Decision Management

Recent changes in service environments have changed the preconditions of their production and consumption. These changes include unbundling services from production processes, growth of the information-rich economy and society, the search for creativity in service production and consumption and continuing growth of digital technologies. These contextual changes affect city governments because they provide a range of infrastructure and welfare services to citizens. Concepts such as ‘smart city’, ‘intelligent city’ and ‘knowledge city’ build new horizons for cities in undertaking their challenging service functions in an increasingly cost-conscious, competitive and environmentally oriented setting. What is essential in practically all of them is that they paint a picture of cities with smooth information processes, facilitation of creativity and innovativeness, and smart and sustainable solutions promoted through service platforms. This article discusses this topic, starting from the nature of services and the new service economy as the context of smart local public services. On this basis, we build an overall framework for understanding the basic forms and dimensions of smart public services. The focus is on conceptual systematisation of the key dimensions of smart services and the conceptual modelling of smart service platforms through which digital technology is increasingly embedded in social creativity. We provide examples of real-life smart service applications within the European context.

This paper considers the nature of environmental knowledge and its importance in general as well as from a sustainable business perspective. Key literature on current environmental knowledge affairs form the bulk of the discussion to illuminate issues of interest. As it considers sustainable business practices, their history, nature and effectiveness, while seeking to investigate them from the perspective of a dependent variable that results from causative environmental knowledge. A purposive sample of 40 managers in different industries on the subject was carried out to investigate the correlation and possible influence of environmental knowledge on sustainable business management in today's world. The study unearths that presence of environmental knowledge is a sure predictor of the likelihood to adapt sustainable business practices. Based on the findings, the study has concluded that environmental knowledge has a positive and significant influence on sustainable business management such that the more of the former a manager possesses the more of the latter likely to try to incorporate in the firm's operations.