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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to businesses worldwide, compelling them to swiftly adapt their strategies to the evolving landscape. This study explores the relationships between uncertainty shocks (i.e. COVID-19), strategic responses, and performance outcomes, with a specific focus on general and green strategic responses.

Drawing from a sample of sustainability-oriented exporters in different industries, we examine the impact of these responses on market, financial, and operation performance by gathering data from 212 managers in Vietnam – an emerging country, and then applying PLS-SEM for analysis.

Our findings reveal that sustainability-oriented exporters have exhibited adaptability by adopting general and green strategic responses in the face of the pandemic’s disruptions. Green strategic responses positively influence market, financial, and operational performance, underscoring the strategic significance of integrating sustainability considerations. However, while general strategic responses show alignment with uncertainty risks, they just impact operational performance, but do not significantly influence market and financial outcomes.

Future research should consider diversifying the sample to encompass a wider range of firm types and geographical locations to enhance the external validity of the results. In addition, the study does not extensively explore the mechanisms that mediate or moderate the relationships between uncertainty shocks, strategic responses, and performance outcomes.

The study’s implications guide practitioners toward agile responses that balance adaptability, sustainability, and performance. This study provides timely insights for sustainability-oriented firms, managers, policymakers, and researchers aiming to navigate disruptions effectively and sustainably.

These findings contribute to the fields of strategic management and sustainability by emphasizing the complexities of strategic responses during uncertainty shocks, and disruptions and the pivotal role of sustainability-driven strategies in enhancing performance.

Given the importance of leadership practices and knowledge resources in fostering innovation capabilities of firms, the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of transformational leadership on exploitative and exploratory innovation via mediating role of knowledge management capability. This study also attempts to increase understanding of the appropriate mechanisms for firms to pursue innovation capability by examining the moderating mechanism of competitive intensity.

This study utilized the structural equation modeling and cross-sectional design to test hypotheses in the proposed research model using survey data collected from 351 participants in 120 manufacturing and service firms.

The findings indicate that transformational leadership induces greater effect on exploratory innovation compared to its effect on exploitative innovation. The mediating role of knowledge management capability between transformational leadership and aspects of innovation capability is also supported. Especially, the influences of knowledge management capability on exploratory innovation capability are enhanced and depended on the degree of competitive intensity.

Future research should examine the mediating mechanisms of knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and knowledge application to provide deeper insight on the role of specific components of knowledge management capability in linking transformational leadership and innovation capability.

The paper highlights the important role of transformational leadership practices for fostering knowledge management capability and specific aspects of innovation capability under high level of competitive pressure.

The paper is unique in the attempts to provide a prospective solution for firms to pursue and improve innovation based on the meaningful insights on the mediating role of knowledge management capability and moderating effect of competitive intensity in the relationship between transformational leadership and specific dimensions of innovation capability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of high-involvement human resource management (HRM) practices on innovation capabilities via the mediating role of knowledge sharing (KS) behaviors. This paper also investigates the potential moderating role of market turbulence in fostering the influence of KS behaviors on two forms of innovation capability, namely exploitative and exploratory innovation.

Analysis of moment structures and structural equation modeling are applied to examine the correlation among the latent constructs based on the survey data collected from 125 manufacturing and service firms.

The findings of this study support the mediating role of KS behaviors in the relationship between high-involvement HRM practices and aspects of innovation capability. It highlights the important role of market turbulence in strengthening the influence of KS on exploitative and exploratory innovation.

Future research should investigate the impact of high-involvement HRM practices on innovation capability under the moderating effects of organizational variables, such as perceived organizational support, to bring better understanding on a new mechanism to pursuit innovation.

The paper significantly contributes to increasing knowledge and insights into the correlation between high-involvement HRM practices and specific forms of innovation. The understanding on the mediating role of KS behaviors and the moderating role of market turbulence contribute to advancing the body of knowledge of HRM and innovation theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of entrepreneurs’ personality traits on firm innovation performance through the mediation role of entrepreneurs’ innovativeness.

The data consist of 2,574 firms from a survey of small and medium-scale manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam, a developing and transitioning economy where SMEs constitute an integral part of the economy. The estimation results based on the structural equation model was applied to analyze the data.

The results indicate that an entrepreneur’s innovativeness is positively associated with his extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience but negatively accompanied with his neuroticism. Besides, the three traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness and extraversion have positive indirect effects, while neuroticism has a negative indirect effect on technological improvement and new technology adoption. However, the effects of agreeableness on entrepreneurial innovativeness and firm innovation performance are insignificant. In addition, the diverse backgrounds of the entrepreneur such as education and ethnics are also found to influence his innovativeness and to have indirect effects on firm innovation performance.

This study may contribute to the immature literature on the entrepreneurial process within SMEs by presenting empirical evidence on the relationship between entrepreneurial personality traits and firm innovation with a large sample of SMEs in Vietnam, an emerging economy where SMEs constitute an integral part of the economy.