La tesi si focalizza sull'implementazione di un sistema ERP in una organizzazione multinazionale con headquarters in Massachusetts, USA. Il metodo e' case study e l'approccio e' di tipo interpretativo. Sono studiati i processi di apprendimento (learning) di utenti e management che hanno permesso lo sviluppo di absorptive capacity. I risultati sottolineano l'importanza di processi di apprendimento di tipo "double loop". E' proposta una riconcettualizzazione del costrutto "absorptive capacity" ispirato all'originario framework di Cohen e Levinthal (1990)che rappresenta un modello di sintesi. / The dissertation concentrates on ERP implementation in a worldwide organization with headquarters in Massachusetts, USA. The method used is the case study and the approach is interpretive. The research points to learning processes which underpin the development of absorptive capacity. The findings highlight that double-loop learning is necessary to develop absorptive capacity. A reconceptualized model of absorptive capacity is provided based on the original construct of Cohen and Levinthal (1990).

Il lavoro, composto da tre articoli, si focalizza sulla relazione tra leadership e performance, indagata e osservata da molteplici punti di vista e attraverso differenti strategie di ricerca, ma sempre in un contesto pubblico o comunque mission-driven. In particolare, il primo articolo indaga la relazione tra leadership e performance organizzativa, con un duplice obiettivo: da un lato validare da un punto di vista metodologico la scala di misurazione più utilizzata, dall’altro verificarne la relazione con la performance organizzativa utilizzando una scala più parsimoniosa. Gli altri due articoli si focalizzano sulla relazione tra leadership e performance individuale: il primo esplora, attraverso un disegno di ricerca qualitativo, il ruolo del feedback fornito dal superiore nel processo di riflessione critica dei collaboratori, volto al cambiamento dei comportamenti e al miglioramento della propria performance; il secondo indaga, attraverso un disegno di ricerca sperimentale, gli effetti della credibilità dei leader sulla performance dei collaboratori, anche mediante la percezione da parte dei dipendenti dell’importanza e dell’utilità del proprio lavoro per gli altri. / The three papers included in the thesis focus on the relationship between leadership and performance, investigated and observed from multiple points of view and through different research strategies. All the papers are conducted in a public or mission-driven setting. The first article focuses on the relationship between leadership and organizational performance, with a twofold objective: on the one hand, to validate the most used measurement scale for leadership from a methodological point of view, and, on the other, to verify the relationship with organizational performance using a more parsimonious scale. The other two articles focus on the relationship between leadership and individual performance. One explores, through a qualitative research design, the role of feedback provided by the supervisor in employees’ critical reflection process, aimed at changing their behaviors and at improving their own performance. The last one investigates, through an experimental research design, the effects of leaders’ trustworthiness on the performance of employees, through the employees' perception of the task significance of their job.

Through the case study of a regional welfare information system, I analize how the process of keeping information systems workable and operational unfolded.

Nella quotidianità di un ambiente di cura oggi è difficile pensare ad un’attività che non coinvolga l’uso di una o più tecnologie: si pensi ad esempio quanto nell’accettazione di un paziente, nelle attività di anamnesi, di test, di diagnosi e di refertazione le azioni dipendano dal supporto di strumenti (non solo informatici). In questo senso, il lavoro medico si poggia su un’infrastruttura di tecnologie e sulla complessità delle connessioni esistenti tra di esse in cui medici, infermieri ed operatori lavorano attraverso artefatti che disciplinano la pratica medica. Per questo documenti digitali, tracciati record, tecnologie diagnostiche, linee guida, standard clinici e numerosi altri artefatti si intrecciano nel lavoro quotidiano di medici e infermieri. Si potrebbe pensare che tali strumenti prendano parte alle azioni proprio perché il loro uso risulta adatto ai compiti dei medici e implicitamente si intende che tale utilizzo sia in sintonia con il contesto in cui vengono utilizzati. Ma con una più attenta osservazione emerge invece che l’utilizzo di questi oggetti e tecnologie richiede un lavoro di relazione per essere gestiti tra le diverse necessità presenti nella quotidiana esecuzione delle pratiche mediche. In sintesi si tratta di mettere a fuoco quale lavoro è necessario per usarle in relazione alla pratica a cui sono destinate.

This thesis is comprised of three essays which explore economic and management issues of firms in Vietnam. The issues being addressed here are varied but connected to highlight (partly) how firms are doing business in the transition economy of Vietnam. The first essay examines ownership differential (i.e. state-owned, private-owned, and foreign-owned) and competition effect on firm total factor productivity (TFP) as consequences of mixed economic reforms in Vietnam (Chapter 2). It describes the big picture: the whole transition process/institutional changes in Vietnam and how such changes are reflected in competition effect on firm TFP and comparative performance (in terms of TFP) of firms with different ownership types. The next two essays deal specifically with foreign firms' subsidiaries in Vietnam. One essence of the economic reform of Vietnam is its “open-door policy” to foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade. While many benefits of FDI have been identified, in the second essay, an unwanted consequence of FDI is dealt with instead. Specifically, it examines whether foreign multinational firms undertake tax-avoidance profit shifting out the country (Chapter 3). Using a newly developed identification approach in the literature, the essay examines how corporate income tax-rate differentials between the home country and Vietnam determine a foreign wholly-owned subsidiary’s under-reporting of the profit obtained from an exogenous income shock in Vietnam. The third essay then investigates post-formation conversion of international joint ventures (JVs) to either wholly-owned subsidiaries (WOSs– 100% foreign ownership) or domestic firms (DOMs– 100% domestic ownership) in Vietnam. In this essay, both the drivers of such ownership transfers and their performance implications are investigated (Chapter 4).

Over the last century, customers have become increasingly uncertain about how to be satisfied because of the growing complexity of their own needs. On the one hand, most standardized needs have been satisfied, whereas on the other hand, worldwide demand for intrinsically complex needs (such as health care and long-term care) has increased, especially because of population ageing. On the supply side, producing on the basis of an estimated foreseen demand has become increasingly difficult and customer uncertainty has become a cause of organizational inefficiency. Nevertheless, in the theories of the firm so far developed, the customer is still a missing player, confined to the position of 'rational agent'. This research discusses how organizational efficiency is impacted by customer uncertainty in taking consumption decisions when the needs are complex. The central issue is to understand when it is efficient for the organization to involve the uncertain customer in the production process and, accordingly, which organizational form is the most effective in managing such involvement. Today the lack of clarity regarding this theoretical issue has permitted, or even supported, an imprudent adoption of mass-customization in important sectors which gives customers the option of choosing exclusively from among standardized options, without suitable consideration for both the complexity of their needs and the organization required. My dissertation is organized into three chapters. The first chapter proposes a theoretical framework on the basis of the Modularity Theory of the Firm (Langlois and Robertson 1995; Langlois 2002, 2006; Baldwin and Clark, 2003; 2006), which allows for the identification of the most effective organizational types to face customer uncertainty. The second chapter studies the most efficient way to design and manage production processes in the presence of uncertain customer needs, implying the necessity to involve the customers themselves in the production process. The focus here is also on the design and management of long term care (LTC) services. And the third chapter, by adopting case study research methods for theory building (Eisenhardt, 1989, Yin 2003), in order to investigate the relationship between organizational and production efficiency, analyses five LTC organizations that belong to different categories of modularity and are characterized by different governance forms. Summarizing the results, the thesis firstly theorizes that cooperative governance (the internal organization of labour based on inclusion, participation, and horizontal relations) is the most effective to minimize dynamic transaction costs and the related unexpected production costs (damages, errors, waste of time, legal actions) thanks to developing capabilities related to how to satisfy customers' complex needs. Particularly, the accountability of workers supports a learning-by-doing process that allows for life-long learning and the necessary flexibility to adequately meet customers' needs. Secondly, the study proposes a blueprinting approach to service design and management, which allows for the separation of front/back office in order to improve management efficiency. This structure is particularly suited for supporting decision-making processes in a flat organizational structure (such as the cooperative one), as it clarifies the workflow processes and responsibilities. Thirdly, it empirically applies the theoretical results to situations of long-term care with customer uncertainty and shows how services should be designed in order to maintain a low level of unexpected production costs.

This dissertation aims to test, in a controlled laboratory setting, the role of dierent types of both monetary and non-monetary incentives in coordination. Although complexity and task interdependence have rapidly grown, organizations have often overlooked the importance of integrating specialized activities, hence causing organizations to drift into, or stay locked in, inecient equilibria for a wide range of coordination problems. I adopted an experimentally-grounded approach to organizational design which has long been neglected by both economics and management scholars, and in an attempt to enhance the generalizability of the results to actual organizations, I carried out a series of experiments in which real-eort tasks are implemented. The present dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter 1 and 2 critically review the relevant literature on coordination games and real effort in laboratory experiments, respectively. Chapter 3 compares individual and group-based incentives in a real-eort coordination game. In line with some empirical evidence on actual organizations, group-based payments work as good as, and in some cases outperform, individual-based payments. Chapter 4 tests the impact of group pride on coordination. I found a large and statistically signicant eect of information about ranking and matching procedure on coordination. Chapter 5 test the robustness of group pride across dierent tasks. Quite surprisingly, group pride induced by a task related to the one used in the coordination phase was not eective, while group pride induced by an unrelated task was eective in enhancing coordination among top performers.

The Doctoral Thesis explores Sustainability-oriented transition mechanisms (SUS) at different levels of analysis (Country, inter-organizational, and organizational levels). The focus of the study is Digital Transformation (DT) and the Collaborative (multi-stakeholder) (COL) dimensions. By disentangling between COL and DT, the thesis proves that Digital Transformation and the Collaborative dimension are sufficient conditions to achieve Sustainable outcomes. In particular, the Collaborative dimension mediates the impact that Digital Transformation has on Sustainability transitions, which the existing literature identifies as a direct effect. The motivation behind these results seems to emerge from the explorative longitudinal case study, where a digital platform represents a tool able to increase the efficiency of collaboration dynamics and enable sustainable outcomes. After five years, the platform ecosystem collapsed as the leading ecosystem firm failed to effectively engage with multiple stakeholders toward sustainability outcomes and began transitioning towards lower levels of sustainability.

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Questo lavoro consiste in una collezione di 8 paper accettati da altrettante Conference internazionali di diverso indirizzo disciplinare, dal marketing B2B all'organizzazione aziendale ai sistemi informativi. In questi paper, si affronta da diversi punti di vista il tema dei business network e di come il business networking influenzi la capacità di innovazione delle imprese. Le ricerche presentate confermano su più fronti come le classiche variabili con cui si misurano i business network, quali la fiducia, la conoscenza reciproca, l'intensità dei flussi di risorse scambiate, eccetera, per quanto importanti, non siano sufficienti a spiegare l'influenza che il network ha sulle capacità di innovazione. Vengono quindi proposti 3 nuovi costrutti: Motivazioni al business network, Attitudine alle relazioni di business di lungo periodo, e Sostenibilità della collaborazione altruistica. Il lavoro ipotizza come diverse configurazioni di queste tre variabili possono influenzare le capacità di innovazione dell'organizzazione. Alcune ricerche qualitative, focalizzate sul settore turistico (sistema destinazione) e sul manifatturiero (supply chain) permettono di mettere a confronto il modello con contesti di business concreti. / The system of the organization's long-term business relationships is the organization's Business Network. This theory-building thesis focuses on how business networking influences the organization's performances, and more specifically its innovation capabilities. An important gap in theory is identified, since there is a lack of consistent research explaining why even Business Networks where all the traditional variables (such as Trust, Cooperation, Number of Ties, Strength of Ties, etc.) are ranking high, may perform poorly in terms of innovation capabilities. An inter-disciplinary effort may be a fruitful strategy for addressing such a gap in theory. Consistently, this thesis was structured as a collection of 8 papers submitted to and accepted by different international Conferences, whose disciplinary focus spanned from B2B marketing to organization studies, Information Systems, Operations research and eParticipation studies. These papers include qualitative researches for theory-building, and the considered cases belong to different industrial sectors such as Tourism and Manufacturing. The main novel outcomes of this work are: the identification of new Constructs (and related Scales) describing phenomena that influence, according to the qualitative researches conducted here, the innovation capabilities of Business Networks; and the in-depth analysis of how successful and sustainable innovation emerges from creative processes in collaborative settings. The identifed Constructs are: Motivations to Business Network, Attitude to Long-Term Business Relationships, Sustainability of Altruistic Cooperation. This work hypothesizes that if the main Motivation to Networking is the predictability of business interactions, this may result in a detrimental effect on Creativity/Innovation, and in a weakened resilience of the Altruistic Cooperation. On the other hand, if the main Motivation to Networking is to aggregate power, for example for lobbying activities, this tends to enhance only certain aspects of Altruistic Cooperation, whilst Creativity/Innovation at the network level is likely to be poorer. Finally, if the main Motivation to Networking is to aggregate capabilities, both Altruistic Cooperation and Creativity/Innovation are often positively impacted, especially when also certain levels of Predictability and of Power Aggregation are achieved.