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This paper identifies the forces that drive digital adoption among SMEs from low and high-tech industries in Malaysia.

This research uses multiple case analyses based on data gathered by in-depth interviews with key representatives of 20 firms from low and high-tech industries in Malaysia.

The findings suggest that digital adoption among SMEs derives by four fundamental forces, which are sales, marketing, process improvement and product development.

This study employed qualitative research, but lack of geographic diversity limits the generalisability of the case findings. This study provides several suggestions to policymakers and technology suppliers on how to encourage adoption of digitalisation among SMEs.

This study proposes a model that presents the critical forces that drive digital adoption for export-oriented firms, thus enriching the knowledge in SME digitalisation literature.

This study argues that having an entrepreneurial culture and market orientation are critical for young enterprises to gain competitive advantage and superior international performance. We investigate how young entrepreneurial companies despite their limited resources and experience expand rapidly in foreign markets almost from their inception.

This investigation uses a mixed-methods approach, combining in-depth interviews and survey data. In-depth interviews lead us to conceptualise a model highlighting the importance of international knowledge, international orientation, international networking and international commitment as entrepreneurial culture and market orientation for gaining competitive advantage and, in return, superior performance in the international market. Then, the derived conceptual model is empirically tested on a sample of Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Results show that entrepreneurial culture is positively associated with competitive advantage and international performance, while market orientation is positively related to competitive advantage but not to international performance. In addition, government support strengthens the positive effect of competitive advantage on international performance.

This study investigation analyses the importance of entrepreneurial culture and market orientation in contributing to competitive advantage and superior performance. In addition, this study examines the critical role of government support in the relationships between entrepreneurial culture and competitive advantage and between competitive advantage and international performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation and networking capabilities of born global firms in an emerging market on marketing strategy and foreign market performance.

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze data from 1,001 internationalized firms in an emerging market and to test seven hypotheses regarding the development of marketing strategy and foreign market performance.

Marketing strategy was found to mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and networking capability and foreign market performance, while foreign market performance is affected by entrepreneurial orientation and marketing strategy.

Research on emerging market multinationals can be merged with that of born globals to augment our understanding of how early internationalizers from emerging markets perform in foreign markets.

This study is among the few focusing on born globals in emerging markets, which face the difficulties of newness and limited resources, as well as characteristics of emerging markets, such as institutional voids.

This study aimed to develop an in-depth understanding of the outcomes of servant leadership at the team and organizational levels. It reviews the relationship between servant leadership and its team- and organizational-level outcomes, and examines the mediation and moderation effect of the relationship. It further identifies the mechanism by which servant leadership is beneficial to the organization.

A systematic literature review is conducted, focused on 52 articles published between 2012 and 2022. Content analysis and descriptive analysis were used to respond to the research questions.

A new conceptual model was developed to better understand the outcomes, mediators and moderators of servant leadership at team and organization level.

Future research should further explore outcomes of servant leadership at team and organizational levels and test how mediators affect the relationship between servant leadership and associated outcomes.

This study provides a framework for leaders on how servant leadership contributes to teams and organizations, and how a leader applies servant leadership.

This systematic review presents a new model that builds on existing research into servant leadership and its impact on team and organizational levels completed in the past decade. To date, there have been no reviews of servant leadership that focus only on outcomes at the team and organizational levels using a widely recognized database.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are highly concerned about every aspect of their international performance (IP) due to their limited resources. However, the literature has not given equal attention to every necessary aspect and has left some fields unexplored. Moreover, different approaches to assessing SME IP have made the literature even more fragmented. This research aims to identify the gaps in the research context and assessment methods of this concept.

A systematic literature review and a thematic analysis method are employed to review 272 journal papers published in high-quality journals.

By extracting six contexts in which the concept of international performance of SMEs has been analyzed, this study integrates the research themes with geographical domains and highlights which contexts require more attention. Moreover, this study provides a comprehensive review of the current state of this concept’s operationalization methods, illustrating the level of fragmentation and differences in the literature. Following the presentation of an enriched future research agenda, this study guides scholars on the current gaps and needs for research in specific contexts and domains while providing suggestions for a more cohesive assessment of the concept.

This study is the first to systematically review the research concerning the foreign performance of firms with less than 500 employees, extract their research context, illustrate uninvestigated fields and provide helpful suggestions about the concept’s operationalization method based on a comprehensive review of the extant assessment methods.

This study aims to examine the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on the export performance of apparel small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the role of multiple differentiation strategy as a mediation effect between their relationships. It has also investigated the moderation impact of export market category between EO and performance relationship. The multiple differentiation strategy comprises the product (PDD), customer (CTD), service (SVD) and brand (BDD) differentiations.

A cross-sectional survey was carried out by providing a questionnaire to senior managers and owners of the apparel SMEs from the developed and developing markets exporters. The primary data of 550 was treated by the partial least squares-structural equation modelling) technique for final analysis.

The study revealed EO’s positive and significant effect on SMEs’ export performance. The study has found the mediation effect of product, customer and brand differentiation strategies between EO and export performance relationships from the mediation analysis. In contrast, service differentiation has found no mediation effect. However, the moderation effect (export market category) has revealed an insignificant effect between EO and performance association.

The findings of this study are based on one country data analysis. This study has been conducted in the SMEs of the apparel industry in Bangladesh, considering only owners and senior-level managers of the firms.

This research has drawn the attention of managers/owners to EO and multiple differentiation strategies enhancing export performance from the developing country context, such as Bangladesh. Multiple differentiation as a competitive strategy is the pioneer application of mediating effect between EO and export performance relationships. Moreover, this research has investigated the effect of the export market category as a moderator. Dearth research has applied the export market category to investigate the moderation effect between EO-performance models. Therefore, current research has theoretical and practical contributions to the international entrepreneurship and strategic management literature.

Unlike multinational companies, small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) have budget constraints and, thereby, cannot invest heavily in improving the creativity of employees. They look for alternative budget-friendly ways to do the same. The authors of the current paper attempt to identify two psychological-based constructs which positively influence creativity among employees. Both these psychological constructs may be improved among the employees using suitable interventions from the human resource (HR) professionals and line managers working in the organization. This study is an attempt to test the influence of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and psychological capital (PC) (both malleable) on creative performance behaviour (CPB) among SME employees.

Validated instruments were used to collect data. Structural equation model (SEM) was used to evaluate the 377 responses collected from the employees working in three SME's in India. All three SMEs work in the area of innovative process design and require a high level of creativity among employees.

PC fully mediates the relationship between OBSE and the CPBs of employees. Employees experiencing higher levels of OBSE will develop higher self-esteem, and these employees will exhibit more creative behaviours, increasing the likelihood of achieving creative results.

This study provides valuable inputs to the creativity literature as it describes the process of how self-esteem influences the creativity of an employee. HR professionals working in SMEs can work on enhancing the OBSE and PC (both malleable) of employees to improve creativity among employees.

To the best of the researcher's knowledge, this is the first attempt to identify frugal ways to improve creativity, especially in SMEs.

Previous research focused on open innovation (OI) suggests that enterprises benefit from adopting the journey; however, the relationship among OI, marketing journey and knowledge-intensive innovation marketing activities (KIIMA) remains unclear. The present study proposes a conceptual model of the marketing journey linking heterogeneous modes of marketing collaboration to knowledge-intensive activities.

The conceptual model was tested via ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression based on a sample of data drawn from the Eurostat database.

The results indicate that strategies are a robust proxy for evaluating KIIMA, and partnerships, heterogeneous sources of knowledge and different marketing modes for collaboration among European knowledge-intensive firms are core antecedents of KIIMA, such as new-product development and marketing innovation, as well as firms' sustainable competitive advantage.

This study fills the gap by tracking the role of the journey within marketing collaborations on KIIMA, and it intervenes in the debate about interactive marketing innovation mechanisms. The study contributes to OI, knowledge management and the marketing literature by identifying the heterogeneous modes for marketing collaborations under which the marketing journey enhances knowledge-intensive activities such as those for marketing innovation.

The international entrepreneurial capability has achieved its legitimacy in international business literature. Leveraging capabilities to recognise opportunities is considered a pivotal strategy to achieve success. Drawing on the entrepreneurship literature and opportunity perspective, this study aims to investigate the role of international entrepreneurial capability in enhancing the international opportunity recognition (IOR) process and the performance of export manufacturing firms.

Structural equation modelling has been used to test the hypothesised relationship on 388 export manufacturing entrepreneurial firms operating in the apparel industry of Bangladesh.

The results signify that three international entrepreneurial capabilities, namely, international networking, learning and marketing capability, positively enhance the IOR process of export manufacturing firms. The IOR process positively mediates the relationships between these international entrepreneurial capabilities and firm performance.

Merely having the international entrepreneurial capability is not sufficient to escalate the firm performance. It must be amplified by various strategic actions such as the IOR process. Entrepreneurs need to capitalise on the international entrepreneurial capability to leverage the IOR process and generate non-financial performance success. Entrepreneurial firms that focus more on stimulating non-financial performance can secure better financial performance.

The significance of market orientation (MO) in industrial marketing literature is immense. Separately, the role of dynamic managerial capability (DMC) as an individual-level capability has been found to be beneficial to business-to-business (B2B) transactions. However, the assessments of DMC as the antecedent to complement MO in achieving firm performance are rare. To address this knowledge gap, this study builds upon a research framework on the DMC theory and MO literature. Additionally, this study aims to investigate how export assistance avails MO-firm performance relationship and assists entrepreneurs to thrive in the international market.

The research was conducted among the entrepreneurial export manufacturing firms in the apparel industry in Bangladesh. Structural equation modelling was used to investigate the hypothesized relationship among 329 firms.

Two attributes of DMC, namely, managerial social capital and managerial cognition of entrepreneurs improve the MO process of export manufacturing firms. MO mediates the relationship between DMC and firm performance. Additionally, export assistance positively moderates the relationship between MO and the financial performance of the firm.

MO requires complementary capabilities to realize the value of it efficiently. This study strongly advocates entrepreneurs to nurture DMC to leverage MO and capitalize on emerging opportunities by productively using export assistance. Firms in the emerging economies often suffer from resource-scarcity and export assistance mitigates barriers to expand international operations and yield financial liberty to the firms operating in the international B2B market.