This conceptual paper addresses the nature of value creation in professional service firms (PSFs). An extensive number of scholars have been looking at PSFs within law, consulting and engineering to understand knowledge as sources of competitive advantage. A dominant part of this literature build on agency theory to suggest that information asymmetry is an important characteristic and precondition of value creation in professional services. This paper identifies a contradiction in the notion of information asymmetry in reference to professional services firms. The paper reviews theoretical contributions explaining the value creation processes in PSFs. While the context of professional services might be considered marginal in reference to agency theory, knowledge has been identified as one of the key sources of competitive advantage in the 21st century, and understanding how to develop and leverage such sources of advantage has gained extensive interest. In addition, the context of knowledge intensive and professional services has been referred to as extreme and strategically relevant to understand knowledge based value creation. We argue that it is necessary to revisit the assumption of information asymmetry for two main reasons, First, any asymmetry that is proposed to exist is that of knowledge rather than information. Secondly, value creation in the context of PSFs is characterized by mutuality rather than asymmetry as co-production with clients as a core component in PSFs value creation. While PSFs might have superior esoteric professional knowledge, buyers often have superior knowledge of their own context and problem. Both of these types of knowledge are relevant in the value creation in PSFs due to the contextual and customized nature of the services they provide. Two important contributions are suggested in the paper, First, the characteristics of value creation of PSFs should be revised and extended by the inclusion of knowledge asymmetry and mutuality. This is important for practitioners in that the co-operative and mutual nature of value creation needs to be recognized and nurtured, which has impact of the conduct of both suppliers and buyers of professional services. Secondly, this more complex nature of value creation needs to be recognized from an institutional perspective in that the certification of professionals should incorporate and promote the mutuality and the importance of client needs while at the same time emphasising esoteric professional knowledge and attitude and the desire to deliver what is objectively best for the client.

To find tools and methods to research networking process of the knowledge creation, development and sharing The creation and management of knowledge has become a central concern to business and management, both as a source of value and as an opportunity to achieve and sustain competitive advantage We propose an approach to analyse the current situation with networking as a key factor for knowledge creation. This methodology puts in evidence several examples of successful profiting from using of knowledge by high-tech companies and organizations The outcomes of the application can be used in business environment by high-tech companies and organizations for building up, development and using their technologies

Knowledge work (KW) has risen to a significant role in modern societies, leading to an increasing number of the knowledge workers. Digitalization changes the work life, challenging individuals representing different professions as well as organisations. KW and the traditional professions are changing in many ways, opening up new vistas. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the enablers and restraints of KW in different professions, the medical practice, the clergy, the legal profession and the teachers. The paper seeks the KW enablers and restraints similar or different when digitalization changes inevitably the ways of working. The theoretical background for the paper is addressed by the concepts of professions and KW and certain professions. The empirical data was gathered with unstructured interviews using a narrative interview method. Questions were open so that the situations were similar to a discussion. The interviewer posed further questions to deeper the interviewee’s answers and to build the continuity of the interview upon them. Using the narrative interview method meant that the researcher tried not to influence or lead the interviewee to a significant extent and the differences and similarities could be seen as they are perceived by the respondents This methodology puts in evidence on similarity of working habits, socio-technical systems and work-flows of within and between professions. The originality of the study is laid on the unique comparison of different professional groups and the parallel analysis. The paper concludes by discussing the enablers and the restraints of KW in the era of digitalization in the chosen professions. The paper also builds profession related taxonomy of key findings and discusses those from the managerial perspective.

Customers and their requirements are increasingly influencing product development and production processes and at the same time products are becoming more and more individualized. Thus, individualization is no longer restricted to the final products; it increasingly influences all process of companies. New strategies and methods for an effective and flexible management of the production system are needed that include a certain agile approach to personnel planning and deployment. Existing approaches do not meet these requirements of dynamic production environments. We propose an approach which allows connecting flexible process networks with a model-based dynamic competence management. The flexibility of the process network, used for all enterprise processes in the company, is created by a modular framework for the process description. Flexibility in this case means, that the structures can be easily changed for every customer order. This approach offers the possibility to describe required skills in relation to processes and to assign them to employees, so that the planning of the needed staff does not remain on fixed role concepts and offers an increased degree of freedom in planning. Competence management largely relies on competence profiles of individual employees. These profiles are matched to specific positions, thus the flexibility to engage personnel in cross-position tasks is impeded. A decoupling from individuals and the compilation of competence-based reference models is a significant step towards agile human resource management in flexible production systems. The organizational and production process automation is progressed in terms of the deployment of personnel controlled by the process itself. Furthermore, the human resource development is enhanced via process controlled coaching and mentoring, where idle capacity of personnel is assigned to tasks for transferring implicit knowledge additionally. The combination of flexible process networks and dynamic human resource management leads to increases in productivity, effectiveness and implies new approaches e.g. under the constraints of Industry 4.0. Especially in combination with models of flexible working and the resulting new forms of employment the employees are actively involved in the future by bringing in all of their skills which leads to an increase of their individual responsibility. Furthermore, this approach could be a solution to counter the demographic change, as the required competences for the considered processes are referenced to the respective personnel along with demographic data.

The purpose of this paper is explore if human resource flexibility (HR flexibility) facilitates the development of organizational ambidexterity (OA), which in turn brings positive effects on firm performance. We proposed a quantitative approach. The theoretical model and the hypotheses proposed were tested using a sample of 100 Spanish hotels. We chose the hotel industry because their dynamism requires companies to have to anticipate (exploration learning) and the sectorial hostility forces the firms to offer good price (learning exploitation). This paper represents a valuable contribution to the literature in several ways. Firstly, this research advances in the understanding the factors that stimulate the OA. It determines the extent to which Human Resource Flexibility influences organizations to develop, simultaneously, learning exploration and exploitation. This “micro” approach about the OA complements the current literature about this topic. Secondly, this paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between OA and performance. And thirdly, the results obtained allow us advance in the understanding the relationship between Human Resource Flexibility and performance. Our findings demonstrate that the relationship between these two variables is not direct. This relationship is mediated by OA. This conclusion can be a reference for further research in this area. The practical implications that emerge from this paper are the following. The conclusions of the research demonstrate that the ability of the firm to follow, at the same time, exploration and exploitation learning, has a positive effect on organizational performance, and the HR flexibility is an antecedent factor in this process. This is a conception of HR flexibility that would be placed within the paradigm of organizational dynamic capabilities. More precisely, a need would exist to encourage behavioral flexibility; that is, to develop all those employees’ ability to adapt their responses and actions to any new circumstances which might eventually arise in the workplace. This behavioral flexibility will be viable as long as skill flexibility is previously developed; in other words, employees need to be versatile in order to perform different tasks and/or functions, and they must also be given the opportunity to develop new skills in the future. Finally, the human resource management has to implement people management practices which can easily adapt to any potential organizational contingencies.

Although intangible benefits of information systems (IS) can seriously contribute to organizational success (Remenyi et al., 2007), their poor assessment can falsely dismiss IS as uneconomic (Kim et al., 2010; Marsh and Flanagan, 2000). Despite rich research in the field of IS justification (see Schryen, 2013), it seems that this effort yields insufficient outcomes. Organizations still struggle with finding reasons why to invest (or not to) in IS and what benefits such investment will bring, and researchers report lack of knowledge of justification methods (Bernroider et al., 2014). Therefore, this study reviews the past IS justification research with the attention on intangible benefits. As the research of IS justification has broadened and dispersed, mainly literature review studies were analysed. The reviews were identified by various ad-hoc database search queries and by backward and forward citation search. Subsequently, relevant review articles were narratively reviewed with focus on types of methods and possibilities for further research. Finally, according to analysis, taxonomy of methods was designed and further research directions were suggested. This study is the first attempt of justification methods taxonomy since Irani and Love (2002) study. The taxonomy can be used in future research efforts helping researchers to navigate through the domain. Besides, it synthetizes reviews helping another researchers to quickly orient in the research domain as it analyses recent research development in the IS justification field. Practitioners can use this research in order to gain more knowledge about justification methods, as the knowledge of this field is not very spread in companies. This research identified five categories of IS justification methods, financial, strategic, analytic, multi-criteria, process. The ability of most methods to justify intangible benefits of information systems is rather low or non-existent. With current justification methods, companies are unable to properly justify information systems that provide many intangibles. Therefore, instead on focusing on developing other new methods, more effort should be directed into gaining more insight into the practice of justification process in order to understand the reasons why companies struggle to evaluate intangible benefits of information systems.

The proposed research work is intended to support a methodological development of digital 3D reconstruction by investigating (a) scenarios and practices for the employment of digital 3D reconstruction and visualization methods and approaches for scientific research in visual humanities, (b) to identify requirements and recommendations for digital tools, and (c) to develop and evaluate how to educate on the use of digital 3D reconstruction and visualization methods in visual humanities. The proposed paper presents preliminary results as well as research prospects from previous and ongoing work in which our department is involved in and which deal with various aspects of 3D reconstruction, primarily in the context of visual humanities. Research methods and approaches mainly derive from social sciences as for example social network analysis, quantitative and qualitative content analysis, and Grounded Theory. Moreover, various methods from usability engineering as well as from business informatics are employed. An overarching objective of our research work is to draw a currently outstanding “big picture” on digital 3D reconstruction and visualization and related “knowledge” issues by combining both theoretically and practically grounded research parts as well as including multi-disciplinary perspectives. Against this background, this article is intended to provide a structured overview of previous and future research activities within our department as well as preliminary results. With regards to the described activities, an intended outcome of the proposed research work is to contribute to a comprehensive discourse on a unique epistemology of digital 3D reconstruction in visual humanities as well as to deliver related practically tested implications for software design and education as well as methodological and organizational settings.

Organizations seek to expand the utilization of social-software-solutions to boost collaboration among employees. However, the existing scientific data regarding the improvement of intra-organizational collaboration as a result of social software is not applicable for companies. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate corporate collaboration based on social software. It describes a holistic design model for intra-organizational collaboration based on social software by addressing relevant possible company goals and highlighting the advantages of integrating social software solutions into corporate communication. The model in this paper aims to take a variety of different variables into account and therefore consists of four main elements goals, functions, effects and collaboration which allow a detailed planning of social software supported collaboration as well as a strategically organization. Currently there are many social software solutions with different functions and functional characters. To choose the fitting one, the design model can be of use. It helps selecting the applying strategy respectively the applying solution. The design model presents the functional classes and possible support when attaining entrepreneurial goals. Thus it is possible to prioritize the function module and to plan ahead, as well as to evaluate when it comes to different types of social software based collaborations. This paper shows what kind of potential social software holds when used to support corporate communication and collaboration. The designed model enables businesses to structure and plan their implementation of social software and organize what kind of goals they want to achieve and which areas of their company they wish to connect. Thus, the model supports the growth of collaboration based on social software and is an important guideline for business that wish to transform themselves into an Enterprise 2.0.

Subversive advertising – or just subvertising, a word made by the words “subvert” and “advertising” (San Nicolas Romero, 2004) – deals with the lack of ethics in modern advertising and how has impacted young people, modifying the purchasing intentions and the refusal to continue shopping brands related with non-ethical practices (Aouina et al., 2011). Subvertising becomes the mean to generate awareness that allows clarifying the full range of practices of companies that use advertising. So people can display a model of respect for human rights, the environment, and freedom of expression and open a small way of alternative thoughts (Cortés, 2009). The study enables the hypothesis that there is greater resistance to continue consuming the products of a particular brand if the youth persons are exposed to a longer time of subvertising. An exploratory and descriptive research based on a pretest and post-test experiment shows the reaction of viewers to the subvertising, this allows determine the relationship between young people and these content. Exploratory study is generally used when the research question is not clear or when the available literature does not seem clear enough or directly related to the object of study (Aouina et al., 2011) or when the objective is to examine a issue or problem little studied, of which you have many questions (Hernandez Sampieri et al., 2007). An experiment where the impact of publicity against the impact of subvertising is important because we can determine whether exposure to the latter modifies the perception that young people have for brand advertising, letting know more about this phenomenon and how is evaluated for those affected by it. Joseph D. Rumbo (2002) found that young consumers goes against postmodernism, which is due to the saturation of advertising culture, having the feeling of be more and more invaded by the hyper-reality, a fantasy created by manufacturers to encourage to consume and marketers from large firms stimulate this with advertising (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 251), which for young people is not entirely true, because what companies want to show is different from what reality is.

This paper aims to fill in the gap of investigating the relationship of strategy development and knowledge strategy and the integrating role of key strategy management tools and techniques between business strategy and knowledge strategy influenced by the culture the organization operates in. The paper first introduces different approaches of strategy development and the general process of developing an organizational strategy. It continues with the most used strategic management tools and techniques based on the results of the Bain & Company 15th Management Tools & Trends’ empirical survey. The most used management tools and techniques are also presented in details. The survey has been conducted in different countries and the results are summarized in different cultural clusters. Thus, the paper introduces the characteristics of these cultural clusters highlighting the similarities and differences among them. The comparative analysis in this case is rooted in the dimensions of Hofstede’s model of national culture. Furthermore, the paper discusses why the preferences in the usage of strategic management tools and techniques differ in these cultural clusters. This is followed by focusing on different knowledge strategies identified by De Toni et al. (2011). Besides the analysis of the differences of preferred knowledge strategies in different cultural clusters, the paper also aims to reveal the knowledge strategy being more effective in given cultural clusters. The paper helps practitioners and academics to understand the role of culture in the strategy development process and knowledge strategies implementation. Several papers have been dealing with management tools and techniques from a very technical perspective introducing empirical research results on how to use them in practice. Other papers analyze the values of the dimensions of national culture according to Hofstede’s database. However there is a lack of combination of these two fields and this paper highlights the importance of using management tools and techniques adequate to the cultural characteristics of the organizational environment. For strategic decision makers it is of high importance to take cultural differences also into consideration during the organizational and knowledge strategy development process. The paper helps leaders of multinational and international companies to understand why certain management tools and techniques are preferred in different cultures. Furthermore, an integrated view is provided for leaders on organizational and knowledge strategy development, on effectively applicable management tools and methods applied for the development process, and the adjustment of these strategies to each other.