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The purpose of this paper is to explore and theorize the process of managerial feedback in relation to change in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

This research embraces a qualitative methodology in the context of manufacturing SMEs. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, and observations conducted with various managers in six SMEs operating in three countries, it is argued that managers benefit more by using daily, ongoing, feedback as a trigger of change in their organizations.

The findings suggest that there is an overall view that managers appear to be reluctant to change existing processes using formalized feedback mechanisms, which runs counter-intuitive to the literature. In contrast, informal methods of feedback work better in enhancing organizational change. Moreover, another two features of feedback enhance this process, namely, benefits oriented and confidence oriented. As such, this study contributes to existing knowledge and practice by proposing a three-fold form of feedback through which managers expand their perspectives of feedback from feeding-back to feeding-forward thereby enhancing the opportunities of triggering change.

Feedback should merely be considered as a dynamic and socially constructed managerial practice. A practice where actors not only exchange information and share knowledge, but also act, react and interact with each other as they constantly rethinking the change process. The proposed aspect of feedback emphasizes knowledge therapeutically and in combination with the dialogical discourse (practical illustration) that increases the odds for capturing change as a natural, rather than exceptional.

Practitioners, as such, may wish to consider the terminology used when it comes to studying change and its implementation in a crisis context. Using deformalized managerial feedback mechanisms to tackle a formal phenomenon like “change” could help avoid employees perceiving a negative connotation, causing resistance or confusion and feeling threatened. Therefore, the authors suggest that practitioners, during development initiatives on modernizing or altering organizational processes, consider replacing the term “change” as a formal concept.

It is an investigation from an exploratory perspective in studying and understanding the causes, factors and modalities that trigger managerial feedback toward organizational change in manufacturing SMEs.

Market share is often used to describe the position and success of a firm in an industrial sector. While the impact of market share is not always reflected in a firm’s profitability or performance, many firms see it as an important organisational goal. Accordingly, it could be argued that market share influences the organisational thinking and strategic planning of small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises. However, it is unclear how and to what extent? The analysis indicates that firms with an increased market share differ significantly from firms with a decreased or static market share on the emphasis given to a number of environmental factors. The analysis shows that firms with increased market share are likely to have higher performance and in particular achieve enhanced financial performance, greater customer retention and customer satisfaction. This applies to all firm sizes. To ensure competitive advantage, firms need to consider market share in conjunction with overall profits.

The purpose of this introduction is fourfold: (1) to articulate the reasons for the special issue; (2) to highlight some of the fundamental issues related to the management research on COVID-19; (3) to introduce the authors and to summarize their contributions to this special issue; and (4) to provide some suggestions for future research pertaining to global challenges and business in general.

This article introduces the special issue by addressing the following four points related to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) conceptualization of the crisis, (2) the role of organizations, (3) challenges of the global pandemic and (4) business–society relationships. We briefly relate the papers in this special issue to these four points and we conclude with some thoughts on how to move forward on research in this domain.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be one of the most important challenges to mankind and to organizations in recent years, and many organizations have proven to be very resilient in the face of this. Effective leadership, communication with stakeholders, global organizations and new organizational forms such as cross-sectoral collaborations have all proven important in dealing with this crisis. They will also likely be important for dealing with even more serious crises in the future such as climate change and other challenges referred to in the papers in this issue.

This paper provides an overview and summary of the implications of the papers in this special issue. As such, its originality derives mostly from the originality of the papers contained in this special issue.

Previous studies have shown that small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms make a substantial contribution to national economies in terms of job and wealth creation (Daly & McCann, 1992; Schreyer, 1996). However, many smaller firms face unprecedented change arising from the increasingly competitive and changing environment in which they operate (Coopers and Lybrand, 1997; D’Aveni, 1994). Much of this competition often emanates from larger firms with greater resource capabilities. Firms of all sizes are increasingly turning to strategy as a means of achieving competitive advantage. Strategy research is mainly directed towards examining why firms differ in performance (Barnett & Burgelman, 1996; Schendel, 1996). Strategy has ‘undergone, in the 1990s, a major shift in focus regarding the sources of sustainable competitive advantage: from industry to firm specific effects’ (Spanos & Lioukas, 2001). This involves more than strategy formulation — it is about making choices based on competing alternatives and implementing the chosen direction using the organisational processes and systems (Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2002; Stopford, 2001). Other writers, such as Pettigrew and Fenton (2000), acknowledge that ‘soft’ aspects are an integral part of the evolutionary nature of strategy, and include cultural influences (Chakravarthy & Doz, 1992) and leadership (McNulty & Pettigrew, 1999).

Besides applying knowledge in own products and services, firms increasingly exploit their knowledge assets externally, e.g. by means of licensing out technology. The aim of this paper is to help firms achieve strategic fit in the keep‐or‐sell issue, which results from potential external knowledge exploitation.

The keep‐or‐sell decision refers to the issue whether to commercialize knowledge assets externally in addition to exploiting them inside the organization. Because of the high opportunities and risks of externally leveraging knowledge, the keep‐or‐sell decision constitutes a major area of conflict between strategies at different levels, particularly knowledge vs product strategies, corporate vs business unit strategies and R&D vs marketing strategies. After detailing the keep‐or‐sell decision, the paper conceptually explores how firms may respond to potential conflicts in the keep‐or‐sell decision by achieving strategic fit.

The paper identifies, in particular, three major characteristics of a firm's strategic approach, i.e. coordination, centralization, and collaboration, which may help firms achieve strategic fit in the keep‐or‐sell issue.

The keep‐or‐sell decision is a unique arena for studying hierarchical strategies and strategic fit. As a result, this paper has major implications for research into strategic fit, hierarchical strategies, knowledge management and open innovation. Achieving fit across a firm's different strategies in the keep‐or‐sell issue is essential for firm performance in a knowledge‐based economy.

The intention of this research paper is to shed light on the key factors influencing the human resource management (HRM) performance of first tier managers (FTMs), and the vital importance that a holistic strategic framework can have in this regard.

The research paper uses an up‐to‐date historical approach and, additionally, draws on detailed case study evidence from an aerospace manufacturing/engineering company via manually and electronically analysed in‐depth semi‐structured interview and company documentation.

The case study findings reveal that the FTM's HRM performance is greatly influenced by a group of four key factors, and their interrelationships.

The literature survey was mainly industry‐specific (manufacturing), and the sample was restricted to one sector (aerospace), as well as one case study organisation. Furthermore, the views of FTMs' staff are not directly represented.

The FTMs' HRM role shows no signs of abating; in addition, questions regarding their performance of this role have increasingly emerged. This has become more evident as organisations have continued to expand the FTMs' role by devolving greater HRM responsibilities to them, and their performance of the role demonstrates that many FTMs are ill equipped to perform their HRM duties to the required standard. However, the vital importance that a holistic strategic framework (which encompasses the four key factors influencing their performance) can have on their performance of this role is not acknowledged. The present research paper, gives an empirical example of a case study, and therefore provides a springboard to address the weakness in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between business‐level strategy and organisational performance and to test the applicability of Porter's generic strategies in explaining differences in the performance of organisations.

The study was focussed on manufacturing firms in the UK belonging to the electrical and mechanical engineering sectors. Data were collected through a postal survey using the survey instrument from 124 organisations and the respondents were all at CEO level. Both objective and subjective measures were used to assess performance. Non‐response bias was assessed statistically and it was not found to be a major problem affecting this study. Appropriate measures were taken to ensure that common method variance (CMV) does not affect the results of this study. Statistical tests indicated that CMV problem does not affect the results of this study.

The results of this study indicate that firms adopting one of the strategies, namely cost‐leadership or differentiation, perform better than “stuck‐in‐the‐middle” firms which do not have a dominant strategic orientation. The integrated strategy group has lower performance compared with cost‐leaders and differentiators in terms of financial performance measures. This provides support for Porter's view that combination strategies are unlikely to be effective in organisations. However, the cost‐leadership and differentiation strategies were not strongly correlated with the financial performance measures indicating the limitations of Porter's generic strategies in explaining performance heterogeneity in organisations.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature by identifying some of the gaps in the literature through a systematic literature review and addressing those gaps.