Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the first cause of death globally, with huge costs worldwide. Most cases of CVD could be prevented by addressing behavioural risk factors. Among these factors, there is physical and amateur sports activity (PASA), which has a linear negative correlation with the risk of CVD. Nevertheless, attempts to encourage PASA, as exercise prescription programmes, achieved little impact at the community-wide level. A new frontier to promote PASA is represented by mobile health tools, such as exergaming, mobile device apps, health wearables, GPS/GIS and virtual reality. Nevertheless, there has not yet been any evident turnabout in patient active involvement towards CVD prevention, and inactivity rates are even increasing. This study aims at framing the state of the art of the literature about the use of m-health in supporting PASA, as a user-centric innovation strategy, to promote co-production health policies aiming at CVD prevention. Methods: A mixed-method systematic literature review was conducted in the fields of health and healthcare management to highlight the intersections between PASA promotion and m-health tools in fostering co-produced services focused on CVD prevention. The literature has been extracted by the PRISMA logic application. The resulting sample has been first statistically described by a bibliometric approach and then further investigated with a conceptual analysis of the most relevant contributions, which have been qualitatively analysed. Results: We identified 2,295 studies, on which we ran the bibliometric analysis. After narrowing the research around the co-production field, we found 10 papers relevant for the concept analysis of contents. The interest about the theme has increased in the last two decades, with a high prevalence of contributions from higher income countries and those with higher CVD incidence. The field of research is highly multi-disciplinary; most of documents belong to the medical field, with only a few interconnections with the technology and health policy spheres. Although the involvement of patients is recognized as fundamental for CVD prevention through PASA, co-design schemes are still lacking at the public management level. Conclusions: While the link between the subjects of motor activity, medicine and technology is clear, the involvement of citizens in the service delivery process is still underinvestigated, especially the issue concerning how “value co-creation” could effectively be applied by public agencies. In synthesis, the analysis of the role of co-production as a system coordination method, which is so important in designing and implementing preventive care, is still lacking.

Purpose: Artificial intelligence (AI) can help in defining preventive strategies in taking decisions in complex situations. This paper aims to research how workers might deal with intervening AI tools, with the goal of improving their daily working decisions and movements. We contribute to deepening how workers might deal with intervening AI tools aiming at improving their daily working decisions and movements. We investigate these aspects within a field, which is growing in importance due to environmental sustainability issues, i.e. waste management (WM). Design/methodology/approach: This manuscript intends to (1) investigate if AI allows better performance in WM by reducing social security costs and by guaranteeing a better continuity of service and (2) examine which structural change is required to operationalize this predictive risk model in the real working context. To achieve these goals, this study developed a qualitative inquiry based on face-to-face interviews with highly qualified experts. Findings: There is a positive impact of AI schemes in helping to detect critical operating issues. Specifically, AI potentially represents a tool for an alignment of operational behaviours to business strategic goals. Properly elaborated information, obtained through wearable digital infrastructures, allows to take decisions to streamline the work organization, reducing potential loss due to waste of time and/or physical resources. Research limitations/implications: Being a qualitative study, and the limited extension of data, it is not possible to guarantee its replication and generalizability. Nevertheless, the prestige of the interviewees makes this research an interesting pilot, on such an emerging theme as AI, thus eliciting stimulating insights from a deepening of information coming from respondents’ knowledge, skills and experience for implementing valuable AI schemes able to an align operational behaviours to business strategic goals. Practical implications: The most critical issue is represented by the “quality” of the feedback provided to employees within the business environment, specifically when there is a transfer of knowledge within the organization. Originality/value: The study focuses on a less investigated context, the role of AI in internal decision-making, particularly, for what regards the interaction between managers and workers as well as the one among workers. Algorithmically managed workers can be seen as the players of summarized results of complex algorithmic analyses offered through simpleminded interfaces, which they can easily use to take good decisions.

We examine two types of political connections on trade credit of Pakistani firms over 2009–2015; parliamentarian connections are divided into the senate, national assembly, and provincial level, while bureaucrat connections cover civil and military officers and individuals working on government committees. We documented evidence that parliamentarian connections have significant preferential access to trade credit while bureaucratic political connections decrease the firm’s access to trade credit. These findings are more pronounced in the presence of CEO political connection. Our results stay robust using alternative proxies and accounting for endogeneity and time-invariant concerns. Additional analysis reveals that politically connected firms with higher leverage and low market power use more trade credit. Moreover, low economic developed regions decrease the benefits of political connections to access trade credit.

We intend to investigate the impact of chief executive officers’ (CEO) powers on corporate decisions made by firms in the context of board oversight (BO) and market competition (MC). From 2007 to 2017, we applied a quantitative approach to a sample of two stressed European markets (i.e., Hungary and Greece). We found that CEO power has a negative impact on corporate risk and firm performance. Furthermore, results also reveal no sign of moderation effect for MC with corporate decisions, whereas BO moderated the CEO power and corporate decisions in the Hungarian market. However, the results of moderation for the Greek market are diametrically opposed to those of the Hungarian market. Our study indicates that in stressed markets, the CEO power is suppressed and does not increase the corporate risk and firm performance despite the good governance and high market competition. The study can help boards in the optimal delivery of power to the CEO to perform well in a stressed environment