Search results

This study aims to investigate how firms of different sizes respond to competitive pressure from peers.

This study employs machine learning techniques to measure competitive pressure based on management discussion and analysis (MD&A) documents and then utilises the constructed pressure indicator to explore the relationship between competitive pressure and corporate risk-taking behaviours amongst firms of different sizes.

We find that firm sizes are positively associated with their risk-taking behaviours when firms respond to competitive pressure. Large firms are inclined to exhibit a high level of risk-taking behaviours, whereas small firms tend to make conservative decisions. Regional growth potential and institutional ownership moderate the relationships.

Utilising text mining techniques, this study constructs a novel quantitative indicator to measure competitive pressure perceived by focal firms and demonstrates the heterogeneous behaviour of firms of different sizes in response to competitive pressure from peers, advancing research on competitive market pressures.

Leveraging signalling theory and institutional environment theory, this study aims to examine how the entrepreneurial orientation of emerging market firms impacts initial public offering (IPO) performance.

The authors conduct regression analysis based on archival data from 312 firms’ IPOs in India.

The results in the Indian context suggest it differs from IPO performance in developed markets. In an emerging market context, the findings suggest that only competitive aggressiveness is valued by investors in IPOs. The findings further show that proactiveness and autonomy negatively influence IPO underpricing.

The research propositions imply that, owing to institutional voids in emerging markets, investors’ risk propensity and, hence, rewarding a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation differ from those in developed markets.

Extant literature has given limited attention to the dynamics of entrepreneurial orientation and the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation on IPO performance in emerging markets.

In socio-technical transition theory, resistance by existing technology and regime resistance plays a key role. The resistance is in the form of intentional improvements; eventually, the regime destabilizes and adopts the new technology, referred to as the sailing-ship effect. Researchers used a structural view and examined it as a strategic action and its relationship with new technology (competitive/symbiotic) in non-fast-changing sailing systems. This study uses a microlevel view and examines it in a fast-changing where products/services are developed by integrating existing technology with new product innovations; their success depends on addressing technical/market uncertainty. This study examines the sailing-ship effect in a fast-changing system and contributes to the socio-technical transition theory.

The authors need to examine the phenomena of the sailing-ship effect in its setting, and a case-study method is appropriate. The selected case provided diverse analytic and heuristic perspectives to examine the phenomena; therefore, it was a single case study.

In an IT scenario, the strategic actions decide and realize agility and competitive advantage by formulating appropriate goals with required budgets and coevolutionary changes to resources at product, process and organizational levels, addressing technical/market uncertainty. Moreover, the agility displayed by strategic actions determines the relationship with new technology, which is interspersed. Finally, it provided insights into struggle, navigation and negotiations, forming strategic actions to display the sailing-ship effect.

The study selected a Banking Financial Services and Insurance product of an IT Services company. As start-ups exhibit inherent (emergent) agility, the authors can examine agility as a combination of emergent and strategic actions by selecting a start-up.

The study highlights the strategic actions specific to an IT services company. It developed its product and services by steering clear from IT innovations such as native cloud and continuous deployment. It improved its products/services with necessary organizational changes and achieved the desired agility and competitive advantage. Therefore, organizations devise appropriate strategic actions to combat the sailing-ship effect apart from setting goals and selecting IT innovations.

The study expands the socio-technical transition theory by selecting a fast-changing system. It provided insights into the relationship between existing and new technology and the strategic actions necessary to manage technical and market uncertainty and achieve the desired competitive advantage, or the sailing-ship effect.

This study aims to explore the spillover effects of data breaches from a consumer perspective in the e-commerce context. Specifically, we investigate how an online retailer’s data breach affects consumers’ privacy risk perceptions of competing firms, and further how it affects shopping intention for the competitors. We also examine how the privacy risk contagion effect varies depending on the characteristics of competitors and their competitive responses.

We conducted two scenario-based experiments with surveys. To assess the spillover effects and the moderating effects, we employed an analysis of covariance. We also performed bootstrapping-based mediation analyses using the PROCESS macro.

We find evidence for the privacy risk contagion effect and demonstrate that it negatively influences consumers’ shopping intention for a competing firm. We also find that a competitor’s cybersecurity message is effective in avoiding the privacy risk contagion effect and the competitor even benefits from it.

While previous studies have examined the impacts of data breaches on customer perceptions of the breached firm, our study focuses on customer perceptions of the non-breached firms. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to provide empirical evidence for the negative spillover effects of a data breach from a consumer perspective. More importantly, this study empirically demonstrates that the non-breached competitor’s competitive response is effective in preventing unintended negative spillover in the context of the data breach.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relevant literature to gain deeper insights into understanding what directions of research are needed with reference to entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness in the oil and gas sector of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

This paper is a conceptual evaluation of literature.

The extant body of research on both entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness is based on quantitative studies without previous systematic, exhaustive and comprehensive grounded theory-based theorizing processes rooted in qualitative approaches. This accounts for inconsistencies and controversies of findings reported in the field.

The grounded theory-based approach advocated by this paper is likely to generate a more precise estimation of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, competitive aggressiveness and firm performance. Consequently, an accurate understanding of the interplay between these factors can empower managers to make finely-tuned strategic decisions, achieve sustainable competitive advantage and optimally adapt to dynamic and unforeseen environments.

The paper reports on important limitations of the existing literature indicating that current findings may be an artifact of studying a small number of industries.

This paper aims to unravel the relationship between market-driven impacts of climate change and firms’ deployment of renewable energy (RE) innovation. The purpose is to understand how market-related forces, influenced by uncertainty, shape firms’ behaviour in response to climate change challenges.

Drawing on the behavioural theory of the firm (BTOF), the paper develops a conceptual model to decode the relationship between each category of market-driven impacts and the resulting RE innovation within firms. The model takes into account the role of uncertainty and differentiates between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

The analysis reveals five key sources of market-driven impacts: investor sentiment, media coverage, competitors’ adoption of ISO 14001, customer satisfaction and shareholder activism. These forces influence the adoption of RE innovation differently across firms, depending on the level of uncertainty and the discrepancy between environmental performance and aspiration level.

This paper contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, it emphasises the importance of uncertainty associated with market-driven impacts, which stimulates different responses from firms. Secondly, it fills a research gap by focusing on the proactivity of firms in adopting RE innovation, rather than just operational strategies to curb emissions. Thirdly, the paper extends the BTOF by incorporating the concept of uncertainty in explaining firm behaviour. Finally, it provides insights into the green strategies of MNEs in the face of climate change, offering a comprehensive model that differentiates MNEs from domestic firms.

In today’s business world, adopting social commerce for day-to-day operations has increasingly become an important phenomenon. Several factors have been identified by previous researchers regarding the adoption of social commerce, but academic research is scarce on the relationship between the factors influencing social commerce adoption and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the post-COVID-19 situation. This study aims to identify the impact of technological, environmental and entrepreneurial factors on the adoption of social commerce by SMEs in Sri Lanka.

A quantitative study utilised the deductive approach and collected data through a field survey by distributing a five-point Likert scale questionnaire to conveniently selected respondents from Sri Lankan SMEs. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for the analysis of 384 responses.

The results revealed that technological factors [technology availability (TA) and cost-effectiveness (CE)], environmental factors [bandwagon effect (BE)] and entrepreneurial factors [attitude (AT), innovativeness (IN) and IT knowledge (IK)] have a significant impact on the social commerce adoption of SMEs in Sri Lanka. This study, as the first of its type, offers insightful information on the influence of variables on the adoption of social commerce after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Similar to any research, this study also has inherent limitations. Due to time and financial restrictions, the study’s convenience sampling method was adopted. The study’s possible limitation is its narrow focus, which could mean that it only examines a select few social media (SM) networks. The study’s conclusions might be less generalised since it focused on the western province of Sri Lanka. Future studies should take a cross-cultural strategy to explore the influence of social commerce adoption to improve the generalisability of research findings.

This study provides an in-depth assessment of critical factors, facilitating policymakers, owners, leaders and managers (decision-makers) to gain insight into the real influencing factors on social commerce adoption and the significance of SM. The study helps them comprehend how outstanding governance and knowledge of influencing factors can boost SME success in various ways. For example, research reveals that various factors have a major influence on social commerce adoption.

There has been limited research conducted on social commerce adoption after the COVID-19 pandemic period; thus, this study looked at the variables influencing it amongst SMEs in a South Asian developing country like Sri Lanka after the pandemic lasted for two years. By placing a strong emphasis on the role of entrepreneurial characteristics and the available technology within one single framework in the context of SMEs and their involvement with social commerce adoption, this study contributes to the past literature by emphasising the role of several significant factors in SMEs' adoption of social commerce. Whilst previous studies looked at multiple factors influencing the adoption of social commerce globally, this study focussed on how these factors have a significant impact on SMEs in Sri Lanka.

This study developed a multi-perspective framework combining technological, environmental and entrepreneurial factors influencing SMEs to adopt social commerce. The study provides a contribution to the literature on social commerce adoption from the perspective of SMEs in a developing country like Sri Lanka after COVID-19. Exclusively, it examines the impact of entrepreneur-related factors on social commerce adoption.

Understanding the adoption of m-commerce in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is critical for their sustainable development. This study aims to investigate the adoption of m-commerce in Vietnamese SMEs, leading to the identification of the critical determinants and their relative importance for m-commerce adoption.

An integrated model is developed by combining the diffusion of innovation theory and the technology–organization–environment framework. Such a model is then tested and validated using structural equation modeling and artificial neural networks in analyzing the survey data.

The study indicates that perceived security is the most critical determinant for m-commerce adoption. It further shows that customer pressure, perceived compatibility, organizational innovativeness, perceived benefits, managers’ IT knowledge, government support and organizational readiness all play a critical role in the adoption of m-commerce in Vietnamese SMEs.

The findings of this study can lead to the formulation of better strategies and policies for promoting the adoption of m-commerce in Vietnamese SMEs. Such findings are also of practical significance for the diffusion of m-commerce in SMEs in other developing countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore the adoption of m-commerce in Vietnamese SMEs using a hybrid approach. The application of this approach can lead to better understanding of the relative importance of the critical determinants for the adoption of m-commerce in Vietnamese SMEs.

Innovation is considered as an important tool to succeed and survive in periods of great uncertainty such as COVID-19 crisis. This paper aims to empirically examine the propensity to engage in product, process and organizational innovation under uncertainty among small and medium enterprises and how that propensity varies depending on the gender of the manager.

Using the results of 213 responses by managers of Armenian small and medium enterprises in the scope of GLOBE-2020 survey, the authors investigate the role of manager’s gender in encouraging innovative attitude under uncertainty. To measure the relationship between uncertainty and innovation (product, process and organizational), Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated between managers’ perception about the uncertainty and their perceptions of innovation within their companies compared to the players in the external environment. In addition, a linear regression was run between the three innovation types and uncertainty.

The results of our analysis confirmed the positive relationship between uncertainty and innovation. Moreover, our results indicate that male managers have a higher tendency to undertake innovation under external turbulence.

This study fills the gap in the literature by studying the relationship between uncertainty and innovation, focusing on SMEs during adversarial times, which in contrast to bigger companies are limited in terms of their resources and, hence, capacity to innovate. The paper examines the gender dimension as an internal factor affecting innovation under uncertainty in an under-researched country context of Armenia, where female entrepreneurs deal with unique challenges to engage in innovative activities.

This study aims to integrate the resource-based view (RBV) with other theories that consider external factors necessary to respond successfully to dynamic and uncertain entrepreneurial business conditions.

The paper introduces an multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, utilizing the axial-distance-based aggregated measurement (ADAM) method with weights determined by the preference selection index (PSI) method, to rank eight European countries based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data. Additionally, the paper extends the existing entrepreneurial ecosystem taxonomy (EET), offering an additional classification.

The performed analysis emphasizes the importance and necessity of involving different dimensions of EE in assessing the countries' entrepreneurship performance, which facilitates creating adequate policy measures.

The crucial limitations are assessments based only on the GEM data from a particular period, possibly leading to a certain bias. Future research should involve data from various resources to increase the results' reliability.

The ranking results and country classification obtained using the ADAM-based approach and two distinct taxonomies served as the basis for formulating tailored policy recommendations, aiming to formulate tailored policy implications for increasing the number of new entrepreneurs and improving innovativeness, sustainability and internationalization of existing entrepreneurs for each group of countries.