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The novel COVID-19 supply chain disruption has globally altered the environmental needs of society. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine how top managers are environmentally committed to integrating green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in the operational performance of small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana, within the post-pandemic economy.

The study used a cross-sectional survey to obtain data from 270 SMEs in Ghana, using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling to test seven hypothesized relationships.

The outcome of the analysis revealed that top management environmental commitment has a significantly positive effect on supply chain operational performance. The structural model also revealed that top management environmental commitment has a positive and significant effect on both internal and external GSCM practices. The results further revealed that both internal and external GSCM practices have positive and significant effects on supply chain operational performance. Finally, both internal and external GSCM practices mediate the path between top management environmental commitment and supply chain operational performance.

The study provides a novel framework which contributes to both theoretical studies and managerial decisions on COVID-19 related supply chain management issues. However, the study was limited to the Ghanaian context, thus, further related studies are required in other contexts.

This study provides a novel framework by elucidating the intervening role of GSCM practices in the path between top management environmental commitment and supply chain operations in an emerging post-pandemic world context.

Industrialization has contributed to global environmental problems, especially in developed countries, but increasingly so in developing ones as well. Leveraging on the natural resource-based view theory, this study aims to examine the mediating role of environmental consciousness (EC) on the relationship between green intellectual capital (IC) and environmental performance among manufacturing firms in Ghana against a backdrop of increasing national drive towards greater industrialization.

This study used a cross-sectional survey design to obtain data from 245 manufacturing firms using purposive sampling technique. Structural equation modelling was used to test for the hypothesized relationships among variables.

Evidence suggests that green IC has a significantly positive effect on environmental performance. Furthermore, it was found that green IC has a positive and significant effect on EC, but EC only mediated the relationship between green IC and environmental performance.

Manufacturing firms within emerging economies like Ghana can improve on their green practices by incorporating these findings in their business models, while research could be guided to focus their inquiries on this and related genre of scholarly work.

This study is an early-stage study to identify EC as a variable which mediates the relationship between green IC and environmental performance among manufacturing firms in an emerging economy like Ghana.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) domestic network structural attributes on their ex post internationalisation strategic innovation and adaptiveness in the host country.

The model fit of SME domestic network structural attributes and their ex post international performance was examined using structural equation modelling on data gathered from a sample of 263 SMEs from Croatia, a transition and emerging economy. Hierarchical regression analysis was further performed to test both the direct and moderating effects.

The study revealed that domestic network informality (DNF) moderates the link between SME domestic network centrality and their international innovation. Similarly, the findings show that DNF strengthens the negative association between domestic network density and SME international innovation and strategic adaptiveness. Moreover, the study did not find any direct impact of these domestic networks’ structural attributes (density and centrality) on SME international innovation and strategic adaptiveness.

Scholars have emphasised the importance and urgency for further research attention on the role of networks on SMEs’ internationalisation activities from emerging economies. This study responds to this call, and to the knowledge of the authors, is the first to examine the role of domestic network attributes on SME international performance in emerging economies. The findings provide new insightful contributions to the social network perspective and the international entrepreneurship literatures.

This study aims to examine the underlying mechanisms through which entrepreneurial marketing (EM) promotes the development of a favorable brand image and enhances sales growth and market share in new ventures (NVs).

The authors tested the theoretical model using a multi-informant design in which survey data were collected from NV entrepreneurs and marketing managers. Hypotheses were tested using linear regression and PROCESS analysis.

The authors demonstrate the significance of EM as comprising two NV capabilities – first, the level of complementarity between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) as a dynamic capability, and second, brand management capabilities (BMCs) as an operational capability – in shaping a favorable NV brand image and promoting market performance.

The authors offer a novel perspective by demonstrating that EO and MO yield complementarities in driving NVs’ BMCs, which, in turn, drive brand image development and market performance for NVs. In doing so, the authors demonstrate novel theoretical implications for the relevance of EM to NV branding, which, to date, has received scant attention in the literature.

The authors identify a potential avenue for entrepreneurs and NV managers to mitigate the potential failure rates by simultaneously pursuing a higher level of EO and MO and investing in brand-building activities. Such efforts can help enhance brand image, drive sales growth and foster long-term success.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to include brand capabilities as an element of EM, examine EM in NV brand image development and identify the role of EM capabilities relevant to NV brand building and market performance simultaneously.

The aim of the study is to examine the effects of opportunity creation and discovery on the performance of family firms. Specifically, from the tenets of dynamic capabilities and organizational contingency perspectives, this study proposes and tests a framework of how family firms' creation and discovery behavior impact venture growth and the conditions under which such impact can vary.

The study uses moderated-hierarchical regression to analyze survey data from 156 family-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within a sub-Saharan African economy.

The findings indicate that creation behavior has a curvilinear U-shaped relationship with venture growth, while discovery behavior has a direct positive relationship with venture growth. Further analysis reveals that the curvilinearity of the U-shaped relationship between creation and venture growth will be stronger for older family firms than for younger ones.

The study findings may be limited by the cross-sectional nature of the data and the specific focus on family firms only.

The results highlight the significance of pursuing both opportunities among family firms. In fact, both creation and discovery opportunities are significant drivers of family firm growth, albeit in different capacities. Relatedly, managers of older family firms (compared to younger firms) can invest more in exploiting creative opportunities.

From these findings, governments and other stakeholders should create enabling environment and institutional frameworks conducive to exploiting opportunities by entrepreneurial firms.

The study is novel – as it provides unique findings on the performance implications of creation and discovery behavior of entrepreneurial family firms within developing economies.

The purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation in the nexus between cultural diversity (CD) and firm operational performance (OP).

The population of the current study is foreign industrial firms listed in the tax directorate of the Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI). A stratified random sampling technique was applied to select 136 firms in KRI, with a response rate of 57 per cent. Smart-PLS was used to examine the hypothesised relationships in the proposed framework.

The results indicate that CD is significantly related to a firm’s OP. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is, in turn, significantly related to a firm’s OP. Furthermore, the results provide evidence that EO plays a mediating role in the nexus between CD and a firm’s OP.

The study highlights the importance of CD and EO in supporting a firm’s OP. In addition, the findings will provide scholars and managers a deeper understanding of the role of EO as a mediator through which CD enhances a firm’s OP.

The International Labor Organization (2020) estimates that eight out of ten enterprises (i.e. own-account workers and small economic units) are informal worldwide. However, less is known about the internationalization of informal enterprises. Here, it is argued that economic blocs, such as sub-Saharan Africa, with a greater proportion of informal enterprises, may provide broader societal legitimacy for them to operate internationally. Thus, informal firms would need to collaborate with other firms to overcome their resource constraints. Geographic colocation is one way to facilitate positive interfirm interactions that promote networking and subsequently cooperation. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to addresses two questions. Firstly, how and to what extent does interfirm marketing cooperation in geographic colocation influence the internationalization of micro and small informal manufacturing enterprises? Secondly, how do the perceived benefits of local external economies moderate this relationship?

The study draws evidence from 125 randomly selected informal enterprises located in two major clusters in Ghana, using a mixed-method approach.

The partial least square - structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis applied revealed two central points. Firstly, sharing marketing costs allows informal firms to upgrade their phases of export development directly. Secondly, the linkage of increasing sales activities and local external economies encourages the progress of the phases of export development and the scope of internationalization. Results confirm that the cluster benefits of interfirm cooperation and local external economies on the informal firm internationalization process complement each other in addition to their linear relationship.

The study contributes to understanding the nexus of the informal sector, geographic colocation and the entrepreneurial internationalization literature. The results should motivate researchers and policymakers to approach informal firm internationalization through collaborative business activities.

The purpose of this study is to test the thesis that the family firm’s success hinges on effective strategic knowledge management (SKM) capability coupled with an entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Contingency theory holds that entrepreneurial success is contingent on strategic capabilities and resource orchestration theory explains how well family firms nurture capabilities to structure, bundle and leverage resources that define competitive advantage (CA). This study combines these two theoretical viewpoints to propose the effects of EO and SKM capability on CA to achieve successful performance in family firms.

This study uses a hybrid approach applying structural equation modelling (SEM) and deep-learning artificial intelligence (DL-AI) analysis to survey data on 268 Malaysian family firms.

SEM results confirm that CA mediates the relationship between innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking dimensions of EO and firm performance. Autonomy and competitive aggressiveness have no bearing, however. The relationships among innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking with CA and performance are positively moderated by SKM capability, becoming more potent at higher levels. Moreover, four additional DL-AI models reveal the necessity of specific EO dimensions and the interacting effects of EO–SKM capability to influence CA and to attain performance success subsequently.

This study theorizes and presents two new boundary conditions to a knowledge-based theory of the family firm and its firm performance. First, CA mediates the relationship between EO and performance; and second, SKM capability moderates the relationships between EO and CA and between EO and family firm performance. Methodologically, this study uses DL-AI to embrace non-linearity and prioritize predictor variables based on normalized importance to produce greater accuracy over regression analysis. Hence, DL-AI adds methodological novelty to the knowledge management and family firm literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether predicting factors of conventional ventures’ performance are appropriate in interpreting the creative industries context. Moreover, this paper introduces a way to measure venture performance in creative industries.

A structured questionnaire was used to address this research objectives, based mainly on scales tested in previous studies. Data were collected from a sample of 371 female entrepreneurs of creative industries. A hierarchical linear regression analysis was conducted to examine the research hypotheses.

In congruence with the hypotheses, the findings demonstrated that venture performance in creative industries can be predicted by factors that affect conventional venture performance. Creative personality and professional network ties are regarded according to the empirical analysis presented in this paper as the factors with the highest impact.

Data were pulled from female entrepreneurs in Greece, especially from the two biggest cities Athens and Thessaloniki. Consequently, it was precarious to fulfill the condition of generalizability. Additionally, a snowball sampling method was used, because of the absence of creative industries firms’ directory in Greece.

Based on authors’ knowledge and review, no prior study has examined predictors’ effect on creative industries venture performance.

The purpose of this paper is to help enhance the scholarly conversation about the essential nature of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct, its dimensionality and measurement. The authors focus on how EO was defined and measured in various contexts, which is the basis for the proposed five-dimensional EO scale (FDEOS).

Survey was conducted in design industry in China. A pilot test was conducted with 20 Chinese firms. Questionnaires were sent to 1,200 firms. A total of 408 complete and valid questionnaires were received.

It was found that a behavior aspect of EO as a second-order reflective model had a greater degree of agreement among scholarly community. As a result, a new FDEOS was proposed from behavioral perspective. Data were collected from 408 firms of design industry in a big developing country.

While five-dimensional EO construct is a well-recognized concept in the literature on entrepreneurship, little is known about its measurement. The research reported in this paper provides support for this assertion and develops a new scale, FDEOS, that designed to be neutral with regard to industry context and type of organization.