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Prior crowdsourcing literature has highlighted that communication among peers within the crowdsourcing community matters since it affects the solvers’ success. Particularly, previous scholars have focused on how the volume and the content of communications among solvers improve their creativity and likelihood of winning crowdsourcing contests. This study aims to understand whether, alongside these two communication dimensions, the linguistic style of solvers’ communications (i.e. how solvers write things) permits them to promote their qualities in seekers’ eyes and emerge from the crowd.

Empirically, we collected data from a sample of 1866 solvers within the community of the 99designs crowdsourcing platform to build an ad-hoc dataset and test our hypotheses by running an econometric analysis.

Our results show that by posting comments of moderate length and prudent complexity, characterized by positive language and an other-oriented perspective, solvers can signal their capabilities and skills to increase their likelihood of succeeding in crowdsourcing contests.

This research’s findings contribute to prior crowdsourcing literature, which has so far exclusively focused on the linguistic style used by seekers when drafting the requests for proposals of their competitions. Moreover, the paper offers practical guidance for both solvers and seekers, suggesting how to leverage peer communications in crowdsourcing contests.

The effect of the transition toward digital technologies on today’s businesses (i.e. Industry 4.0 transition) is becoming increasingly relevant, and the number of studies that have examined this phenomenon has grown rapidly. However, systematizing the existing findings is still a challenge, from both a theoretical and a managerial point of view. In such a setting, the knowledge management (KM) discipline can provide guidance to address such a gap. Indeed, the implementation of fundamental digital technologies is reshaping how firms manage knowledge. Thus, this study aims to critically review the existing literature on Industry 4.0 from a KM perspective.

First, the authors defined a structuring framework to highlight the role of Industry 4.0 transition along with absorptive capacity (ACAP) processes (acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation), while specifying what is being managed, that is data, information and/or (actual) knowledge, according to the data-information-knowledge (DIK) hierarchy. The authors then followed the systematic literature review methodology, which involves the use of explicit criteria to select publications to review and outline the stages a process has to follow to provide a transparent and replicable review and to analyze the existing literature according to the theoretical framework. This procedure yielded a final list of 150 papers.

By providing a clear picture of what scholars have studied so far on Industry 4.0 transition, in terms of KM, this literature review highlights that among all the studied digital technologies, the big data analytics technology is the one that has been explored the most in each phase of the ACAP process. A constructive body of research has also emerged in recent years around the role played by the internet of things, especially to explain the acquisition of data. On the other hand, some digital technologies, such as cyber security and smart manufacturing, have largely remained unaddressed. An explanation of the role of these technologies has been provided, from a KM perspective, together with the business implications.

This study is one of the first attempts to revise the literature on Industry 4.0 transition from a KM perspective, and it proposes a novel framework to read existing studies and on which to base new ones. Furthermore, the synthesis makes two main contributions. First, it provides a clear picture of the different digital technologies that support the four ACAP phases in relation to the DIK hierarchy. Accordingly, these results can emphasize what the literature has looked at so far, as well as which digital technologies have gained the most attention and their impacts in terms of KM. Second, the synthesis provides prescriptive considerations on the development of future research avenues, according to the proposed research framework.

The study focuses on the value co-creation processes in humanitarian professional services provision, analysing the key enabling factors of beneficiaries' participation, involved in long-term integration programmes (L-TIPs).

Through an in-depth case study, the research looks at the practices of value co-creation in humanitarian professional services, considering both the perspectives of the professional service provider and beneficiary.

In professional services beneficiary's participation affects the success of the L-TIPs outcomes. Participation's enablers can be classified into four different spheres, each belonging to different elements of professional service: the beneficiary, the professionals, the service design and the external environment.

This paper contributes to the literature on humanitarian operations & supply chain management. By focussing on an understudied phase of the disaster life-cycle management, it contributes to the theory of value co-creation by exploring new issues and drivers of beneficiary's participation.

This research has interesting implications for policymakers and humanitarian practitioners. First, guidelines for professionals' behaviours and interventions should be designed as well as new practices and strategies should be adopted. Second, governments should avoid concentrating L-TIPs in few big humanitarian centres.

The study focuses on an understudied stage of humanitarian operations, namely the L-TIPs, and uses this setting to build on the theory of value co-creation in professional services by identifying its enabling factors, clustered into four spheres, namely beneficiary, professional, service design and environmental.