Abstract
Nowadays, firms have to face challenging economical cirses, like the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, where volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are manifested. Strategic management is seen as one of the key approaches that firms can choose to implement sustainable smart working (on the support of Internet of Things and smart technologies) and to face global competition. In this article, as a response to the current crisis, we study the influence of Smart Working on Eco-innovation within EU 28 countries. Specifically, we evaluate the relationship between Eco-innovation index for EU 28 countries and Smart Working, by using a clustering analysis. The results show that the increased labor productivity and employees’ eco-innovation are associated, to a higher extent, with the companies agreeing to a flexible and comfortable environment. These companies agree with the introduction of special programs such as working from home. We also prove that Smart Working is implemented by innovative leaders gaining economic sustainability. This study also provides several theoretical and practical contributions. We provide (i) an overview of sustainable management, including the diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives; and (ii) the recommendation of an innovation model through the bilateral collaboration for the constructs of performant sustainable strategies.
Highlights
Like the one caused by COVID-19, companies have to be very flexible to integrate smart working and to adopt a sustainable leadership to gain economic sustainability
The smart working environment is facilitated by the multitude of smart interconnected devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) [4]
Protecting the employees, as a top priority, because they manifest value-added, creativity, and innovation; setting up a cross-functional response team: Employees from every function and discipline should be led by an agile manager; ensuring sufficient liquidity for at least 3 months of cash at hand; stabilizing the supply chain-Business Continuity Management has to be achieved through long-term actions; practicing Customer-centric Design (CCD)-in staying close and engaging customers, companies should ensure customer transparency and agile responses; and helping community-in times of pandemic crisis that affects the community, it is important and morally responsible for organizations to take an active role in helping the community at large
Summary
Like the one caused by COVID-19, companies have to be very flexible to integrate smart working and to adopt a sustainable leadership to gain economic sustainability. The ecological ecosystems transform the strategic leaders: They proved to be more (i) innovative, (ii) open-minded, (iii) efficient in applying mindfulness techniques to motivate followers, and (iv) flexible and adaptive to economic and social challenges [2,5,6,7,8]. They are referred to as innovative leaders. The result was evident in the reduction of unnecessary service demand and improved sustainable leadership, offsetting emission footprint These companies took friendly commitments and practices to overcome new challenges such as cost pressures, survival threats, and deprioritizing environmental sustainability initiatives [18].
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