Organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of sustainability and responsibility. They are challenged to develop a holistic approach to value creation that reconciles economic, social, and environmental goals. This book describes how knowledge can facilitate this process and amplifies the idea of knowledge management to strategically serve multiple stakeholders in a sustainable and responsible way. In particular, the book introduces the concept of the "Need Knowledge-Driven Organization." It builds on mature research on organizational purpose, stakeholder theory, and phronesis, and advances the concept of "needs." This provides a new lens for understanding the sustainable and responsible business case: First, people are motivated by their needs, and organizations represent social structures that facilitate the satisfaction of shared needs. Second, needs reflect and combine social, environmental, and economic concerns, making sustainability and responsibility more realizable for practitioners. And third, needs provide a reference point for holistic value creation and can thus align knowledge processes and structures in organizations.

A hyperconnected, constantly evolving world has emerged. A world where people (internet of people), things (internet of things), and data (internet of data) are linked together, shaping the global economy while demanding new, innovative approaches for value creation. The era of hyper-connectivity is no longer characterized by centralized firm-centric business structures and traditional intra-firm and inter-firm processes. Open, distributed ecosystemic formations have started to emerge, utilizing cutting edge technologies to harness the collective power, co-creation ability, and intelligence of the crowd, the data, and the environment in an open participatory value co-creation mode. However, the question has become whether the frameworks, models, and tools that organizations use to create value will remain the same in the new business environment and within the organizations themselves. Existing literature on ecosystems, business models, and business model innovation are starting to examine these aspects. Emerging Ecosystem-Centric Business Models for Sustainable Value Creation explores emerging technology-enabled ecosystems and ecosystem-centric business models in theory and practice, from a business and technological perspective, and in a range of industrial settings, aiming to contribute to the existing knowledge of innovative technology-advanced ecosystems and business models, facilitating their design, implementation, and sustainable value creation. It examines the dynamics of this technology-powered revolution and how it is influencing the foundations of value creation and business modeling in novel ecosystemic formations across the HMD triangle: human, machine, and data. The target audience of this book is researchers and professionals in the fields of innovation, business, and strategy as well as computer science and information technology, along with managers, executives, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in new ways to create value in emerging and future ecosystems via innovative ecosystem-centric business models and strategies.

Organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of sustainability and responsibility. They are challenged to develop a holistic approach to value creation that reconciles economic, social, and environmental goals. This book describes how knowledge can facilitate this process and amplifies the idea of knowledge management to strategically serve multiple stakeholders in a sustainable and responsible way. In particular, the book introduces the concept of the "Need Knowledge-Driven Organization." It builds on mature research on organizational purpose, stakeholder theory, and phronesis, and advances the concept of "needs." This provides a new lens for understanding the sustainable and responsible business case: First, people are motivated by their needs, and organizations represent social structures that facilitate the satisfaction of shared needs. Second, needs reflect and combine social, environmental, and economic concerns, making sustainability and responsibility more realizable for practitioners. And third, needs provide a reference point for holistic value creation and can thus align knowledge processes and structures in organizations.

This book aims to advance the discussion on concepts such as value, wealth and richness, both from a country and a corporate perspective. Buying junk food, the consumption of legalized drugs such as tobacco, or even the compulsive purchasing of new models of smart phones, the second or third car bought by a city dweller or any other tangible property characterized by a short transient joy, compute positively in the GDP calculation. However, all of these have no, or almost non-existent, marginal utility, for the person who obtains them. The GDP approach does not consider the harmful effects on physical and mental health, on the environment, and the legacy to future generations that these consumptions bring about. At a corporate level, to secure a long-lasting achievement, companies must pay attention to the wide sphere of stakeholders relating to them - employees, customers, suppliers, financial partners, State, local authorities and public administration, natural environment and local communities - in addition to shareholders only. The validity of the corporate sustainable approach is empirically analyzed in this book through an analysis of a sample of European listed companies.

The way organizations manage their value chain has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today, organizations take account of economic issues, but they also adopt a broader perspective of their purpose including social and environmental issues. Yet despite its global spread, sustainable value chain management remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. The social and environmental issues that organizations should address easily can be interpreted as including virtually everything. Current literature on the topic seeks to understand the effects and management of initiatives dealing with diversity, human rights, safety, philanthropy, community, and environment. However, the penetration of social and environmental considerations into value chain management is described as ’desire lacking reality’ thereby making the idea a patchy success. The objective of this research anthology is to investigate different angles of sustainable value chain management. The book’s 27 chapters fill holes and explore new fields; the chapters are organised in five sections: Sustainable value chains - context, drivers, and barriers; Sustainable value chains - managing activities; Sustainable value chains - managing networks and collaboration; Sustainable value chains - integrative perspectives; and Sustainable value chains - specific sectorial and industry perspectives.

Strategy and finance are generally viewed as two separate subjects. Once regarded with fascination, they have become the subject of strong criticism, the first considered too theoretical and long term to be of any use and the second too speculative and short term to contribute to value creation. This book argues, however, that strategy and finance are in fact value twins, both of which need a thorough overhaul, from their toolkits to their end goals. The author contends that we rely on strategic and financial frameworks that were developed decades ago, but, in an increasingly complex and risky environment, these need to undergo a profound transformation, one that follows an intertwined approach, enabling companies to achieve the twin goals of value creation and sustainability consistently and successfully. The book provides a fresh and innovative view of strategy and finance. It discusses the concept of strategy extensively, examining its history, application, and importance in modern business. It also explores how strategy has evolved and how it can be adapted to better serve companies in a rapidly changing business landscape. The book emphasizes the role of finance in corporate strategy, suggesting that it is a crucial element in achieving sustainable business success, and explores how financial tools and concepts can be integrated with strategic planning to drive growth and value creation. Further, it investigates how strategic and financial planning can be used to manage business risks effectively. Readers are given useful insights via the inclusion of case studies from numerous industries, including corporations, banks, and wealth and asset managers; these real-world examples serve to close the gap between theory and practice.

As entrepreneurs seek to gain an advantage against their competitors, understanding how to share information throughout their organization will be vital in their success. Accordingly, it is critical for researchers, managers, and consultants to strengthen their own systems to facilitate knowledge management and implement strategies that will launch them into the future. Global Practices in Knowledge Management for Societal and Organizational Development is an integral reference volume featuring leading academic research on the management and creation of knowledge and organizational development theories and models. Including coverage on a variety of related perspectives and subjects, such as infrastructure and services for knowledge organizations, ethics and the impact on knowledge management, and the future of knowledge workers, this book is an ideal reference source for organizational development specialists, consultants, policy makers, researchers, and graduate business students looking for advanced research on cultural aspects of knowledge management and creativity, innovation, and technology in learning communities.

The ecological, social and technological challenges of the Anthropocene require developing and implementing new economic, business, and financial models to create sustainable value for a wide range of stakeholders including nature, society, and future generations. This book defines ‘sustainable value creation’ as bringing forth products, services, organizational forms, processes, actions, and policies which satisfy real social needs and contribute to the ecological regeneration of nature. The book collects and analyzes innovative economic, business, and social models of sustainable value creation globally. It critically examines the existing mainstream models of business and financial value creation. In reviewing both traditional and sustainability-oriented models, it focuses on both the challenges and opportunities inherent in a possible shift from models based on single-stakeholder wealth creation to models that propagate multidimensional value creation. Part of the Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business in Association with Future Earth series, this book aims to engage academics, and business and civil society practitioners to discuss innovative value creation models for a sustainable world. Interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange will be facilitated to inspire and cross-fertilize different knowledge and action fields as well as to promote intergenerational dialogue about the prospects of the human-earth system.