The relationship between eco-innovation and smart working as support for sustainable management

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 con-structs of performant sustainable strategies © 2021 by the authors Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland