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Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) increasingly implement digitalization in uncertain business environments. However, a dearth exists in the entrepreneurship literature for understanding the decision-making logic of digitalization as a management issue. Drawing on the effectuation theory, this study aims to explore the relationships between effectuation dimensions and SMEs’ digitalization.

Using quantitative data collected from 345 Chinese SMEs through questionnaires, the authors conducted the principal component analysis and hierarchical linear regression analysis.

The results highlight significant positive relationships between the four effectuation elements – experimentation, affordable loss, flexibility and precommitment – and SMEs’ digitalization. Moreover, this research considers the environmental conditions as moderators and reveals that environmental dynamism and complexity associated with high uncertainty negatively moderate the effects of effectuation on SMEs’ digitalization.

SMEs embarking on digitalization should constantly experiment to determine optimal strategies while contemplating their affordable losses. Flexibility should also be maintained to discard unproductive tactics and redirect to other viable options. Additionally, precommitments can reduce the risk that SMEs encounter in digitalization process. While the effectuation principles consolidate the likelihood of a successful digitalization, this research recommends that entrepreneurs should carefully consider their possible application in uncertain environments.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by theoretically clarifying the decision-making mechanism of digitalization and extends the application of effectuation to this context by illuminating the influences of effectuation principles on SMEs’ digital transformation. The identification of negative moderating effects of environmental uncertainty also augments an academic criticism about uncertainty creating the conditions for effectuation.

Several studies have shown that economic shock and crisis trigger companies to move forward innovatively. This paper aims to compliment this research topic by investigating how SMEs activate their organization resilience to adapt to changes generated by a crisis, with specific focus on how digitalization is used as an opportunity on this road. COVID-19 pandemic provided the context to investigate this situation.

The research approach combines literature review, quantitative data survey and data analysis and modeling using PLS-SEM. The quantitative data survey provided the database for building the structural equation model, exploring the structural relationships between the constructs and testing the hypotheses. Expert discussions contributed to the validation and interpretation of the results.

The model reveals that while organizational resilience has no direct effect on digitalization, combined with available resources, it realizes its indirect impact. Resilient companies require less external financial support to achieve their digitalization goals. The results also confirm that an uncertain environment encourages SMEs to go digital.

Several research studies highlighted the importance of SMEs in recovery from crises. Knowing more about how they can be supported and what capabilities they should develop is essential. This research explores the relationship between organizational resilience, resource availability and digitalization for SMEs in crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing the self-reinforcing effect of organizational resilience and the level of digitalization that was not previously studied.

This study aims to investigate the drivers and challenges of integrated reporting (IR) adoption in the Hungarian SME context.

The study uses qualitative methods to conduct an in-depth analysis of small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) drivers and challenges of IR adoption through semi-structured interviews. Further, the results of the interview are supported by content analysis.

The research highlighted the drivers for IR adoption, including growing the company’s customer base, attracting new investors, boosting competitiveness and increasing the company’s market value by improving the long-, medium- and short-term value creation. Nonetheless, the organizational transformation required to implement IR, a lack of qualified human resources, weak administrative control and poor documentation all serve as impediments to Hungarian SMEs implementing IR. Consequently, the current IR framework needs further clarification and simplification to be practical for SMEs. Integrated thinking, value creation, materiality and stakeholder engagement are the concepts that have been identified as being unclear or inapplicable for SMEs.

Furthermore, the practical implications for standard-setters, regulators and companies may help in the future in mitigating barriers, pushing companies to learn more about the benefits and risks of adopting IR.

The study is one of the few that examines the drivers and challenges of IR adoption in SMEs and responds to several academic requests for IR research on the reasons why SMEs do not participate in IR adoption. Also, the study compiles and evaluates the previous literature’s drivers and challenges for IR adoption. Furthermore, the practical implications for standard-setters, regulators and companies may help in the future in mitigating barriers, pushing companies to learn more about the benefits and risks of adopting IR.

The aim of the study is to highlight the perspectives of accounting professionals in Romania on adopting a single set of financial reporting standards for small and medium-sized entities (SMEs).

The study included a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. A qualitative approach was employed to examine the perspectives of accounting professionals on their inclination toward international standards for SMEs or national regulations. The quantitative approach involved doing content analysis on interviews to provide empirical support for the implementation of these standards in a national context.

Romanian accounting professionals want an improvement in financial reporting, but not necessarily through the use of an international standard. And although the level of convergence between the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) for SMEs and national regulations is medium, it is not desirable to apply an international financial reporting standard for SMEs.

This study stands out as one of the few papers that delve into the perspectives of accounting professionals about adopting IFRS for SMEs in a specific country, offering a unique and engaging perspective.

This paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between generic business strategies and the competitiveness of Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja (FCT).

The research design used a cross-sectional survey approach, focusing on SMEs registered with the SMEDAN in FCT-Abuja. A total of 349 SMEs were used. Data collection relied on a questionnaire-based survey instrument. The data were analysed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (SmartPLSv3.1).

The results revealed several significant findings. Firstly, the study confirmed a direct and positive relationship between the cost leadership strategy and SME competitiveness, indicating that cost leadership significantly enhances competitiveness. Secondly, a significant and positive relationship was identified between the focus strategy and SME competitiveness, suggesting its significant contribution. However, the relationship between the differentiation strategy and SME competitiveness was found to be non-significant. Moreover, the research established that employee engagement has a significant positive effect on SME competitiveness. The study also confirmed the mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between cost leadership strategy and competitiveness, as well as between focus strategy and competitiveness. Lastly, employee engagement significantly mediated the relationship between differentiation strategy and SME competitiveness.

The paper advances a new perspective by linking internal resource’s role in strategic management effort towards ensuring increased firm competitiveness especially in SMEs. The paper offers scholars a new area of research, as it draws scholarly attention to internal behaviour mechanisms that drives top managements activities through lower-level employee participation towards ensuring improved competitiveness.

As little is known about the productivity levels of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaging with universities and the relative changes in productivity of SMEs subsequent to these collaborations, the paper examines the following questions: (1) Does the relative productivity of SMEs engaging in university collaboration differ from those that do not? (2) Are subsequent changes in firm productivity following university collaboration related to their initial levels of productivity?

The paper utilises data on 254 SMEs from the Longitudinal Small Business Survey and uses two statistical techniques: First, bivariate tests of difference were used to inspect the relationships between productivity levels and whether the firm collaborated with a university to introduce its innovation. Second, ordinary least squares regressions were used to test whether the future productivity of SMEs that collaborated with universities was related to their initial productivity levels.

The analysis reveals that SME–university collaboration is unrelated to starting productivity. Furthermore, the analysis suggests a nonlinear relationship exists between the starting productivity of SMEs and their subsequent productivity following a university collaboration. Therefore, higher levels of subsequent productivity are observed among those SMEs where starting productivity was either relatively low or high, suggesting that collaborations have a transformative effect on SMEs with relatively lower initial levels of productivity and a maintenance effect for SMEs with relatively higher levels of initial productivity.

Given the fact that the extant literature also suggests that, overall, university collaboration is beneficial, policymakers should strive to encourage greater levels of collaboration involving SMEs. In light of the evidence that SME–university collaborations can transform less productive firms, it appears unjustified for practitioners and policymakers to only consider stronger-performing firms to be included in such programmes.

The study contributes new theoretical and practical knowledge to the understanding of the role of firm productivity in predicting the proclivity of firms to collaborate with universities. Furthermore, as few studies have examined the impact of these collaborations on the subsequent productivity of firms that collaborate with universities, this paper fills an existing gap in the literature.

Lack of access to finance is a major constraint to the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship in developing countries. The recent proliferation of mobile phone services, access to the internet and emerging technologies has led to a surge in the use of FinTech in Africa and is transforming the financial sector. This paper aims to examine whether FinTech developments heterogeneously contribute to the growth of digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in 47 African countries from 2013 to 2020.

The paper uses a novel method of moments quantile regression, which deals with heterogeneity and endogeneity in diverse conditions for asymmetric and nonlinear models.

The empirical results reveal that the rise of FinTech companies offering services in Africa heterogeneously increases digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in their different stages of growth. FinTech developments have a strong and positive impact in countries with higher levels of digital finance than those with lower levels. FinTech developments and digital finance positively and significantly influence entrepreneurship in Africa, particularly in the nascent and transitional development stages of entrepreneurship. Institutional quality has a considerable positive moderating effect when used as a control rather than an interaction variable.

The results suggest the need to promote FinTech developments in Africa: to provide a wide range of alternative digital finance schemes to SMEs and to promote entrepreneurship, especially in countries where entrepreneurship is in the nascent and transitional development stages. The results also underscore the need to promote FinTech development through supportive regulations and institutional quality to reduce risks related to FinTech and digital financing schemes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts to account for the often overlooked heterogeneity effects and show that the influence of FinTech developments is not homogenous across the varying development stages of digital finance and entrepreneurship.

Data analytics (DA) is an emerging topic in management science at large organizations; however, accountants in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are believed to be lagging far behind in the usage of DA. This study aims to provide a deep understanding of the actual DA activities undertaken by management accountants (MA) and to draw on SMEs’ characteristics to take advantage of DA applications.

This study used a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews with 31 accounting and finance practitioners at senior levels of SMEs, following the use of the MAXQDA 2022 application for data analysis.

Findings in this study suggest variance and trend analysis as the two most popular tasks of DA, and advanced tasks such as contingency analysis, financial modeling, sentiment analysis and regression analysis are unfully performed in SMEs. The outcomes revealed that DA is not anticipated to affect the responsibilities but to expand the role and scope of management accounting.

This study simultaneously builds a theoretical framework about the antecedents, in terms of the external and internal drives and the characteristics of SMEs’ owner-managers, that are most common in all types of SMEs that encourage MA to use a specific technology, data analysis in a more advanced way instead of searching for determinants that affect the adoption of technology in general, as previous studies have conducted.

Although there are studies on DA usage, little has approached the mutual interconnections between how DA is applied by MA in SMEs and what changes in management accounting responsibilities by DA affect. Therefore, the point of this study was to look into how SMEs use DA and what activities MA actually do with DA to discover what traits SMEs need to use DA applications effectively as DA applications become more advanced.

This research investigates the feasibility, benefits and challenges of environmental sustainability reporting by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The authors develop an abridged SME environmental sustainability reporting framework based on the environmental aspects of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards for Sustainability Reporting. The authors collect the views of 203 SME accounting practitioners on our proposed reporting framework using a survey questionnaire.

The authors find that the greatest perceived benefit for firms adopting environmental sustainability reporting is that it leads to an improvement in company image. Lack of knowledge, resources and data capturing tools impede implementation of environmental sustainability reporting for both SMEs and accounting practitioners. While SMEs are not yet required to implement environmental sustainability reporting, the research discusses implications for policy makers and practitioners for adopting environmental sustainability reporting in the SME context.

The main limitation of this study is that environmental sustainability reporting for SMEs is in its infancy. A longitudinal survey, or re-examining this survey over time, could be beneficial to assess the long-term benefits and costs of implementing sustainability reporting.

The findings of this study have practical implications for the future development of SME environmental sustainability reporting in the EU and for regulators considering sustainability reporting regulations with a specific focus on SMEs.

The study reconstructs the GRI environmental guidelines into a framework for SMEs and provides empirical evidence on the accountant’s sustainability reporting role.

Empirical evidence of the value creation process through which internationalizing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) develop international branding capability (IBC) to build a value-creating brand in international markets is incomplete. This research aims to investigate a theoretical framework for the determinants and outcomes of IBC in internationalizing SMEs.

Using surveys of 519 internationalizing SMEs, this research empirically verified the antecedents to and effects of IBC on SMEs’ value creation, which thus translates into superior performance. Furthermore, this research explores contextual factors influencing the value creation process in SME internationalization.

Findings show that SMEs with strong international marketing resource orchestration (IMRO) and relational capability are more competent in developing IBC, which assists resource-constrained SMEs to create value, as manifested through international brand equity (IBE) and improved international performance. Moreover, environmental uncertainty enhances the interplay between IMRO, relational capability, and IBC, while new entrant pressure strengthens the relationship between IBC and IBE, and price competition pressure magnifies the impact of IBE on international performance.

Our study pioneers conceptualization of the value creation process through which SMEs develop IBC to build value-creating brands in international markets, overcoming the liabilities of smallness and outsidership.