Ilaria Giannoccaro

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Polytechnic University of Bari

The circular economy ( CE ) aims to reshape production models, aligning them with environmental and social goals. Recent analyses show that global economic systems in 2023 are recycling only 7.3% of their material usage. One reason is the existence of barriers to CE adoption at multiple levels, which in turn require appropriate dynamic capabilities...

The transition towards a circular economy requires companies to innovate their ways of doing business by giving rise to circular business models (CBMs). The literature on the topic is wide with a focus on both macro and micro aspects. However, only a few studies in CBM research have attempted to adopt an integrated micro-macro perspective, thus lim...

In today's rapidly evolving landscape, supply chains must develop specific dynamic capabilities for initiating and successfully governing their transformations toward new configurations to withstand pressures arising from competitions and global changes. Differently from dynamic capabilities that enable adaptation, supply chain transformative capab...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Welcome to the Special Issue on Applications of Complexity for Resilient Organizations, Management, and Innovation Systems. This Special Issue includes six articles highlighting how complexity science and complex systems approaches can be employed to study resilient aspects in organizations, management and innovation systems. Nowadays, governments,...

Multiple stakeholders are responsible for the supply chain redesign for the transition to Circular Supply Chains (CSCs). Despite it has been demonstrated that certain supply chain (SC) capabilities and Digital Technologies (DTs) can play a determinant role on the design of specific CSC archetypes, current knowledge remains still sparse. To fill thi...

Circular economy (CE) disclosure is becoming urgent for firms, but an accepted and recognized approach to address it is still missing, especially at small and medium enterprises (SMEs) level. This study aims to contribute to this issue by exploring the potential of the adoption of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards as a standardized approa...

We develop a conceptual framework for studying collective adaptation in complex socio-cognitive systems, driven by dynamic interactions of social integration strategies, social environments and problem structures. Going beyond searching for 'intelligent' collectives, we integrate research from different disciplines and outline modelling approaches...

Adopting industrial symbiosis (IS) is a key strategy for pursuing sustainable development and developing circular economy. In this regard, a powerful approach is promoting the development of regional business networks of IS relationships (ISNs), such as the well‐known Kalundborg ISN in Denmark. Nevertheless, a formalized method supporting the devel...

The management of the Integrated Healthcare Operating Systems (IHOSs) requires more and more to improve efficiency and resilience. We conceptualize the IHOS as a supply chain made up of operating units interacting among each other to accomplish a common goal (the care), resulting from the adoption of Integrated Care Pathways (ICPs). Then, we rely o...

Today need for replacing linear-oriented production systems with circular-oriented ones is urgent. Circular Economy production networks promote the continuous reuse of resources and products, recapturing value from by-products and end-of-life resources, and minimising resource leakage out of the systems. However, the design and management of CE pro...

Supply chains (SC) are increasingly complex and if the resulting complexity is not managed effectively, it could lead to adverse consequences for the firm. The effect big data analytics (BDA) can have on managing distinct types of SC complexity is not well-understood in the extant literature. Based on a sample of 166 firms from Pakistan, this study...

We develop a conceptual framework for studying collective adaptation: the process of iterative co-adaptation of cognitive strategies, social environments, and problem structures. Going beyond searching for “intelligent” collectives, we integrate research from different disciplines to show how collective adaptation perspective can help explain why s...

Nowadays firms operate in complex and turbulent scenarios where frequent and unpredictable disruptions drastically threaten the core business operations and inter-firm relationships, thus negatively influencing their firm performance. Prior to the Covid-19, firms often lauded their ultra-efficiency, single-sourcing techniques, and just-in-time capa...

Circular economy has become a very popular topic worldwide, not only among policymakers, entrepreneurs, citizens but also academics (Fraccascia, Giannoccaro, Agarwal, & Hansen, 2019). National strategies and initiatives have been deployed in many European countries (e.g., acatech CEID and SYSTEMIQ, 2021). According to Scopus and Web of Science data...

The higher education system plays a critical role in supporting the transition towards a circular economy (CE). It helps create business leaders and policymakers having appropriate skills, competences, and consciousness referring to the CE challenges. Nevertheless, few studies have specifically investigated how the higher education system is addres...

Despite the existence of a large body of literature on the topic of supply chain (SC) resilience, comprehensive empirical reviews of the antecedents and outcomes of resilience are limited. The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework and carry out a meta-analysis of extant empirical studies to investigate the relationship between...

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a collaborative approach among firms involving physical exchanges of materials, energy, and wastes, which creates economic advantages for firms and environmental benefits for the society. In this paper, we adopt an ecosystem approach to conceptualize the network of firms involved in IS relationships (ISN), in terms of o...

Today supply chain operations are continuously threatened by frequent and unpredictable disruptions. To survive in such complex and fast-changing environments, firms need to develop resilient strategies for their supply chains. To this regard, previous studies in literature have shown that cooperative relationships play a relevant role. However, th...

Today organizations increasingly rely on working teams to compete in complex and turbulent environments since they exhibit high resilience, the ability to change, and secure desirable conditions after disruptions occurred. Improving team resilience is thus becoming a critical question and understanding its determinants a mandatory issue in literatu...

Firms increasingly put financial pressure on their suppliers, also called squeezing. Suppliers react and adapt to financial squeeze as autonomous agents, causing complex ripple effects across the extended supply chain network. To capture intertwined and highly interactive effects among suppliers, we use agent-based models. We explore the impact of...

The ripple effect refers to disruption propagation across the supply network affecting its global performance. To cope with it, supply networks should be resilient. This study investigates the drivers of supply network resilience, viewed as adaptive capacity to disruptions, focusing on trust and investigating the moderating role of network topology...

The ripple effect refers to disruption propagation across the supply network affecting its global performance. To cope with it, supply networks should be resilient. This study investigates the drivers of supply network resilience, viewed as adaptive capacity to disruptions, focusing on trust and investigating the moderating role of network topology...

Search is a fundamental part of complex problem solving and often involves a choice between the exploration of new ideas and the exploitation of already known solutions. While literature has mainly analyzed search behavior of individuals working alone, we investigate search accomplished by individuals working in teams. We study the interplay of thr...

During the last two decades, the literature devoted great attention to industrial symbiosis (IS) as an effective strategy to achieve environmental, economic, and social benefits. Accordingly, a wide range of numerical indicators – highly different among them for scope, definition, purpose, and applications – have been developed, to characterize and...

Search is a fundamental part of complex problem solving and often involves a choice between the exploration of new ideas and the exploitation of already known solutions. While literature has mainly analyzed search behavior of individuals working alone, we investigate search accomplished by individuals working in teams. We study the interplay of thr...

Because of the increasing international trade, monitoring tools are required that quantify and analyze CO2 emissions at a global level. This paper contributes to this literature by adopting a consumer-oriented approach and using two tools based on Multi-Regional Input-Output tables, i.e., the Global Emissions Chains (GECs) and the Global Emissions...

The aim of this paper is to propose a taxonomy of industrial symbiosis (IS) business models. Rather than to adopt a firm perspective, we take a system perspective and focus on the governance of the system made up of the firms implementing IS, being the latter considered an important factor influencing firm’s competitive advantage. Four extreme IS b...

The circular economy is receiving increasing attention as a way to overcome the linear economic model, which is characterized by a “take–make–dispose” pattern. The circular economy aims at slowing (i.e., maintenance, repair, remanufacturing) and closing (i.e., recycling) resource cycles (Bocken, Ritala, & Huotari, 2017; Stahel & Reday‐ Mulvey, 1981...

Trust is widely recognized as a predictor of positive supply network performance in terms of cost reduction and enhanced service level. However, little is known about the effect of trust on supply network resilience, i.e. the ability of the network to cope with perturbations by absorbing the disturbance and/or to quickly recover. This paper overcom...

This paper reviews the state of art on the resilience of complex systems by embracing different research areas and using bibliometric tools. The aim is to identify the main intellectual communities and leading scholars and to synthesize key knowledge of each research area. We also carry out a comparison across the research areas, aimed at analyzing...

How are teams able to cope with environmental threats? Why are some teams better than others in facing this challenge? This paper addresses these questions by investigating two drivers of team resilience: the team size and the density of social interactions among team members. We adopt a complex system approach and employ a model of team decision-m...

We examine the concept of knowledge externalities, namely the benefits that co-located firms receive in terms of knowledge, focusing on the role of interactive learning processes and adopting the single firm perspective, whereas in literature their role has mainly been analyzed adopting the system perspective and focusing on knowledge spillovers. T...

A large number of optimization algorithms have been developed by researchers to solve a variety of complex problems in operations management area. We present a novel optimization algorithm belonging to the class of swarm intelligence optimization methods. The algorithm mimics the decision making process of human groups and exploits the dynamics of...

This paper contributes to behavioral supply chain management research, by examining the influence of managers' problem solving ability and resistance to change as regards their choice of the level of centralization to adopt in the management of a supply chain. Since such factors play a critical role in influencing decision maker behavior, they are...

This paper contributes to green product development by identifying the green products with the highest potential for growth in a country. To address our aim, we use the concept of product proximity and product space and, borrowing from the results of recent studies on complexity economics, we advance that the green products with the highest potenti...

An exhibition system is typically a physical open space made of several buildings devoted to performing demonstrations or social activities. Several examples of exhibition systems can be found word wide. The management of these spaces, even in presence of a limited number of activities, requires significant efforts: safety, welcome, merchandising,...

Previous literature has emphasized that developing trust among supply chain (SC) firms is a critical element in achieving SC effectiveness. Since developing trust is an expensive task, however, making an informed decision whether to invest or not in trust requires careful assessment of trust benefits. Therefore, we advance a simulation-based method...

This paper proposes new performance indicators for industrial symbiosis networks (ISNs) based on the ecosystem approach. ISNs are framed as ecosystems where the firms correspond to the organisms and perform specific functions, i.e., recovering wastes and saving inputs. Two kinds of indicators are designed: 1) indicators assessing the performance of...

Control over suppliers is a core issue for a buying firm. Despite the amount of research on the topic, how much of its supply network (i.e., scope of control) a buying firm should control, so as to increase supply network performance, is a question that has not received adequate research attention. The study addresses this research question by cons...

A spin-like model mimicking the human behavior in groups is employed to investigate the dynamics of the decision making process. Within the model, the temporal evolution of the state of systems is governed by a time-continuous Markov chain. The transition rates of the resulting master equation are defined in terms of the change of interaction energ...

Teams are framed as individuals embedded in hierarchical and knowledge networks, who interact among each other with the aim of accomplishing a common task. Social interactions are the means through which team members exert their mutual social influence, change opinions, and converge to a common understanding. In this paper, we investigate how the d...

We present a dynamic model of firm absorptive capacity, which is consistent with a process-oriented conceptualization and based on the teaching-learning approach, to investigate the effect of social interactions among the firm members on the firm absorptive capacity. In particular, two main learning processes are considered: the explorative and the...

Despite the theoretical value of industrial symbiosis (IS), this approach appears to be underdeveloped in terms of practical applications. Different attempts to stimulate IS in practice are noticed, one of them consisting in the application of adequate policy measures. This paper explores the efficacy of two specific policies (landfill tax and econ...

Resilience has become the new imperative of industrial symbiosis research, since its recognition as a fundamental factor in the development of sustainable Industrial Symbiosis Networks (ISNs). We offer a contribution to this topic by providing a wider conceptualization of resilience and an innovative method of measuring it, borrowing from studies i...

A large number of optimization algorithms have been developed by researchers to solve a variety of complex problems in operations management area. We present a novel optimization algorithm belonging to the class of swarm intelligence optimization methods. The algorithm mimics the decision making process of human groups and exploits the dynamics of...

In practice, product design decisions in a buyer–supplier setting can be either centralized or decentralized. Yet, it is unclear in what circumstances either of these settings can result in higher new product performance. In this study, we show that the choice of the level of centralization of product design decisions should be made contingent to t...

This paper explores the efficacy of contractual mechanisms for enhancing the formation of self-organized industrial symbiosis networks in environments characterized by diverse levels of uncertainty and turbulence. We propose a simple contract scheme designed to foster the formation of stable industrial symbiosis relationships and to guarantee that...

The paper conducts an explorative research on the competitive success of the Industrial Districts IDs (GCs), due to their capacity to adapt and evolve to the environment. Our aim is to identify the ID structural features supporting adaptation by using the complexity theory. We consider the IDs as complex adaptive systems (CASs) and identify the ID...

A continuous-time Markov process is proposed to analyze how a group of humans solves a complex task, consisting in the search of the optimal set of decisions on a fitness landscape. Individuals change their opinions driven by two different forces: (i) the self-interest, which pushes them to increase their own fitness values, and (ii) the social int...

This study concerns the antecedents of the effectiveness for autonomous inter-organizational (IO) teams guided by leaders adopting a direct leadership behaviour. We analyse the effect of the density of the team social networks and the environmental uncertainty on the team performances. We propose an approach based on the Ising model developed in st...

Purpose – Industrial symbiosis networks (ISNs) are collections of long-term symbiotic relationships among firms, involving physical exchanges of materials and energy as well as the exchange of knowledge, concurrently providing environmental and economic benefits. Our aim is to investigate the complexity of ISNs adopting a similar approach to that d...

This paper provides a toolkit based on NK fitness landscape to model complex supply chains and to carry out behavioral research analyzing the impact of decision makers' behaviors on supply chain management. Whereas this methodology has been largely applied in organizational studies, very few applications exist in supply chain contexts. Main researc...

In this paper inter-organizational teams are analyzed using the social network perspective, identifying three types of networks, i.e., the hierarchical, the knowledge, and the friendship ones. The main team dynamic concerning how team members change opinions is investigated by employing the Ising model of social interactions, with the aim of invest...

In this paper inter-organizational teams are analyzed using the social network perspective, identifying three types of networks, i.e., the hierarchical, the knowledge, and the friendship ones. The main team dynamic concerning how team members change opinions is investigated by employing the Ising model of social interactions, with the aim of invest...

This paper investigates the use of the contractual mechanisms to enhance the formation of self-organized industrial symbiosis networks for increasing levels of environmental uncertainty and turbulence. In particular, industrial symbiotic networks are framed as complex adaptive systems and an agent-based model is provided to study their emergence. R...

This chapter investigates the benefits of supply chain integration (SCI) by including behavioural factors influencing decision maker behaviour. In fact, the majority of the studies on the topic assume that SCI is pursued by a central planner, who is completely rational and adopts an optimizing behaviour. Since the central planner is an individual,...

From a methodology point of view, most Behavioural Operations Management (BOM) studies have employed experiments. However, no reason, either theoretical or practical, exists to limit BOM to experimental research. In this chapter, I discuss my conviction that methodologies coming from complexity science have the proper characteristics to be successf...

Behavioral Operations Management has been identified in the last years as one of the most promising emerging fields in Operations Management. Behavioral Issues in Operations Management explains and examines up-to-date research in this field, which works to analyze the impact of human behavior on the management of complex operating systems. A collec...

From a methodology point of view, most Behavioural Operations Management (BOM) studies have employed experiments. However, no reason, either theoretical or practical, exists to limit BOM to experimental research. In this chapter, I discuss my conviction that methodologies coming from complexity science have the proper characteristics to be successf...

The paper investigates how proximity affects Industrial District competitiveness. We adopt the complexity theory by analyzing the influence of the proximity on the Industrial District adaptive capacity. Our argument in fact is that the more adaptive the Industrial District, the more the competitive success. Based on the complexity theory, we identi...

Coordinating supply chains by adopting a centralized decision making approach, which is theoretically desirable, is often practically infeasible, if not ineffective: the high number of involved companies in a supply chain, the lack of adequate contractual power concentrated in the hand of only a few of them, the difficulty to gather all the relevan...

Supply chain management advocates that the whole supply chain (SC) from the material suppliers to the end customers must be managed by adopting an integrated approach. However, different forms of governance can be adopted to pursue integration, ranging from the pure market to the hierarchy. While integration has been extensively investigated in the...

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate concerning the role of heterogeneity for the GC competitive advantage. With this aim, we focus on different sources of heterogeneity and study how the different level of heterogeneity affects the performance of GCs. Specifically, we consider the GC heterogeneity due to: 1) the variety in the firm...

In recent years there is increasing evidence of the adaptive failure of geographic clusters (GCs) ranging across the US, UK, and other parts of Europe. To explain success and failure in GCs, complexity science is used. It holds that successful GC evolution happens only if they behave as effective complex adaptive systems (CASs). A review of complex...

This paper develops a conceptual model to assess the complexity of the supply chain (SC). It is built on the theory on the complex adaptive systems (CASs) and it identifies the main SC features that match the CAS properties. The conceptual framework is used in two case studies that regards the SCs of two Italian firms. The analysis aims at assessin...

This paper focuses on the implementation issues of the revenue sharing (RS) contract. This is a coordination mechanism, which aligns the incentives of independent SC actors so as to induce them to act in such a way that is optimal for the supply chain as a whole (channel coordination). The literature pays attention mainly to the design of the contr...

Consider a supply chain that consists of a supplier and a retailer, who sells a single product to the customers over a short selling season. In this paper, we present a model in which the supply chain partners participate in two different programs: (1) the supplier and the retailer enter a revenue sharing (RS) contract and (2) the retailer offers a...

This paper addresses Supply Chain Management (SCM) within Industrial Districts (IDs). This topic is becoming more and more important due to the increase of global competition that forces ID firms to adopt more efficient and effective models and techniques for the management of the material and information flows from the source of supply to the fina...

The revenue sharing contract is a coordination mechanism adopted by supply chains, wherein the decision making process is decentralized, to assure channel coordination. It has been mainly used in the video-rental industry by firms such as Blockbuster or Hollywood Planet. Despite the ease of this coordination mechanism, based on two parameters, the...

This paper deals with the adaptive capacity of geographical clusters (GCs), that is a relevant topic in the literature. To address this topic, GC is considered as a complex adaptive system (CAS). Three theoretical propositions concerning the GC adaptive capacity are formulated by using complexity theory. First, we identify three main properties of...

In the past few years the literature on supply chain management has widely emphasized that cooperation among supply chain (SC) firms is a key source of competitive advantage. This paper explores the topic in a particular context, i.e. the industrial district (ID), which constitutes a specific production model where complex SC networks can be identi...

Despite the wideness of the literature on industrial districts (IDs), the driving processes of ID innovation have not still received much attention: Questions about how new innovation processes emerge, how, when and where they evolve are minimally addressed in the literature. To address these questions new theoretical approaches and methodologies a...

In this paper, some Supply Chain (SC) configurations based on different degrees of flexibility are considered. The SC flexibility here refers to both process and logistics aspects. Process flexibility concerns the number of product types that can be manufactured in each production site (supplier or assembler); logistics flexibility concerns the pos...

In dynamic competitive markets, the flexibility of manufacturing system networks such as supply chains (SCs) is particularly interesting. The SC flexibility considered in this paper takes into account two main aspects: the process flexibility of each SC firm and the logistics flexibility concerning the possible connections between suppliers, assemb...

Supply chain (SC) coordination can be pursued by adopting a centralized or decentralized decision-making approach. The former option occurs when there is a unique decision maker in the SC, the latter when several independent actors make decision at the different SC stages. SC contracts are a useful tool to make the several SC actors of a decentrali...

In this paper we propose a computational approach based on multi-agent systems to study the multiple forms of cooperative and competitive relationships within Industrial Districts (IDs). In particular, we develop a computational model by using AgentBuilder software, which is referred to a specific kind of cooperative relationships, namely that aime...

This paper addresses the supply chain (SC) co-ordination problem and emphasises the need to consider the involved organisational issues when dealing with it. In particular, the influence of the form of SC governance on the selection of SC co-ordination mechanisms is investigated. An empirical analysis on a sample of firms located in Southern Italy...

This paper presents a methodology to define a supply chain (SC) inventory management policy, which is based on the concept of echelon stock and fuzzy set theory. In particular, the echelon stock concept is adopted to manage the SC inventory in an integrated manner, whereas fuzzy set theory is used to properly model the uncertainty associated with b...

A major issue in supply chain inventory management is the coordination of inventory policies adopted by different supply chain actors, such as suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, so as to smooth material flow and minimize costs while responsively meeting customer demand. This paper presents an approach to manage inventory decisions at all stage...

The literature on Industrial Districts (IDs) has emphasised the importance of inter-organisational relationships within this specific production model. However, this stream of studies has given less attention to conceptualise models and define techniques to effectively manage such relationships. In the paper a theoretical framework is proposed to c...