Purpose: The paper provides a contribution of systematisation to the literature on the blue economy and aquaculture as challenging issues for achieving sustainable growth and a circular economy. The growing scientific interest in recent years and the increased attention in political agendas make the blue economy and aquaculture as promising fields for scientific investigation. The latter has been confirmed during a particular period too as the pandemic times. To identify those areas of specialisation emerging from the intersection of such topics, the paper embraces a systematic literature review for inspiring future research.Design/methodology/approach: The study covers a period of 20 years by including 85 papers extracted from the Scopus database. Through the adoption of VOSviewer, the investigation explores the main descriptive statistics, while content analysis has been embraced to identify thematic areas.Findings: The main results of this study are about statistics (i.e. publication trends, geographic distribution, most frequent keywords and most influential authors, etc.). Three main thematic areas have been identified in this study: SDGs and policies for sustainable development, food and energy, business models and managerial issues.Practical implications: Practical implications arise both for firms and policymakers. About the firsts, interesting insights can be derived in terms of business model innovation, collaborative approaches and technological exploration. About policymakers, inspiration in terms of renewal of strategic guidelines, creation of enabling contextual conditions and evidences for new regulations can be noted.Originality/value: Elements of original contributions can be identified in the adoption of an SLR to verify the advancement of the debate till the recent pandemic.

Purpose: Digitalization is the great global challenge of the twenty-first century including technologies, like, Internet-of-Things, Big Data and block-chain. New digital innovation can play a crucial role for the competitiveness and sustainability of agro-food small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) but in Europe it has been adopted by only 25% of farmers. Joined participation in EU R&D projects can boost SME's digital innovation. The paper aims to analyze how business networking, within a R&D project, affects the digital innovation of agro-food SMEs.Design/methodology/approach: The paper investigates a single longitudinal case study focused on the local development phase of the EU Horizon 2020 project “Eugenius”, which aims to develop a European business network able to provide Earth observation services for natural resources management in agriculture. The focus is on the dyadic relationship between two firms, the winery Tormaresca and the digital innovation provider Planetek.Findings: Results highlight that the process of commercialization of Planetek's innovative services significantly passes through a multifaceted process of development and adaptation of technology to the specific needs of the user company, allowed by the research project with no expense for both companies during the experimentation phase.Originality/value: The paper deals with a new underexplored topic thus giving interesting insights into how the R&D project participation affects agro-food SMEs in adopting digital innovations, which are difficult to acquire directly, and how this influences the value creation process and their organizational structure.

The article analyses sustainable economic development of EU countries according to the sustainable development goals (SDGs), by using indices of integrated sustainable development and environmental footprint. Sustainable economic initiatives can be driven by economic, environmental and social aspects, applying principles of innovation and knowledge. However, development requires skills, human and financial resources; in turn, it increases productivity, efficiency, competitiveness, profit, and promotes a better working environment. In general, sustainable business initiatives contribute to SDGs and reduce the environmental footprint. The scientific problem is how to develop a sustainable economy while ensuring the achievement of SDGs and at the same time reducing the environmental footprint. The object of the scientific research is the evaluation of sustainable economic development through the analysis of integrated sustainable development indicators. The aim of the research is, upon the evaluation of SDGs and environmental footprint indices as well as the analysis of the integrated sustainable development indicator, to identify the opportunities for sustainable economic development in the EU countries. The research has been carried out by analysing the scientific literature, and applying SDGs and environmental footprint methodology to calculate individual and integrated sustainable development indices. The results have shown that despite the disparity of SDG indices, the overall value of the integrated sustainable development indicator is distributed quite evenly among the EU countries. The impacts from each of the SDG indices range from 11% to 31% but the environmental footprint index has the greatest impact on the sustainable development of a country—up to 31%.

Purpose: As Generation Z (Gen Z) represents one of the most important segments in the travel and tourism sector, the present work aims to analyse Gen Z's behaviour in a post-pandemic scenario. In particular, the present work deepens the factors that may influence future accommodation choices.Design/methodology/approach: This study uses data from a web-based questionnaire targeting Italian tourists belonging to Generation Z, reaching 221 complete responses. After the statistical analysis of the sample, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was then carried out.Findings: Data provided evidence about the main factors affecting Gen Z tourist choices. In particular, these young consumers are positively influenced by the information (especially from institutional and verifiable sources), more flexible purchase terms (e.g. full refund in case of cancellation due to contagion of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and digital payments) and structure features (e.g. cleanliness, sanitisation, digitalisation and sustainability).Originality/value: This work attempts to contribute to the academic literature by looking at the tourism experience from Gen Z's perspective. From this angle, this work underlines the influence some factors exert on the final accommodation choice, especially in the presence of exogenous events. Moreover, as this study focusses on a post-pandemic scenario, the study seeks to provide valuable indications, both at the theoretical and managerial level, for the tourism sector to boost the sector's recovery and prepare the sector to face similar events.

_clear_ 511 / 5.000 RISULTATI DELLA TRADUZIONE RISULTATO DI TRADUZIONE The research questions seem a bit too broad; it would be better to narrow the scope and formulate more specific RQs, such as research questions: What challen...

Purpose: This study explores how SMEs design and manage sustainability alliances as intellectual capital mobilization mechanisms for signaling sustainability commitment to stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: We adopt a qualitative multiple case study approach analyzing alliance formation, governance and stakeholder communication processes. The study is based on three Italian SMEs active in the agri-food sector. Findings: Three intellectual capital mobilization patterns – sequential, simultaneous and network amplification – emerge across cases, each generating distinct eco-innovation outcomes. Our analysis identifies two intellectual capital mobilization mechanisms: signaling infrastructure, through which alliances are deliberately designed around shared values and operational compatibility, and signaling reframe, through which existing collaborations are retroactively repositioned as sustainability communication platforms. Originality/value: The study identifies two mechanisms through which SMEs mobilize intellectual capital by means of sustainability alliances and proposes a cycle of intellectual capital, alliances and signaling that drives the adoption of eco-innovation. The study offers managerial insights for SMEs on partner selection, alliance structuring and governance, targeted signaling investments and the strategic role of a sustainable alliance manager.