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The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative picture of the state of the art of the literature on digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as an enabler for their internationalisation process and as a comprehensive view of the specific domains impacted by digital technologies as well as their repercussions on the international outreach.

A systematic review which leverages a descriptive analysis of extant literature and an axial coding technique has been conducted to shed light on the current knowledge and to identify primary research areas and future research lines.

The research indicates that digitalisation impacts the internationalisation of SMEs in three specific domains: (1) internationalisation through the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) technologies and e-commerce platforms; (2) international expansion through the digitalisation of value chain activities and (3) international outreach through knowledge acquisition on digital platforms.

The value of this study is threefold. First, the authors attempt to systematically review the literature on SMEs digitalisation and internationalisation and provide a holistic perspective on the intertwining of these two research streams. Second, the authors propose a novel conceptualisation on the dimensions of SMEs digitalisation as enablers to internationalisation. Third, the authors put forward promising future lines of research.

1. Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

2. Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

3. Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

4. Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

5. SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

This paper aims to investigate if, under which conditions, and with which consequences, nonfamily members have the perception of being discriminated against as a consequence of nepotism and adverse selection practices. This research also aims to investigate whether the carried-out role influences the perception of being discriminated against among nonfamily member employees.

A quantitative approach was carried out by adopting a structural equation model (SEM) analysis. The survey investigated a sample of Italian family SMEs (participating companies N = 186, total questionnaires collected N = 838).

Drawing on the multiple identities theory, findings show that role salience (RS) effectively contributes to reducing the unwanted effects of perceived discrimination (PD) among nonfamily member employees. In doing so, this study deepens the knowledge of nonfamily member employment conditions and their consequences on strategic outcomes such as organizational commitment (OC), organizational justice (OJ) and intention to quit (ITQ).

By adopting a self-categorization approach, this study also advances current theoretical literature, as this methodological lens could help scholars further understand diversity in family business.

This study suggests it would be advisable to implement human resource management practices based on job rotation to promote cohesion and reduce perceived distances.

SMEs are the most widespread type of firm in the world; as a consequence, avoiding PD among nonfamily member employees has general ethical relevance.

This study expands current literature by showing that RS plays an important role in determining levels of PD. This study also advances current literature by focusing on the impact of multiple identities on fairness and commitment at individual and group levels of analysis of family businesses.

In today’s interconnected world, social capital has emerged as a crucial business competence, drawing significant attention in recent literature. Using social network analysis, this study aims to investigate the impact of network centrality, established by a firm through its board members (i.e. boardroom networks), on corporate cash holdings.

This study uses extensive panel data comprising 36,963 firm-year observations of firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, spanning a 22-year period (2001–2022). The study uses firm fixed-effect regression along with several alternative specifications and an instrumental variable approach to ensure the robustness of the results. Boardroom network centrality is quantified by five measures that capture different perspectives on networks as viable conduits for resource exchange and information flow: degree, two-step reach, closeness, eigenvector and betweenness.

The authors find evidence for the benefits of board networks. Firms with well-connected boards (central firms) are more likely to have smaller cash holdings. The findings also reveal distinct effects stemming from local and global properties of centrality, with local network measures playing a more pronounced role in shaping cash-holding decisions. Overall, the evidence reflects the ability of connected directors to enhance governance by limiting managerial discretion over cash reserves, thus reducing agency conflicts associated with cash holdings.

This study offers important insights for regulators, investors and practitioners, highlighting the potential for connected directors to effectively curtail managerial autonomy in deploying corporate cash holdings.

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion about the advantages and drawbacks of board networks, which constitute a vibrant and burgeoning area of research in the finance literature. It also complements scanty network-based studies on firm cash holdings. Importantly, this study extends prior work by providing robust evidence and a comprehensive analysis of the nuanced roles that board networks play in affecting the level of cash reserves.

The importance of financial dependence of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on their performance is a relatively unaddressed area of research. Relatedly, whether and to what extent foreign bank penetration exerts an impact in the presence of financial dependence also remains an open question. The purpose of the paper in this regard is to exploit unit-level data on Indian SMEs and assess the independent and interactive effects of financial dependence on SME behaviour, in the presence of foreign banks.

This study uses fixed effects specification to address the issue. In subsequent analysis, this study also uses an instrumental variable approach for robustness.

The results indicate that financial dependence improves investment and employment, although there is a decline in productivity. These findings differ across size classes of SMEs. Similar is the evidence in the presence of foreign banks. In particular, foreign bank penetration leads to a decline in investment for micro and medium SMEs, although for small SMEs, the impact is found to be the opposite.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the early within-country studies to examine the interface between SMEs and financial dependence and the role played by foreign banks in this regard.

YouTube (YT) has become a trend among millennials, and thus, marketers are trying to harness the power of it to communicate with them. Global marketers need to understand the mechanism of communicating via YT advertising (YTAD), especially in India that consists of 440 million millennials to re-strategize their YT communications. Consequently, this study aims to examine the influence of YTAD on the cognitive attitude, namely, brand awareness (BA) and brand knowledge (BK) of Indian millennials. The study also tests the moderating impacts of gender, device used for YT watching (DEYTW), duration and frequency of YT watching (DUYTW and FEYTW) on BA and BK.

Generalized linear model – analysis of variance has been used to investigate the proposed relationships in the study. Responses of 294 Indian millennials who watch YTAD regularly have been used for the final analysis. Moderating effects were also tested using Bonferroni pairwise comparisons.

The results revealed that YTAD significantly improves the cognitive attitude (BA and BK). However, gender was not found to have any moderating effect in the relationship of YTAD with BA, whereas moderating effects of gender were observed in the relationship of YTAD with BK. Furthermore, other moderators including DEYTW, DUYTW and FEYTW were found to have significant moderating impacts in the above-mentioned relationships.

In a country like India, comprising the largest millennial population of the world who spends a significant portion of their time in watching YT, it becomes crucial for global marketers to understand how the cognitive attitude (i.e. BA and BK) of millennials improves by watching YT advertisements. As it will help them in strategizing their communications on YT to get favourable consumers’ responses like purchase intention and actual purchase that may happen only when people have favourable cognitive attitude towards advertised brands.

The study offers new perspective to the field of communication by investigating the impact of YTAD on the cognitive attitude (i.e. BA and BK) of Indian millennials.

The ultimate objective of this study is to compare the impact of face-to-face and online flipped learning on students' academic achievements and their perspectives on learning and teaching, offering valuable insights to the field.

The study utilized a quasi-experimental research method that involves pre-test and post-test control groups.

The results indicated that face-to-face and online flipped learning positively impacted learning, with comparable contributions to academic achievement. However, we found that online flipped learning did not affect students' beliefs about learning and teaching, while face-to-face flipped learning positively influenced them.

As distance learning becomes increasingly important in our modern era, this research aims to explore the use of active learning methods, including discussion, writing, animation, drawing, association, analysis, knowledge measurement and games, in virtual learning environments, such as online flipped learning. The study seeks to enhance the existing literature on the impact of face-to-face and online flipped learning models on student success. Additionally, it aims to address a significant gap in the literature by determining the effect of these models on students' epistemological and pedagogical beliefs, which can impact their motivation, learning outcomes, academic achievements and decision-making processes.

This study aims to explore the interrelationships among human-related lean practices, lean production shop floors, process quality, inventory management, operational productivity and business productivity.

This study used a cross-sectional survey approach, and quantitative data were collected from 324 Indian auto-component manufacturing firms. Confirmatory factor analysis was used, followed by structural equation modelling techniques for the conceptual model, which incorporated a complete set of 11 hypotheses.

The results confirmed that human-related lean practices trigger lean production shop floors and improve process quality. Furthermore, the study revealed the positive impact of a lean production shop floor on process quality and inventory management and the positive impact of process quality on both operational and business productivity. Finally, inventory management is of the utmost importance in achieving better operational and business productivity, and operational productivity positively leads to business productivity.

The findings of this study can benefit auto-component manufacturing firms by elucidating the complex relationships between human-related lean practices, lean production shop floors, process quality, inventory management, operational productivity and business productivity. Better knowledge of these relationships will enable firms to enhance efficiency levels, reduce costs and resource wastage and improve their overall performance. This study provides a good understanding of the interplay between lean and quality factors and their influence on inventory management and business performance.

Executive isolation, also known as workplace loneliness, its factors and impact are major issues for organizational development, future of work for leadership and learning culture. The purpose of this study is to examine the Executive isolation phenomenon where relationships between power distance, organizational culture and executive isolation of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are analysed on how it is considered by their teams. The same is contextualized through the inputs received through interviews conducted with CEOs and employee surveys.

The qualitative in-depth interviews of five CEOs, and survey across 34 of the 50 employees, were undertaken over the course of two phases of this study. The investigation focused on identifying executive isolation of CEOs and perspectives of employees that can impact the leadership and learning progress of organizations based on work culture, power distance and decision-making; awareness and experience of executive isolation; workplace friendliness and rejection; and management development initiatives to minimize the impact of executive isolation. Qualitative data analysis was conducted using MAXQDA 2022 (Verbi Software, Berlin, Germany), which is a qualitative data analysis software.

The findings highlight and expose the significant gap between understanding and analysing of the factors due to which the CEOs undergo executive isolation. It also extends to providing details related to the lack of awareness of the teams’ actions contributing to the CEOs’ isolation. It further highlights the fact that the difference of perspectives between the CEOs and teams leads to the organization slowing in its learning activities due to the leaders’ own challenges of executive isolation The findings also provide immense need of developing knowledge assets and management development initiatives for learning interventions, to help understand, analyse and mitigate executive isolation, in the interest of the organizational learning and development.

Earlier research work have contextualized the executive isolation impact on CEOs ability to be a leader. This study extends it to include the implications of leadership and learning culture on the teams that are affected by organization culture, power distance, decision-making and analysing the gap between the understandings about executive isolation of the CEOs. Eventually, it interprets how CEOs courting the executive isolation impacts the overall developmental culture of the organization. This will help in asserting the serious need of new learning frameworks needed to minimize the impact of CEO-level executive isolation.

This paper investigates the impact of individualistic (health) and collectivistic considerations (environmental) on the purchasing intention of organic foods.

The study collected 391 responses from service holders of diversified tiers from Bangladesh. It considers two-step structural equation model (SEM), as well as the Ordinal Logistic regression to analyze the fact.

SEM analysis explores that, both the individualistic and collectivistic considerations affect purchasing intention of organic foods. The regression result finds that income, the number of earning members, occupation, age and BMI are influential determinants of weekly purchasing frequency of organic foods. This research suggests, along with consumer's economic solvency an organized market with dissemination of health and environmental benefits of organic foods acts as a catalyst for purchasing intention of those products.

However, there is still scope of investigating intention-behavior gap between the actual purchasing behavior and purchasing intention, which is not addressed in this study.

To understand the perception of comparatively educated and solvent people toward purchasing intention of organic foods, this research is one of the pioneering attempts in the context of an unorganized organic food market.

Investors aim for returns when investing in stocks, making return volatility a crucial concern. This study compares symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models to forecast volatility in emerging nations like the G4 countries. Accurate volatility forecasting is vital for investors to make well-informed investment decisions, forming the core purpose of this study.

From January 1993 to May 2021, the study spans four periods, focusing on the global economic crisis of 2008, the Russian crisis of 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Standard generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH), exponential GARCH (E-GARCH) and Glosten-Jagannathan-Runkle GARCH models were employed to analyse the data. Robustness was assessed using the Akaike information criterion, Schwarz information criterion and maximum log-likelihood criteria.

The study's findings show that the E-GARCH model is the best model for forecasting volatility in emerging nations. This is because the E-GARCH model is able to capture the asymmetric effects of positive and negative shocks on volatility.

This unique study compares symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models for forecasting volatility in emerging nations, a novel approach not explored in prior research. The insights gained can aid investors in constructing more effective risk-adjusted international portfolios, offering a better understanding of stock market volatility to inform strategic investment decisions.