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The current research aimed to investigate the external enablement role of Digital Infrastructures (DI) in the interplay of entrepreneurial cognitions and innovation.

Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) were used for analyses. This yielded a sample of 8,601 Generation Z entrepreneurs operating in 25 European countries.

Applying hierarchical moderated regressions showed that socio-cognitive components of an entrepreneurial mindset (self-efficacy, risk propensity, opportunity identification) affect innovation among Generation Z entrepreneurs. More importantly, DI plays an external enablement role in the interplay of cognitions and innovation among Generation Z entrepreneurs.

This study contributes to the socio-cognitive theory of entrepreneurship by integrating an external enablement perspective into the study of cognitions and entrepreneurial outcomes (here, innovation). It contributes to the digital technology perspective of entrepreneurship by connecting the conversation about the socio-cognitive perspective of entrepreneurship regarding the role of cognitions in innovation to the conversation in information systems (IS) regarding technology affordances and constraints. This study extends the application of the external enabler framework to the post-entry stage of entrepreneurial activity and integrates a generational perspective into it.

The recent literature on corporate governance and gender diversity underlines that those differences may go beyond a pure or direct effect on firms’ performance and in this vein, this study aims to investigate whether the presence of women in leading positions can affect the credit rating indicators.

The authors focus on Italian manufacturing firms, as well as small and medium firms (SMEs), that are often under-represented in previous studies, despite their importance in many economies. The authors extract data on directors and top managers as well as rating classes and credit score indicators, and using a fixed-effects model, the authors analyze the relationship between credit risk mitigation and the inclusion of women among top managers, consistently with the rising empirical literature focused on risk perceptions.

The authors find a significant negative relationship between female participation in top management and credit risk, with a greater impact associated with smaller firms, where the presence of a female top manager might make the difference. The results are robust to different model specifications and estimation strategies, and the authors find different magnitudes of the effects also according to the geographical location of the firm.

Because of the chosen sample of manufacturing firms, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to expand the study and test the approach elsewhere.

The authors add new and more robust empirical evidence of a negative relationship between female participation in the top management and credit risk by focusing on the entire population of Italian nonlisted manufacturing firms.