As manufacturing firms adopt digital technologies to improve efficiency, they increasingly collaborate with system integrators to compensate for internal capability gaps. Such collaborations, however, are prone to interpretive uncertainty-cognitive misalignments about goals, processes, and technologies-that complicate coordination and value creation. This study examines how governance mechanisms shape the performance implications of these collaborations by analyzing survey data from 101 Italian automotive manufacturers. Focusing on two relational governance practices-co-creation and continuous collaboration-and two types of digital technologies-network and physical-digital interface technologies-we find that governance effectiveness is strongly contingent on technological characteristics. Co-creation is associated with lower cost efficiency when applied to more standardized physical-digital interface technologies, whereas relational governance is associated with higher cost efficiency in more systemically integrative digital initiatives involving network technologies. These findings advance research on inter-organizational governance and digital transformation by demonstrating how governance-technology alignment shapes operational outcomes and by highlighting the underexplored role of system integrators in manufacturing digitalization. The study also offers managers and policymakers guidance on tailoring governance to technological and relational contexts to support effective digital adoption.

Virtualization technologies-digital twins and virtual prototyping-are widely promoted as efficiency levers in new product development, yet we know little about how increasingly central virtual representations reorganize prototyping work over time and how ensuing contradictions become workable. We address this gap through a longitudinal case study of ALPHA, a luxury fashion engineering firm, tracing its virtualization trajectory (2015-2024) via 53 interviews plus archival and internal documents. Virtualization did not converge toward full digital substitution. As virtual representations became coordination hubs, three interdependent tensions persisted: optimization versus physicality, digital expertise versus craft knowledge, and collaboration intensification versus digital dependence. We theorize these as stable and habitable operational paradoxes-contradictory yet mutually enabling demands embedded in everyday prototyping work-stabilized through socio-technical configuration rather than cyclical reframing. We identify three stabilization mechanisms: interdependent representational architectures coupling physical prototypes with 2D/3D artefacts; epistemic authority that governs the enactment of digital competences while preserving craft-based evaluative closure; and partitioned discretion that combines traceability-critical digital workflows with bounded flexibility near material validation. We translate these insights into a diagnose-design-govern roadmap for building hybrid prototyping systems that accelerate iteration without displacing embodied expertise or inducing disabling rigidity.

Trade fairs are vital marketplaces for international business and destination-based service economies, yet their digital transformation has been slow and uneven because value depends on physical co-presence, trust, and sensory evaluation. This study examines how trade fairs evolve into phygital ecosystems, where digital infrastructures are embedded into the physical fair to augment coordination and engagement across the event lifecycle. We conducted an exploratory case study of the Italian trade fair ecosystem (2021-2024), combining 105 interviews with organizers, exhibitors, experts, and association representatives with extensive archival evidence, including a database of 654 AEFI-certified fairs. Findings reveal three dynamics: (1) in-person exchange remains the core of marketplace value despite digital extensions; (2) platform-based coordination shifts fairs from episodic events to more continuous, year-round engagement; and (3) frictions emerge around market structuring and governance, economic sustainability, and uneven digital readiness. We develop three propositions theorizing the platformization of historically physical marketplaces: embedded platforms become the coordination layer enabling phygital business models, reconfigure value creation mechanisms (efficiency, complementarities, lock-in, novelty), and shift governance toward multi-stakeholder orchestration. We also derive four actionable design pillars-management, connection, community, and monetization-to guide sustainable, inclusive phygital trade fair models.

The digitalization of cultural and creative industries has often followed a path of convergence between physical and digital artefacts, leading to the rise of digital platforms that reshape value chains. However, the cultural heritage sector has undergone a different form of digital transformation. Digital platforms in this field create a “phygital” experience that blends tradition with innovation. This study examines the role of digital platforms in fostering social and economic development in the cultural heritage sector, focusing on Google Arts & Culture, launched by Google in 2011. Through a longitudinal case study, we explore how digital platforms create value for multiple stakeholders—museums, users, and the platform itself—by enhancing efficiency, complementarities, novelty, and lock-in mechanisms. Our findings indicate that digital platforms introduce a more dynamic and complex ecosystem that drives growth and innovation while shifting cultural organizations from integrated supply chains to networks of strategic partnerships. The success of digital platforms in promoting social and economic development depends on museums’ ability to internalize legacy knowledge and platforms’ capacity to reinterpret this knowledge using advanced digital tools. This research contributes to the literature on innovation and strategic management by demonstrating that, rather than disrupting tradition, digital platforms enhance the cultural heritage experience. Additionally, while platforms like Google Arts & Culture operate under a non-profit model to democratize culture, they capture significant value through data aggregation, which may play a key role in training artificial intelligence systems.

This study investigates how cognitive and emotional mechanisms drive advancement in lean corporate programs, addressing a key yet underexplored factor in continuous improvement. While existing research documents lean program successes, it often overlooks the role of cognitive and emotional factors in program progression. Using a phenomenological approach, we integrate individual and plant-level data through both qualitative and quantitative methods. Focusing on a lean corporate program implemented across 22 Italian plants of a leading global carmaker, we employ a structural equation model to assess the relationships among lean organizing principles, cognitive involvement, emotional perceptions, and lean program advancement. Three key insights emerge: (1) A comprehensive application of lean organizing principles enhances employees' cognitive involvement in lean practices; (2) Cognitive involvement is essential for advancing lean corporate programs; (3) Positive emotional states—such as pride, self-efficacy, and perceived fairness—significantly mediate the relationship between cognitive involvement and lean advancement. This study contributes to lean management literature by demonstrating that positive emotions are critical for sustaining lean progress. By bridging the knowledge-based view with behavioral theories, we provide researchers and practitioners with a nuanced understanding of the interplay between cognitive and emotional factors in advancing lean programs.

In the last decade, the emergence of new digital technologies has dramatically revolutionized the traditional ways of doing business. Today an additional step to pursue a more comprehensive path for digitalization and to remain competitive is represented by the adoption of digital industrial platforms, especially for the more traditional manufacturing companies operating in the business-to-business sector. This chapter aims at investigating how the interplay between digital platforms - a key enabler for servitization - and digital technologies - a key enabler for personalization - shapes business model transformation by developing an integrative framework, tested with a case study of a manufacturing company operating in the medical device sector. The results show that the business model transformation is multidimensional and is enriched first by the personalization of the product offering and then by the servitization of the value proposition. We maintain that this integrative framework may enhance the scope for combining extant research and inform management research linking digital transformation to business model changes in a more systematic way.

Despite predictions that information technology (IT) investments would have a transformative effect on industry structures, little empirical research has compared the value generated by IT investments across sectors. This study theorizes and tests which component of value-output growth or input reduction-prevails at the industry level by analyzing the effects of IT investments on labor productivity. Results for 231 industries between 2008 and 2019 show that IT investments affect labor productivity growth. However, this effect has different drivers, depending on the industry. IT investments in industries specialized in information goods lead to output growth but to a reduction in labor input and output in other sectors. Taken together, the results confirm that industry is a relevant variable in IT business value research and raise policy implications about the structural divergence that IT investments are creating between sectors.

Remanufacturing is a life-cycle renewal process recognised as one of the most effective circular strategies that can be adopted to achieve sustainable production. However, its potential has been hindered by the absence of an integrated perspective across various business domains to catalyse successful remanufacturing efforts. This paper aims to explore how such an integrated perspective can facilitate the creation of sustainable value within remanufacturing business models. To fill this gap, an in-depth longitudinal case study was conducted on how remanufacturing practices can be effectively implemented in the white goods sector. The research identifies four fundamental mechanisms that, when used synergistically, pave the way for a successful remanufacturing approach yielding triple-bottom-line benefits. The study contributes to the remanufacturing literature by illustrating how (i) moving from products to solutions that fulfil customer priorities, (ii) resequencing business processes according to customer-oriented logic, (iii) enhancing the clock-speed of decision-making and (iv) sharing risks within the supply chain, can unveil new strategic positioning for sustainable value creation. From a practical perspective, it advocates for the adept management of remanufacturing uncertainties through continuous, active questioning of "Who-What-How" choices and the cultivation of circular and organic interdependencies.

The evolution of industries through vertical disintegration has long been the focus of attention and concern of management scholars and managers. However, most existing studies are based on transaction cost economics and address vertical disintegration choices as firm-level decisions. By integrating transaction costs economics with the resource-based view of the firm and moving from static analysis of individual transactions to dynamic analysis of the causes of change within an industry, the article develops an integrative framework that explains where and how vertical disintegration occurs. Drawing on the cultural heritage industry, the results show that vertical disintegration choices reflect differences in the way the institutional context favors (or prevents) the creation and capture of value enabled by technological change. On the one hand, firms with low strategic autonomy and limited flexibility in acquiring resources and competencies tend to evolve toward vertical disintegration decisions when digital platforms enter the industry-Google in our case. On the other hand, organizations with a high degree of strategic autonomy and high flexibility in acquiring resources and competencies opt for vertical integration strategies. In practical terms, the framework provides a tool for managers to understand whether their industry is prone to vertical disintegration.

We investigate the attributes that prevent the digitalization of tacit knowledge in the innovation management function through a longitudinal case study in the luxury fashion industry. We find that was supposed to improve the creativity phase of innovation (Digital Twin), creates new bottlenecks in the recombination mechanisms of tacit knowledge. In particular, our results show that the cognitive and procedural components of tacit knowledge (knowing how to do something) can be encoded in “if-then” rules and codified as “frozen knowledge” in and algorithm. However, as digitalization changes the interfaces through which the physical reality is perceived, the emotional – creative and experiential – components of tacit knowledge remain “ineffable” and therefore not codifiable in an algorithm. We also investigate the organizational mechanisms that enable the recombination of these “ineffable” forms of knowledge and find that they are underpinned by mutual adaptation through informal communication and task integration.

This study proposes and validates a new industry taxonomy to understand the use of IT that generates superior economic returns based on the specific economic and competitive characteristics of four different industry types and the strategic role of IT in each of these industry environments. Our findings extend the well-established industry taxonomy on the strategic role of IT (Automate, Informate, Transform) by considering how IT is changing the nature of the product/service in industries where transformational logics prevail. We found that in industries where the product/service is digital in nature, the firms that achieve higher economic returns are those where IT is used to support dual strategies based on the integration of cost leadership and differentiation. Conversely, in other industries – with the exception of those producing commodities – the firms that achieve superior returns are those that use IT to support differentiation. The results of this study can help managers make intelligent decisions about competitive strategies and IT investments, depending on the business environment of the sector in which the firm operates and the generative potential of emerging technologies to do new things.

The management literature has recently witnessed a considerable escalation of research around the implications of digitalization for firms and their environment. Yet, the conceptualization of the construct of digitalization remains elusive at best. In this chapter, we develop a taxonomy of the outcomes of the digitalization of physical reality, and of the interaction amongst digitalized units of physical reality. We maintain that these taxonomies may enhance the scope for combining extant research in integrative frameworks as well as informing management research that links digitalization and its agency in a more systematic way.

Despite the well-known benefits of remanufacturing as a value recovery strategy for end-of-life products, its implementation is still highly industry-dependent and much more complex than traditional manufacturing. Digital technologies play a key role in overcoming the complexity that currently characterises - and at the same time limits - the successful large-scale implementation of remanufacturing activities. However, they can also engender new shortcomings in the implementation of remanufacturing activities, whose effects are not unidirectional or unambiguous. In this study, we explore how digital technologies can help overcome the shortcomings that prevent the scalability of remanufacturing activities in mature and complex industries which produce highly polluting waste. We conducted a longitudinal case study on the implementation of a white goods remanufacturing project that was launched in 2016 by a leading European distributor of spare parts for household appliances. Our results show that data centralisation – which creates efficiency at a local scale – does not guarantee the replicability of decision-making processes at a large scale; in fact, the opposite occurs. The study contributes to the circular economy and remanufacturing literature by unveiling the idiosyncratic shortcomings that are triggered by digitalisation, which limit the replicability of remanufacturing activities, and by proposing a decision-making tool that exploits platform logics in order to scale remanufacturing activities in mature and complex industries that produce highly polluting waste.

Search and recombination are important mechanisms in the creativity phase of innovation. Digital transformation and the resulting pervasive digitalization of the innovation function have often been associated with increasing possibilities for search and recombination. In this paper, by systematically integrating the search and recombination literature with the literature on digitalization, we demonstrate that digitalization may engender new idiosyncratic tensions in the organizational antecedents of search and recombination and, by implication, in their likely outcomes. We propose that, depending on the interactions among the idiosyncratic tensions identified herein, knowledge recombination might spur very different outcomes, including knowledge layering, knowledge integration, knowledge grafting, or even no recombination at all (which we label “search for the sake of search”). These outcomes may not always be the initially planned desired outcomes. Finally, we provide implications of our integrative framework pertaining to product development and to organizing for innovation.

The organisational mechanisms through which algorithms can be exploited in the process of converting data into relevant knowledge for operational decision-making have not yet been fully investigated from an absorptive capacity perspective. Previous studies underlined a rise in new digital specialised roles, but they said little about how the organisational knowledge and structures should be redesigned to take advantage of these data-rich operational environments. In this article, we present the findings of a case study on the way algorithms can be exploited in the electrical sector to shed light on these issues. We then develop a framework to theorise how the organisational mechanisms associated with absorptive capacity influence the way algorithms can be exploited to convert data into relevant knowledge for operational decision-making. Our emerging framework reveals that to convert data into relevant knowledge for operational decision-making, the involvement of line employees and liaison roles are required to introduce system-level knowledge that algorithms are able to capture less effectively. Additionally, more formalisation is needed in operational work to ensure the quality of the data that feed such algorithms. Finally, socialisation tactics facilitate the convergence between the knowledge produced from algorithms and the experiential knowledge of line employees.