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The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated a global movement of open innovation initiatives aimed to provide knowledge and tools to support policy decisions and actions in the emergency scenario. The authors describe an open innovation process aimed to build an information coordination system to reduce the infection diffusion within the population.

The authors use coordination theory principles to elaborate a framework of activities, resources and dependencies among information resources and producers in the COVID-19 emergency. The framework was applied to develop a case study aimed at describing a health emergency system implemented by Dyrecta Lab (a research laboratory on computer science) and CITEL (a medical research center).

The authors describe the existence of relevant “flow,” “fit” and “share” dependencies within the activities of infection containment and medical treatment. The authors identify eight key resources and a number of actors involved in those activities, and describe a platform able to gather a multitude of epidemic-related metrics with the purpose to address dependencies and support decision making.

The authors provide insights for advancing the academic discussion on process coordination principles in time-constrained, volatile and highly demanding scenarios.

The value of the authors’ research can be identified for practitioners engaged to develop innovative development projects for public utility. The authors provide a contribution also for first responders and health operators involved in management of the current and future emergencies.

The adoption of process coordination principles is a relatively new and powerful approach to analyze and optimize the processes that characterize the management of emergency scenarios. Besides, the study and application of open innovation in healthcare are partially limited.

This study aims to provide a methodology and tools to design new organizational processes and artificial intelligence (AI)-based scoring to optimize the resources management in healthcare units.

Process design and process data-driven simulation: the processes are designed by the business process modeling and notation and the unified modeling language standards. Data processing is performed by Correlation matrix analysis and by Fuzzy c-Means data clustering. The matching between the two methods provides the most indicated final corrective actions of the “TO BE” organizational model.

This proposed method, experimentally applied in this work merging the lean management model (LMM), process mining (PM) and AI methods, named process mining organization (PMO) model (Rosa et al., 2023 (b)), is able to improve organizational processes of a hospitalization unit (HU) by developing three propaedeutic phases: (1) analysis of the current state of the processes (“AS IS”) by identifying the critical issues as bottlenecks of processes, (2) AI data processing able to provide additional classified and predicted information allowing the “TO BE” workflow process and (3) implementation of corrective actions suggested by the PMO in order to support strategic decision-making processes in the short, medium and long term by classifying an order of priority about the healthcare procedures/protocols to perform.

The main limitation of the proposed case study is in the limited number of available digital data to process. This aspect reduces the capability to interpret result. In any case, the proposed methodology is a “launch” work to define a new approach to integrate organizational processes including workflow design and AI scoring. Future work will be focused on managerial implications due to use of the discussed method: design and development of new human resource (HR) organizational protocols following data analysis to optimize costs and care services and to decrease injury compensation claims.

Main implications are in healthcare managerial scenarios: design and development of new HR organizational protocols following data analysis to optimize costs and care services and to decrease injury compensation claims.

Care services optimization is addressed on HUs.

The design of HR organizational processes integrates AI-driven data decision-making processes. This case study examines AI-based innovation analytics addressed on resource efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to review previous research on public appointments to systematize existing knowledge, identify gaps and discuss implications for future research in this field.

This paper is based on a systematic literature review, carried out using the Scopus database. We selected academic articles published in journals ranked in the 2018 CABS Academic Journal Guide plus public administration articles in journals classified by Google as falling within the areas of public policy and administration. The papers were analysed according to four categories: geographical area, theoretical framework, research method and organizational setting.

Results show the lack of research regarding areas like Latin America or East Asia; from a theoretical viewpoint, given the lack of explicit theoretical approaches, future research should have more formal and clear theoretical frameworks. Moreover, given the dominance of case study and review/reflection studies, alternative research methods, such as surveys or mixed methods are suggested for future works.

We identify a new research agenda to revive the focus on public appointments as a tool for intra- and inter-organizational governance in the public sector. Specifically, we argue that how the process of public appointments is managed has huge democratic implications, and public managers have a key role to play in that respect by designing effective governance systems and organizational procedures. The selection of papers has been limited to articles published in peer- review journals ranked in the 2018 CABS Guide; no distinctions have been made regarding journals' positioning in the ranking. Moreover, this work takes a managerial and organizational approach, while the research on public appointments is clearly interdisciplinary, with previous contributions coming mainly from political scientists.

Despite the relevant body of literature on this topic, this study represents the first manuscript to summarize the state of the art of this theme, providing a research agenda on this very relevant but quite neglected issue in public governance.

This paper aims to investigate how relational connectivity can enhance accountability through non-financial reporting regulation in Europe. The paper contributes to the mandatory disclosure literature and provides practical implications for the application of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU.

A case study research methodology is used, analyzing how a listed Italian insurance company embraces a dialogic communication approach with stakeholders along 2018.

From a theoretical standpoint, this paper enhances the scholarly understanding of the relevance and role of the concept of relational connectivity as a mean for effectively enhancing accountability, providing some prerequisites for effectively implementing relational connectivity. From a practical perspective, results address the criticism related to the directive 2014/95/EU guidelines in effectively helping the organization toward enhancing accountability. Through a case study, results show how companies can achieve in practice the goal of enhancing corporate accountability.

The paper is original, as it addresses the topic of relational connectivity applied to the EU Directive 2014/95/EU. Results contribute to the development of the understanding of the mandatory disclosure in a dialogic perspective. Additionally, the paper addresses a case study showing how the analyzed company used relational connectivity to engage an effective dialogue with stakeholders.

This study aims to present a methodology and a system to support the technical and managerial issues involved in anomaly detection within the reverse logistics process of an e-commerce company.

A case study approach is used to document the company’s experience, with interviews of key stakeholders and integration of obtained evidence with secondary data.

The paper presents an algorithm and a system to support a more efficient and smart management of reverse logistics based on a set of anticipatory actions, and continuous and automatic monitoring of returned goods. Improvements are described in terms of a number of key performance indicators.

The analysis and the developed system need further applications and validations in other organizational contexts. However, the research presents a roadmap and a research agenda for the reverse logistics transformation in Industry 4.0, by also providing new insights to design a multidimensional performance dashboard for reverse logistics.

The paper describes a replicable experience and provides checklists for implementing similar initiatives in the domain of reverse logistics, in the aim to increase the company’s performance along four key complementary dimensions, i.e. time savings, accuracy, completeness of data analysis and interpretation and cost efficiency.

The main novelty of the study stays in carrying out a classification of anomalies by type and product category, with related causes, and in proposing operational recommendations, including process monitoring and control indicators that can be included to design a reverse logistics performance dashboard.

This paper aims to examine the European Union (EU) 95/2014 Directive’s impact on large public companies. It chose Italy as a pivotal country that made non-financial information assurance mandatory, going beyond the EU Directive’s original requirements. Specifically, it investigates how the UE Directive fosters institutionalisation of the non-financial reporting (NFR) process in organisations.

Two large public companies in Italy are used as case studies. Data are gathered from annual and integrated reports, institutional websites and semi-structured interviews with the managers and employees involved in different organisational positions. The authors adopted the neo-institutional theory as a theoretical lens to identify the organisations’ response to the (external) institutional pressures influencing corporate reporting practices.

The findings demonstrate how the EU Directive fostered changes to large public companies’ reporting practices and external pressures contributed to influencing changes to internal organisational practices in terms of new internal processes, procedures and structures. These changes are motivated by the companies’ need to guarantee reliable information to be produced in their non-financial reports.

This paper helps academics and policymakers to advance NFR practices by understanding regulatory factors that can foster changes in the internal reporting process and responsibility within organisations.

The findings provide some empirical insights to foster reflections on the EU Directive’s effectiveness in changing reporting practices. This paper contributes to enriching the literature on institutional theory in shaping mandatory non-financial disclosure by identifying the institutional pressures influencing the effectiveness of regulations to change NFR practices.

The purpose of this paper is to design simple and high-performing screens capable to separate circularly polarized electromagnetic waves in Ku band from the ones in Ka band.

The proposed screen consists of an inductive double resonant element FSS, i.e. a regular array of circular holes in a metal thick plate, in order to grant the robustness to mechanical stress for antenna applications in extreme conditions.

The proposed design of a multi-band frequency selective surface (FSS) is able to separate circularly polarized electromagnetic waves in Ku band from the ones in Ka band.

The paper shows the capabilities of a novel FSS that combine the transmission properties of two simple FSSs which allows us to achieve an interesting behaviour in three typical bands of the satellite communications.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical expression for the characteristic impedance of a microstrip line in presence of a dielectric cover.

Assuming a quasi-TEM propagation mode, a rigorous conformal mapping based on the Schwarz-Christoffel transformation is employed to derive the equivalent capacitance model, which can then be applied to derive a closed analytical expression for the effective permittivity and the characteristic impedance of the line.

Such a formulation is not limited to the case of a single cover layer, but an arbitrary number of electric overlays can be considered as well. Comparisons with published numerical results and full-wave simulations in the case of a single cover layer have been also performed to test the validity of the proposed approach.

The new analytical formula for the characteristic impedance of a microstrip line with a single dielectric cover shows better performances compared to the one of closed formulas already presented in the literature.

In this paper, the authors analyze the use of content analysis in disclosing voluntarily information on intangible assets, the intangible assets disclosures (IAD). The purpose of this paper is to conduct a structured literature review (SLR) that assesses the possibilities and limitations of content analysis.

To that end, the authors analyze the existing literature on the topic in the main international databases. In all, 74 empirical articles utilizing content analysis as a research methodology for IAD were reviewed. Regarding the selection of sources, the authors should indicate that the SLR performed includes academic studies published in journals or presented at conferences and that are always subject to a double process of anonymous review.

The obtained results indicate that despite the frequent use of content analysis in studies on IAD, its use does not meet all expectations.

The study synthesizes the research on content analysis for the case of information on intangible assets, offering an updated and global framework for future researchers through the SLR.

Among other problems, the authors found its excessive emphasis on the amount disclosed in the annual report, ignoring other reports in which more information regarding intangible assets is available, such as in the case of the sustainability reports. Furthermore, the use of very different coding systems and its exclusive use without being combined with other methodologies are detected. These aspects affect the quality problems of the sources used, which directly results in the utility of the evidenced findings.

These conclusions allow the authors to conclude on the need to open different lines of study that review the use of content analysis in this topic.

The work focuses on the quality of disclosures more so than on the quantity, offering a critical view that summarizes the utility of the employment of content analysis for this type of disclosure and its implications for future research on this topic. Despite previous studies, the authors highlight the new insights revealed from IAD research, especially since the seminal paper of Dumay and Cai (2014).

The purpose of this paper is to show how metamaterials with extreme values of permittivity and permeability, may be effectively used to design artificial magnetic conductors (AMC) at a given frequency. In particular, this paper theoretically determines, for the different polarizations of the incidence field, the conditions under which metamaterials can behave as an AMC.

In order to find out the required values of the constitutive parameters, this paper has done a theoretical analysis based on the transmission-line theory. The obtained analytical reflection coefficient has been particularized for the different possible polarizations of the incidence field in order to find the constitutive parameters values that this paper needs for the AMC behavior.

Depending on the polarization of the field, it is shown that different values of the constitutive parameters are needed to get AMCs. In particular, it is shown that in the case of TEM and TE polarizations, a large value of the permeability is enough to obtain an AMC boundary condition. In the case of the TM polarization, instead, the AMC boundary condition is effectively achieved by using a material with vanishing permittivity. The role of the permittivity in the three polarizations is discussed. Finally, possible implementations and applications at microwave and optical frequencies are presented.

The idea of using miniaturized inclusions to obtain AMCs is not completely new. However, to the authors' best knowledge, a complete and rigorous theoretical analysis showing the capabilities and the limits of this approach has not yet been presented in the open technical literature.