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Purpose This paper aims to stress the importance of practical wisdom (phronesis) for the knowledge management field. It is a relevant intellectual and ethical resource for responding to recent changes in the business environment and for responsibly and sustainably aligning organizations for the future. Organizations must find ways to reconcile social, environmental and economic goals and meet different and conflicting stakeholder needs. To this end, the authors challenge knowledge management researchers to feature practical wisdom as an enabler for responsible knowledge management built on solid ethical foundations. Design/methodology/approach The authors introduce the concept of phronesis, reaching from Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics to Nonaka and Takeuchi’s The Wise Company. Based on a systematic review of the literature, the authors performed a bibliometric analysis. Moreover, the authors discuss the findings and offer avenues for future research. Findings The results provide an overview of the research on phronesis in the knowledge management field. It points out the leading articles and journals (e.g. Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Knowledge Management). Likewise, it identifies thematic areas, i.e. knowledge management field, knowledge dynamics, organizational wisdom, leadership and followership, corporate social responsibility and red flags. Originality/value In this essay, the authors advise practical wisdom as a promising candidate for advancing the field of knowledge management towards responsible knowledge management. To pursue this, the authors propose to address instability and continuous change through practical wisdom and outline a research agenda to guide further research.

Education is a method of sharing social consciousness and social reconstruction. There is an existential crisis in business education driven by the conflict between social and financial objectives. A paradigm shift in business education requires that leaders be taught how to incorporate new competencies. Phronesis (practical wisdom), individual and collective, is an essential competence to be addressed in business education. It leads companies to continuous innovation and highly sustainable performance. We conducted 23 interviews with leaders from organizations in 14 countries to discuss some transformations that business education needs through leaders’ awareness concerning organizational phronesis. We conducted a thematic analysis of the interviews with support from NVivo software. The results demonstrate gaps in leaders’ awareness concerning phronesis and its relationships with knowledge management and organizational spirituality. Business education still needs to be reviewed to enable leaders to learn and incorporate phronesis theory and practice. Building on the gaps found in the leaders’ awareness of phronesis, we propose interdisciplinary pedagogical methods to teach business students competencies that enable the embodiment of phronesis. These changes in business education are indispensable to reach sustainability.

Purpose This study aims to investigate how organizations that invest in social innovation – such as for-profit and social enterprises – organize and shape the dynamics between social innovation and transformation. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative interpretative study through the theoretical lens of social innovation. The organizational phenomenon studied was the business strategy for sustainable regional development of a Brazilian financial institution. Secondary data were collected from financial institution’s documents. The data analysis followed a categorization technique. Findings This research presents five intersectional elements that act as agglutinating factors between the structural elements common to these organizations: the processes (inter-organizational and intra-organizational), the forms of materialization of social innovation (products, experiences and replicable forms) and the impacts (in society and organization). Practical implications The paper contributes to the debate about social innovation as to its definition, showing that it is both a phenomenon and a theory, which is still little explored. In particular, in emerging countries, such as Brazil, which publishes little about social innovation in international literature, going beyond European countries. Second, an empirical deeper understanding of the for-profit “organizations” modus operandi adopts and integrates social innovation in their strategies and operations. Third, given the multidimensional and complex nature of the social systems involved in innovation actions, it discusses a strategy that acts as an agglutinating factor. Finally, with reflections so that managers can discuss and start up a social innovation project. Originality/value Most research is based on nonempirical evidence. Among the few empirical works, the focus is on the performance of nonprofit organizations in the promotion, development and implementation of projects involving social technology. The literature does not adequately understand how for-profit organizations adopt and integrate social innovation into their strategies and operations. Furthermore, it is observed that research analyzes data from European countries, with few approaches eying countries in development.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems remain under-theorised and conceptually fragmented, making it challenging to comprehend their disposition and performance in the business process. Accordingly, in this research, we explored how knowledge sharing flows through entrepreneurial ecosystems to make analyses and trials to assess new ventures’ creation, continuity, and development opportunities. We carried out a systematic literature review on the Web of Science database. The analysis was carried out in two stages: (i) content analysis using NVivo software and (ii) statistical processing and clustering with the support of VOSviewer and Bibliometrix software. Moreover, we reviewed entrepreneurial literature and proposed conceptual model mapping relations through all main actors and knowledge flow in ecosystems. Our findings suggest the knowledge path in the near field sharing mechanisms resulting in a new conception of traditional structures and relations used to judge and decide how to assess opportunities for new ventures’ opening, maintenance, and growth. This study contributes to entrepreneurial literature, demonstrating knowledge sharing flow through entrepreneurial ecosystems, considering an embracing, dynamic, and multilevel approach. Furthermore, it highlights political and social contributions to include new emergent perspectives: resource scarcity and structural and institutional gaps. This representation is the first knowledge management model applied to different economies and areas, respecting their singularities.