Purpose: Promoting health literacy, i.e. the ability to access, collect, understand and use health-related information, is high on the health policy agenda across the world. The digitization of health-care calls for a reframing of health literacy in the cyber-physical environment. The article systematizes current scientific knowledge about digital health literacy and investigates the role of health-care organizations in delivering health literate health-care services in a digital environment.Design/methodology/approach: A literature review was accomplished. A targeted query to collect relevant scientific contributions was run on PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science. A narrative approach was undertaken to summarize the study findings and to envision avenues for further development in the field of digital health literacy.Findings: Digital health literacy has peculiar attributes as compared with health literacy. Patients may suffer from a lack of human touch when they access health services in the digital environment. This may impair their ability to collect health information and to appropriately use it to co-create value and to co-produce health promotion and risk prevention services. Health-care organizations should strive for increasing the patients’ ability to navigate the digital health-care environment and boosting the latter’s value co-creation capability.Practical implications: Tailored solutions should be designed to promote digital health literacy at the individual and organizational level. On the one hand, attention should be paid to the patients’ special digital information needs and to avoid flaws in their ability to contribute to health services’ co-production. On the other hand, health-care organizations should be involved in the design of user-friendly e-health solutions, which aim at engaging patients in value co-creation.Originality/value: This contribution is a first attempt to systematize extant scientific knowledge in the field of digital health literacy specifically focused on the strategies and initiatives that health-care organizations may take to address the limited digital health literacy pandemic.

Purpose: Lean Six Sigma in public and private healthcare organisations has received considerable attention over the last decade. Nevertheless, such process improvement methodologies are not generalizable, and their effective implementation relies on contextual variables. The purpose of this study is to explore the readiness of Italian hospitals for Lean Six Sigma and Quality Performance Improvement (LSS&QPI), with a focus on gender differences.Design/methodology/approach: A survey comprising 441 healthcare professionals from public and private hospitals was conducted. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine the mean scores on the LSS&QPI dimensions based on hospital type, gender and their interaction.Findings: The results showed that public healthcare professional are more aware of quality performance improvement initiatives than private healthcare professionals. Moreover, gender differences emerged according to the type of hospital, with higher awareness for men than women in public hospitals, whereas for private hospitals the opposite was true.Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to the Lean Six Sigma literature by focusing on the holistic assessment of LSS&QPI implementation.Practical implications: This study informs healthcare managers about the revolution within healthcare organisations, especially public ones. Healthcare managers should spend time understanding Lean Six Sigma as a strategic orientation to promote the “lean hospital”, improving processes and fostering patient-centredness.Originality/value: This is a preliminary study focussing on analysing inter-relationship between perceived importance of soft readiness factors such as gender dynamics as a missing jigsaw in the current literature. In addition, the research advances a holistic assessment of LSS&QPI, which sets it apart from the studies on single initiatives that have been documented to date.

Social media (SM) are one of the marketing tools growing in importance with increasing digitalisation. Companies use marketing to increase interest in their services or reach new customers. Therefore, SM can help companies access a new international market. The aim of this paper is to determine the impact of SM as a marketing strategy tool to gain a new market in the process of internationalisation of SMEs in the countries of Visegrad Four. The paper also evaluates differences in SM approaches according to the selected factors. To obtain relevant data, Tomas Bata University in Zlín organised empirical research in 2019-2020. The online form of the questionnaire was distributed among randomly selected SMEs. In total, 1,585 managers’ responses were analysed. The t-test was performed to compare means and the chi-square test was used to assess differences between variables. Data analysis was performed with SPSS 23 software. A statistically significant difference was found in the perception of the impact of SM on business performance. No statistically significant differences were shown in the case of SM use and the relation to internationalisation.

Recruitment success or failure hinges on organizational reputation (OR), encompassing both internal and external perceptions, as well as corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. While existing literature underscores the direct positive impact of formalized CSR on OR and organizational attractiveness (OA), it remains unclear whether personal perceptions of CSR consistency with organizational behavior influence the OR–OA relationship. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining the interplay of CSR in the relationship between OR and OA. Employing a self‐administered survey, data is collected from a diverse sample comprising postgraduate students and working professionals. The findings from this empirical investigation aim to shed light on the nuanced dynamics between CSR, OR, and OA, thereby contributing to the scholarly discourse and informing HR practitioners' decision‐making processes.

Purpose: This paper explores total quality management (TQM) soft domain efficacy in social care organizations to determine the extent to which an organization's project success may stem from soft TQM critical success factors (CSFs).Design/methodology/approach: Non-structured interviews were conducted with 16 managers overseeing the prosthetic device regeneration project of the Italian local health unit (located in Salerno) to explore which soft factors could contribute to the success of a social care multifunctional organization.Findings: Organizations' handling of certain projects, such as pivoting on soft TQM issues, may allow them to be configured as multiservice organizations. Therefore, a conceptual model of a multiservice social care organization is proposed.Practical implications: From a managerial perspective, this study presents an interesting success case of a multiservice social care organization with a total annual expenditure of €20 million on prosthetic assistance. Preliminary data show a 13% reduction in public expenditure for Salerno's local health unit via a refurbishment project.Originality/value: The paper contributes to the soft TQM literature debate: although Italian local health professionals appear aware of soft TQM issues' implementation and consciously apply them in their organization and projects, this occurs more with specific CSFs emerging from the literature. Therefore, this article paves the way for further quantitative and theoretical investigations on the adoption of TQM soft issues in social care organizations' performance measurement.