientific tasks. New developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), remote sensing and data processing pave the way to new crowdsourcing activities for social engagement, volunteers’ recruitment and organization. In particular, social media systems allow rapid sharing of information at low cost connecting and organizing people within online communities. Citizen science can constitute an innovative theoretical framework within which online communities can be engaged for production of new forms of knowledge and for giving innovative perspective in organizational processes. The aim of the paper is to pose general reflection to build a conceptual transdisciplinary framework for the integration of online communities as part of citizen science projects integrating insights deriving from its application for hydrology and water resources management.

Co-production and nudging reflect the new paths taken by governments in the digital transformation age. Both are behaviour-based tools of public action. Both are premised on the idea that citizen engagement in public services is essential for problem solving. Thus far, however, these topics of debate have been addressed in isolation. The aim of this explorative paper is twofold: to come to an overall assessment about the potential of co-production and nudging, analysing the links between them, and the role that ICT plays in improving citizen behaviours. Drawing on a service lens, the paper makes the case that co-production and nudging can be combined to support citizens in their ‘service user journey’. This tentative exercise is a conceptual one, but hopefully one that broadens the understanding of citizens’ participation mediated by digital technologies. In essence, the joint adoption of co-production and nudging could help design and deliver services that better meet citizen needs.

A systemic perspective could support an enterprise to integrate multiple organizational aspects to facilitate the implementation of sustainability in work practices. The study explores sustainability in SMEs work-practices from multiple stakeholder’ perspectives following a systemic approach to developing a systemic sustainability model proposal. This model intends to investigate sustainability’ relationships to uncover the business’s level of interactions, which results in a sustainability real-practice approach. In this context, the sociotechnical approach is essential for integrating sustainability in work-practices as it aims to balance technical and human systems to improve the quality of work context. Furthermore, an empirical study supports the creation of the model, which emphasizes the possible failure of the current sustainability approach implementation in practice. Overall, the systemic sustainability model intends to explore a systemic perspective to understand and decrease systems’ complexity in enterprises’ context to develop sustainability in work-practices. The analysis’ result emphasizes the importance of interactions to achieve sustainable development goals in a work-practices context.

Although mobile payments have gained considerable attention in academic research, there still are major gaps in our more in-depth understanding of the antecedents of their acceptance and use. In this study, we aim to address these gaps by examining the potential gender and age differences in the use intention of mobile payments and its antecedents in terms of the effects of the antecedent factors on use intention as well as the antecedent factors and use intention themselves while also considering the critical prerequisite of measurement invariance. Moreover, through a careful selection of the compared age groups, we extend the examination to cover also the potential generational differences between digital natives and digital immigrants. As the data for the study, we use the responses to an online survey that were collected from Finnish consumers in May 2020 and are analysed by using structural equation modelling (SEM). In terms of gender, we find no differences in the effects of the antecedent factors on use intention but find women to perceive the use of mobile payments as both less easy and less secure than men. In turn, in terms of age and generation, we find the effect of social influence on use intention to be stronger for younger users representing digital natives, whereas older users representing digital immigrants were found to perceive the use of mobile payments as less easy. Finally, we discuss these findings in more detail from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Connected IT services are considered a key offering for the future differentiation of car manufacturers in automotive aftersales. Enabled by ICT, the additional value and customer experience offered can make the difference on the market. However, the customers’ perception and thus their intention to use such services has rarely been studied in the literature so far. Since their actual adoption is crucial to achieve a competitive advantage, this paper presents criteria that influence the usage intention. They have been analyzed by an exploratory quantitative study using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and PLS-SEM. Results of the survey (n = 260) indicate that the intention to use connected services strongly depends on their overall risk aversity regarding online activities in general. It shows the necessity for car manufacturers to put more focus on offering the right services to their target groups.

Work today consists of complex arrangements of loosely interrelated digital tools that shape work and form digital infrastructures. These digital infrastructures can either support or hinder the workers in their daily tasks. Working in an environment where some digital tools are designed for work purposes, and others without the proposed end-users in mind creates a need for improvisation. The consequence for workers may include finding various types of workarounds when shifting between digital tools. These workarounds become important for how work is performed. Through a multiple case study, this paper explores how workarounds are manifested in different work settings through four cases in the public sector. We conceptualize workarounds as practices of flexibility, efficiency, and responsibility, and show how workarounds result in new and innovative ways of working, which can be understood as a form of infrastructuring.

Social innovation scholars and sociologists regard shocks and crises that impact heavily on social systems as opportunities for self-reflection and as windows of opportunity for the emergence of new ideas and possibilities. In this sense, the social systems recovery in the new normal post-Covid19 era can open new opportunities for the spreading of the transformational impact of social innovation. This will concern also public administration organizations since social innovation can also be seen as a particular perspective on how the public sector should be reformed. Hence, social innovation should be a topic of particular interest for public administration scholars. The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate whether and how social innovation has been considered in the top academic public administration journals. The study confirms that the topic is still underexplored in this literature and highlights some possible research directions that can contribute to bridge this gap.

The aim of this paper is to trace the development of the literature in an objective manner by applying the Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA). It contributes to the literature by building a solid map for future research avenues in the stream of institutional logic and change. Our findings illustrate the time-based introduction in the literature of change mechanisms, such as theorization, rhetoric, representation, and a recent focus on professional role identity, especially in the healthcare context. Recent trends emerge: (i) contributions on emerging global trends, with the application of hybrid organization in sustainable transitions and social enterprises; (ii) increasing body of research applying Institutional Logics and Institutional work in the analysis of organizational change; (iii) increasing interest from scholars of different disciplines in applying the institutional logics perspective; and (iv) the need to further develop the underlying theoretical assumptions of Institutional Logics. Finally, some limitations: (i) selected time frame of analysis; (ii) only author keywords were considered; (iii) overlooking other valuable scientific contributions due to “Matthew effect”.

In this study, we analyze research collaborations and their characteristics in the higher education (HE) scientific community in recent years. Specifically, we focus on the most influential journals in the field according to the Academic Journal Guide 2021— the Academy of Management Learning & Education, the British Educational Research Journal, Management Learning, and Studies in Higher Education—to create our dataset composed of 1,322 articles. Using a bibliometric analysis technique, we design a comprehensive map of scientific production and impact in recent years (2016–2021). We study authorship and co-authorship in the HE field, highlighting the most productive authors and countries and the collaborations that emerge through network analysis. We also perform a citation analysis to examine the impact of the field. Finally, we conclude our discussion with a call for an in-depth study of the most debated and emerging topics in the field.

Hybrid organisations have become important due to their growing popularity based on their different and flexible forms and suitability for all the stakeholders. We investigate the evolutionary trend of the research on hybrid organisations discourse. For this purpose, we analyse a dataset composed of 471 papers selected from the Scopus platform. Adopting a bibliometric analysis approach, we perform descriptive and topic analyses. The results of the descriptive analysis show the growing interest of researchers on this specific topic, specifically in recent years. The topic analysis presents the main topics studied by the authors in our dataset. We find that hybrid organisations topic has been linked with different themes and issues, including social enterprises, institutional logics, social entrepreneurship, governance, sustainability, non-profit organisations and benefit corporation.

Robotic process automation (RPA) has by now for years been viewed as a disruptive innovation that will have a significant impact on accounting, HR and payroll services, and yet the rate of adopting the innovation has not reached a level anticipated in past predictions. As several elements have a negative impact on the organization’s rate of adopting RPA, passive resistance to change has a significant impact in the form of constant dithering. Resistance to change can emerge at any stage of the Innovation-Decision process and fluctuate throughout the continued adoption, causing wasted investments, capabilities and resources.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is an approach that manages complexities such as organizational structure, technology, and business by providing a holistic view of the organization to coordinate digital transformation efforts. While previous research has highlighted several challenges in taking advantage of EA, few empirical investigations explained how organizations should manage EA attempts to avoid failure. This paper aimed to explore the root causes of organizational challenges for EA management (EAM) by conducting a case study. Our findings illustrate inadequate legitimacy as a root cause of the organizational challenges, such as lack of shared understanding, stakeholders’ engagement, and financial and management support, that needs to be managed over time. Particularly, we demonstrate that although pragmatic legitimacy can positively affect the EAM at early stages, regulatory legitimacy plays the primary role in EAM success. In addition, contradictory views and organizational bureaucracy are recognized as significant barriers to achieving normative and cultural-cognitive legitimacy.

Even though organizations may plan for long-term enterprise-wide objectives, they are shaped by local decision-maker’s actions. The latter tend to have conflicting goals, such as short-term and immediate satisfaction of local business needs over organization-wide objectives. While local and diverse decision-making enables specialized products and services, ungoverned behavior may lead organizations that are hard to control and manage. Hence, the challenge is to harness, rather than eliminate decentral autonomy by reaping its benefits while limiting its downsides. Pursuing this purpose, this Design Science Research (DSR) study presents the creation and evaluation of a governance mechanism: a nudge-based label. It also contains a set of design features, which are evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively with expert surveys and discussions. The contributions include design knowledge about labels and the investigation of nudging as an intra-organizational governance mechanism.

This paper proposes a methodology for business process analysis, conceived in the context of business process (BP) management. The proposal addresses business process analysis with a knowledge management approach, adopting an Agile philosophy. It is based on the progressive, iterative construction of a knowledge base about the business organization and, specifically, the process to be innovated. The methodology proposes a set of information structures, in the form of a sequence of seven different knowledge artefacts that starts with a simple, intuitive process specification and then evolves towards richer models. The method has been conceived to be easily adopted by business experts, allowing them to acquire, model and manage business knowledge without the need of knowledge management experience. In this way, business experts are kept at the centre of the business analysis process and the created business models can be easily transferred to a Low-code platform for a seamless development of enterprise information systems.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the adoption of practices and tools finalized to support smart workers to improve their work conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, we believe that such a peculiar situation has represented an important “opportunity” for companies to reaffirm the centrality of the wellbeing of their people and the need to take care of it, to put at the heart of internal policies wellbeing and inclusion reinforcing - and in some cases redesigning - their already existing systems. In detail, our research aims to examine how some practices even more fostered through electronic channels have been used and how these are expected to change the usual people management with an impact on future organizational behaviours. The analysis was carried out on the case study of a big MNC. During the pandemic, this company has implemented an ongoing survey articulated in three waves (April 2020, July 2020, and October 2020) to understand employees’ feelings toward working in the new situation and their perception of organizational inclusion in conditions of physical distance – being aware that the “new” approach represents a no-return point in the evolution of HRM. These results offer interesting stimuli for practitioners and scholars in the field of HRM and OB towards the new normal.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic emergency, the number of remote workers has increased exponentially with a large proportion of the workforce operating from home in April 2020. After the first lockdown period, the percentage of remote workers decreased radically, and was estimated to be around 35–40% in 2021. However, doubts and criticisms have arisen as to whether organizations are carrying out remote working practices effectively. Adopting the socio-technical system (STS) perspective, this paper aims to investigate the specific characteristics of remote working in order to identify the major factors which might affect the adoption of agile working, rather than simply remote working, in organizations. A causal-effect path will be depicted to explain the evolution of remote working adoption in organizations, and the need for task and job redesign, business processes reingeneering, innovative eHRM policies, cultural changes, and new organizational roles. The paper describes the new organizational roles, tasks and competences aimed at enabling an effective adoption of agile working in organization.

Blended and online learning environments continue to grow, transforming higher education. The motivation behind this study is to explore blended and online learning environments, from the perspective of students, through the lens of Activity Theory (AT). Based on 12 virtual semi-structured interviews with Master's (MSc) students at one University in England, the paper sheds light onto some of the findings with respect to student motivation underlying engagement, as well as tensions and contradictions in the activity system.