Anna Nosella

This study investigates how visual labels—specifically eco-labels and "Made in Italy" tags—affect consumer preferences and visual attention. A Conjoint Analysis experiment has been developed and performed in which participants evaluate a series of product configurations, each differing in the type and position of these labels, by rating them individually based on perceived liking. Eye-tracking technology is used to record visual behaviour, capturing metrics such as fixation duration and number of fixations to defined areas of interest. The objective is to assess whether label characteristics systematically influence both perceived product appeal and patterns of visual engagement. The integration of preference ratings with eye-tracking data enables the exploration of associations between attention and evaluation. Statistical analyses focus on identifying significant effects of label attributes and quantifying the relationship between gaze behaviour and stated preferences. This approach demonstrates the value of combining experimental methods with biometric data to better understand consumer decision-making. The findings offer practical insights for optimizing product labeling and packaging strategies, informing how visual elements should be designed and positioned to enhance consumer engagement. From a statistical perspective, the integration of eye-tracking and preference data supports more nuanced modeling of attention-driven choice behaviour, with applications in marketing research, sensory evaluation, and behavioural analytics. This contributes to evidence-based decision-making for brands and policymakers aiming to promote sustainable and origin-certified products more effectively.

Access to heterogeneous knowledge resources is suggested in the literature as an important explanation of firm innovation and performance. The exchange of knowledge, however, can be a complex managerial challenge, especially between different epistemic communities. Our research focuses on the concept of epistemic communities to illuminate the complexity of tensions that arise in heterogeneous knowledge exchange in alliances, thus filling a gap in the literature. Using the Straussian grounded theory case study approach, our research investigates the emergence of horizontal, vertical, and inter-organizational epistemic tensions and explores management controls as instruments to guide the knowledge exchange in intermediary-driven research and development alliances. We find that the source of multiple epistemic tensions is rooted in the natural social behaviors of epistemic community members and further shows how these behaviors influence the effective use of inter-organizational management controls in facilitating heterogeneous knowledge exchange.

Purpose: Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.Design/methodology/approach: The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.Findings: The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.Originality/value: To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.

This paper examines the literature on paradoxes and tensions in interorganizational relationships (IORs) and identifies how such tensions are managed in interorganizational settings. In a systematic literature review, we analyzed 95 papers published between 1997 and 2021 on the subject of paradoxes in IORs. The sample showed a variety of paradoxes occurring in different interorganizational contexts, such as knowledge sharing and protection, short- and long-term orientation, and exploration and exploitation. The diversity of such paradoxes has led to crescent interest in cooperation. Our main results show that contextual factors and management practices influence the balance between paradoxes. Although the particular context of each IOR may be unique in terms of balancing paradoxical elements, we identified a set of “pre-tension practices” and “post-tension practices” which may help avoid the emergence of tensions or reduce their adverse effects. The findings of our systematic literature review have also enabled us to propose future research avenues concerning managing tensions in IORs, for instance, the link between paradoxes and IOR performance.

Startups contribute significantly to the economic development of a country. Despite their importance and promising future, they are extremely fragile, mainly for their lack of tangible and intangible resources. Since this can be obtained through an incubation process, business incubators (BIs) could have a significant impact on the survival rate of startups. Once defined their core structure and value proposition, there are other players, such as venture capitalists who could guarantee the funds necessary to make the startup’s business grow over time. Drawing on the resource-based view theory, this research explores whether some BIs could represent a certification of startup quality for venture capitalists (VCs). Specifically, we investigate whether some specific attributes of BIs increase the probability that a VC funds startups after being incubated; to this purpose, we carry out an experiment on a European sample of VCs. Results demonstrate that some characteristics of the BI can produce a sort of certification effect to the incubated startups, increasing the probability of being funded by VCs.

Academics and practitioners have since decades been interested in the organizational and managerial aspects of patent management. However, little attention has been devoted to validating and testing a measurement scale of patent management. With this background, the current article aims to empirically assess the factor structure of a patent management measurement scale, purify the scale, and validate it. The methodology follows the widely recognized procedure for scale validation and focuses on two steps: scale purification through an exploratory factor analysis on survey data and scale finalization through a confirmatory factor analysis performed on another set of data. The article yields that patent management has five core processes, namely generation, freedom to operate, portfolio management, exploitation and enforcement, and intelligence, as well as two supporting dimensions, namely strategy and organization for patenting. For each of these core processes and supporting dimensions, we outline the formative subconstructs as well as how these subconstructs are reflected in observable and measurable items. With the validity analysis, we show the significant impact of patent management on radical innovation performance.

The COVID-19 outbreak has compelled many organizations to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. In this context, the aim of this article is to unveil how a small R&D organization has been able to rapidly take advantage of the opportunities offered by the COVID-19 outbreak and to understand the factors that have enabled organizational speed. Results of the qualitative analysis of this exemplary single case show that a combination of factors at the individual level (i.e., characteristics of the CEO and collaborators), organizational level (i.e., structure, resources, operative systems and processes, culture), and partner level (i.e., characteristics of the partner portfolio) is required to go through a very fast recognition–decision–execution process.

Purpose: Following an increasing interest in the area that merges digital/I4.0 technologies and business models (BMs), which led to a proliferation of articles in this domain, the purpose of this article is to systematize this body of literature by means of a structured literature review.Design/methodology/approach: After a careful selection of articles, we carried out the analysis with the support of bibliometric techniques, using the bibliographic coupling approach complemented with factor analysis and the content analysis of articles.Findings: The results of the literature review analysis allow us to organize the literature around four main research streams, namely digital technologies and business model innovation, digital strategy and BMs, digital platforms and BMs, and IoT, servitization and BMs. On such a basis, we outline gaps and provide promising avenues for further research in this research area.Research limitations/implications: This study has implications for academics in terms of conceptualization of relevant constructs, integration of two streams of research and specific technologies whose relationship with the BM still deserves attention.Practical implications: This study has implications also for managers, who may take advantage of the description of some BM archetypes driven by digital/I4.0 technologies and also appreciate the relevance of taking a strategic approach, with a particular focus on the BM, toward the use of digital technologies.Originality/value: This study merges two relevant streams of research in an attempt to see how they have developed synergically and what potentials their merge could offer for future research.