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This research aims to investigate, in the context of a crisis, how adaptive marketing and open marketing capabilities directly contribute to enhance SMEs' business model innovation taking into consideration the mediating role of strategic flexibility.

Based on a sample of 120 small firms, our theoretical model is tested through a cross-sectional study. PLS-SEM is applied as the analytical technique.

The results show that open marketing capabilities are positively related to business model innovation and that this relationship is partially mediated by strategic flexibility. Furthermore, adaptive market experimentation capabilities enhance business model innovation only when fully mediated by strategic flexibility.

Extending existing explorative research, our research illuminates how adaptive market experimentation and open marketing capabilities, in conjunction with strategic flexibility, can help SMEs to better adapt existing business models during a time of crisis. Our findings underline the potential contribution of planned test-driven activities, trial-and-error processes, data-based decisional processes and benchmarking activities. We also document how stronger networking capabilities and organizational openness strengthen the firm's ability to access the required additional resources and insights they need. These contributions remain however conditioned by the use of a convenient sampling design as well as the cross-sectional nature of the data.

Our findings underline the importance of empowering SMEs to nurture more effective experimental approaches in the long run, along with a more formalized open marketing posture. Our study also highlights the need for SMEs to improve their awareness of the risk of inertia and the benefits of nurturing their overall flexibility so they can adapt in an adequate and timely manner.

The findings of this study build on the perspective of adaptive marketing capabilities and add to the business model innovation literature in two ways. First, our study provides new insights into the cumulative and concrete consequences of market experimentation and open marketing capabilities on small firms' business model dynamics in the context of a crisis. Second, our findings illuminate the crucial role of strategic flexibility which, partly or entirely, contributes to the full realization of the potential of the marketing capabilities at hand.

To augment sales revenue, B2B digital start-ups aim to create and sustain commercial relationships with industry incumbents. However, since these incumbents have traditionally struggled with implementing disruptive digital artifacts, most studies have almost exclusively concentrated on their challenges, leaving the digital start-ups' side underexplored. Therefore, this study seeks to understand how digital start-ups navigate digital implementation (DI) hardships to ultimately achieve digital entrepreneurship success.

An abductive explanatory multi-case study of four industries that pose a variety of implementation challenges for B2B digital start-ups (agriculture, insurance, real estate and construction, and healthcare) was conducted using data collected from 40 interviews with Israeli experts and relevant digital data observations.

This study articulates two main observations. (1) Throughout their journeys, digital start-ups have utilized newly created and/or refined dynamic capabilities (DC) to successfully implement their digital artifacts. Simultaneously, successful DI has enabled digital start-ups to create new DC or sustain and evolve current DC. (2) We provide empirical evidence outlining how digital start-ups using continuous learning have combined causation and effectuation logic throughout their DI journeys.

This study answers a call to explore more explicit digital-related drivers (i.e. DI) for digital entrepreneurship success by studying a highly-ranked country on the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) to achieve this. Moreover, it illustrates how digital start-ups evolve throughout their commercial relationships with industry incumbents, thereby enabling an effective approach for successful DI. Such an approach can be considered very valuable for both practitioners and policymakers. Consequently, it advances digital entrepreneurship as an independent research topic.

The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of customer incivility on employees' negative emotions (i.e. anger, fear and sadness) considering the moderating role of organizational power distance.

A survey sample comprising 312 service employees was collected from 51 Taiwanese and Vietnamese companies spanning different industries. Given the multilevel characteristics of the data structure, hierarchical linear modeling was used to rigorously test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate a significant contribution of customer incivility to employees' negative emotions. Notably, this impact is more pronounced among employees in organizations characterized by low power distance compared to those in organizations with high power distance.

This research significantly advances our understanding of the emotional repercussions of customer incivility on employees by integrating cognitive–motivational–relational theory and organizational culture perspectives. The findings not only provide valuable theoretical insights but also offer practical implications for effectively managing employee well-being in culturally diverse contexts. The study recognizes certain limitations and puts forth suggestions for future research directions.