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The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how big data collected from social media contribute to knowledge management practices, innovation processes and business performance.

The study used 418 questionnaires collected from firms that actively invest in marketing, advertising and communication in the Italian market. The hypotheses testing and analysis were conducted using structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that customers’ data gathered from social media produce different effects on knowledge management practices and firms’ innovation capacity. Furthermore, increased innovation capacity turned out to affect customer relationship performance directly, while it contributes to gain better financial performance only when it is used to gain relational outcomes.

The outcomes of the study help firms to develop a clear understanding about which big data retrieved from social media can be useful to improve their knowledge management practices and enhance their innovation capacity. Moreover, by investigating the mediating role of big data knowledge management in the context of social media knowledge acquisition and innovation capacity, this study also extends the mediation variables used to understand the relationship between knowledge capabilities and practices and innovation constructs.

Social media developments in the last decade have led to the emergence of a new form of word of mouth (WOM) in the digital environment. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is considered by many scholars and practitioners to be the most influential informal communication mechanism between businesses and potential and actual consumers. The purpose of this paper is to extend knowledge about WOM in this new context by proposing a conceptual framework that enables a better understanding of how trust and reciprocity influence eWOM participation in ORCs.

This study applies non-probability convenience sampling technique to conduct a quantitative study of data from an online survey of 189 members of ORCs. Partial least squares (PLS) is used to analyse the correlations between individuals’ intention to seek opinion, to give their own opinion and to pass on the opinion of another within ORCs.

The data analysis reveals that opinion seeking within ORCs had a direct effect on opinion giving and opinion passing. Ability trust and integrity trust had a positive effect on opinion seeking, while benevolence trust had a direct positive effect on opinion passing. Reciprocity had a direct impact on opinion passing. While reciprocity did not affect opinion giving, the relationship between these two concepts was mediated by integrity trust.

By studying the complexities that characterise the relationships between reciprocity, trust and eWOM, the study extends understanding of eWOM in ORCs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of only a few papers that have examined the complex interrelationships between reciprocity, trust and eWOM in the context of ORCs.

Ambidexterity refers to the tension between two different business models within the same organisation. This paper examines the significance of individuals’ knowledge exploration and exploitation activities in an organisation’s ambidexterity context, along with how they affect the creation of an affective commitment in the workforce. The study then investigates how an organisation’s ambidexterity vision contributes to employees’ affective commitment to learning.

These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 219 employees in the financial sector, using structural equation modelling validated by factor analysis.

The results indicate that for a firm to successfully achieve ambidexterity, its managers need to explicitly work to nurture a context where explorative and exploitative activities take place simultaneously. Another relevant contribution of this study has been addressing the impact that explorative and exploitative activities may have on affective commitment. The results suggest that while the effect of the ambidexterity context on the affective commitment by way of explorative activities is statistically insignificant, the effects of exploitative activities on affective commitment are statistically significant.

While the extant literature provides useful insights into the relationship between contextual ambidexterity and organisational performance, the relationship between ambidexterity and affective commitment has been less researched. This study has shown that an ambidexterity context is a key component in the process of combining knowledge structures in ways which are appropriate for both exploring value of that knowledge for the company and being effective in exploiting its memory.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss key aspects of knowledge management (KM) education in response to challenges posed by the necessity to improve KM as a discipline and an established professional field.

The paper is based on a systematic review of the current literature. This review was used as input in a recent panel held at the 2016 International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM). The paper brings together current literature with thought-provoking panelists’ presentations and subsequent debates with the audience.

KM education from the “why, what, who, where and when” perspectives were first addressed and analyzed, and the end result was a reflection on “how” to approach KM education in the future.

This paper effectively underlines that, KM being a relatively new phenomenon, there is no clear consensus about roles that KM employees should play in an organization, what KM competencies and skills are needed, and where and when these should be obtained. Broad guidelines on how to approach KM education in the future may serve as a basis for further research.

The study provides suggestions on how to place KM in adult education.

The paper tackles the research questions through an innovative combination of a systematic literature review and a panel discussion on the topic of KM and education. Overall, the paper provides a fresh view of the state of the art of knowledge and research on the topic and also shows the common vision of a group of KM researchers and educators.

The purpose of this paper is to frame organisational cybersecurity through a strategic lens, as a function of an interplay of pragmatism, inference, holism and adaptation. The authors address the hostile epistemic climate for intellectual capital management presented by the dynamics of cybersecurity as a phenomenon. The drivers of this hostility are identified and their implications for research and practice are discussed.

The philosophical foundations of cybersecurity in its relation with strategy, knowledge and intellectual capital are explored through a review of the literature as a mechanism to contribute to the emerging theoretical underpinnings of the cybersecurity domain.

This conceptual paper argues that a knowledge-based perspective can serve as the necessary platform for a phenomenon-based view of organisational cybersecurity, given its multi-disciplinary nature.

By recognising the knowledge-related vectors, mechanisms and tendencies at play, a novel perspective on the topic can be developed: cybersecurity as a “knowledge problem”. In order to facilitate such a perspective, the paper proposes an emergent epistemology, rooted in systems thinking and pragmatism.

In practice, the knowledge-problem narrative can underpin the development of new organisational support constructs and systems. These can address the distinctiveness of the strategic challenges that cybersecurity poses for the growing operational reliance on intellectual capital.

The research narrative presents a novel knowledge-based analysis of organisational cybersecurity, with significant implications for both interdisciplinary research in the field, and practice.

This research addresses the relationships between the current, dynamic organisational cyber risk climate, organisational cybersecurity performance and changes in cybersecurity investments, with an aim to address the hostile epistemic climate for intellectual capital management presented by the dynamics of cybersecurity as a phenomenon.

Expanding on the views of digital security and resilience as a knowledge problem, the research looks at cybersecurity as a critical capability within organisations, particularly relevant in critical infrastructure sectors. The problem is studied from the perspective of 400 C-level executives from critical infrastructure sectors across the UK. Data collected at the peak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a time when critical infrastructure organisations have been under a significant strain due to an increase in cybersecurity incidents, were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling.

The research found a significant correlation between the board's perception of a change in their cybersecurity risk climate and patterns of both the development of cybersecurity management capabilities and cybersecurity investments. The authors also found that a positive correlation exists between the efforts placed by critical infrastructure organisations in cybersecurity training and the changes in investment in their cybersecurity, particularly in relation to their intellectual capital development efforts.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that explores the board's perception of cybersecurity in critical infrastructure organisations both from the intellectual capital perspective and in the dynamic cyber risk climate derived from the COVID-19 crisis. The authors’ findings expand on the growing perception of cybersecurity as a knowledge problem, and thus inform future research and practice in the domain of intellectual capital management and its role in supporting the cybersecurity and digital resilience of business and society.

The spread of the Internet in the business world has led to the development of new business-to-business (B2B) settings. Although a large number of companies have adopted B2B strategies, many of these fail to implement such strategies effectively. The most common barriers encompass the technology assimilation by users. This study investigates how IT assimilation can encourage potential and realised absorptive capacity and how these can, in turn, facilitate organisational agility and performance.

A survey was conducted in Spanish companies that make use of Editran, a platform to support B2B strategies. In total, 110 valid responses were obtained. Advanced analytical methods of PLS-SEM as fit measures and prediction procedure recently developed by Shmueli et al. (2019) were used.

The results show that there is a positive relationship between the three preceding constructs (IT assimilation, potential and realised absorptive capacity) and organisational agility. This study also finds support for a direct relationship between organisational agility and firm performance.

This study provides a further understanding and forecasting through the theoretical development and empirical investigation of the role of IT assimilation on firm performance in a B2B scenario by: (1) examining the link between IT and the firm's absorptive capacity and, more specifically, with the two subsets of potential and realised absorptive capacity, which have not received much attention from previous literature; and (2) exploring how an improvement in potential and realised absorptive capacity may place firms in a better position to develop their organisational agility.