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This paper examines how soft skills training for owner-managers affects the financial performance of exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the authors examine the differential influence of specific owner-manager skills, such as “team working skills”, “technical skills” and “leadership skills”, on performance.

The paper utilises the Longitudinal Small Business Survey, which is a nationally representative employer dataset of UK SMEs with up to 249 employees, including those with no employees. The dataset contains information on firms' turnover, export status of goods or services and training provision for employees or owner-managers.

The results suggest that owner-manager's training has a positive effect on turnover in non-exporting firms. Moreover, a combination of soft and hard skills is associated with higher turnover in exporting firms. Amongst the specific skills of owner-managers, training on “team working” has the most significant impact on exporting SMEs' performance.

The authors' findings imply that managerial training to develop soft skills such as leadership, decision-making and communication is a worthwhile investment. The knowledge that owner-managers acquire through soft and hard skills training enables them to develop essential internationalisation competencies. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that teamwork is a significant predictor of performance.

The authors contribute to the literature by examining the role of owner-managers' training in shaping internal systems, structure, processes and internationalisation strategies, thus affecting SMEs performance. The authors' also provide a nuanced analysis of how various types of soft and hard skills underpin the successful implementation of internationalisation initiatives.

Perceived risk and benefits have been proposed as crucial elements in consumers’ technology adoption intention. Therefore, this study aims to use the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) framework, with perceived risks and benefits, to explore how they affect consumers’ Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) behavioural intention.

An online survey was conducted among 537 users of BNPL. Partial least square structural equation modelling analysis was performed to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The study found that perceived benefits, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, habit and social influence increase consumers’ behavioural intention towards BNPL. In contrast, perceived risk reduces the consumer’s intention to use. Additionally, the study revealed that consumers’ intention towards BNPL services positively affects their usage.

The lack of information makes consumers hesitant to use BNPL. Therefore, marketers should optimize facilitating conditions, such as user-friendly interfaces, accessible resources and efficient customer support, which should be the business strategy of BNPL service providers to ensure a seamless user experience.

The research empirically investigates the effect of perceived benefits on consumer behavioural intention. This contribution is crucial because while there was speculation about benefits as a driving force to consumers’ adoption intention, there was a lack of sufficient empirical evidence to support it.

This study investigates the impact of large-scale teaching in higher education on students’ preparedness for the workforce within the context of evolving labour market demands, the expansion of higher education and the application of high-impact teaching strategies. It synthesizes perspectives on employer work readiness, the challenges and opportunities of large-scale teaching and strategies for fostering a dynamic academia-industry feedback loop. This multifaceted approach ensures the relevance of curricula and graduates’ preparedness while addressing the skills gap through practical recommendations for aligning teaching methodologies with employer expectations.

The research methodically examines the multifaceted challenges and opportunities inherent in large-scale teaching. It focuses on sustaining student engagement, maintaining educational quality, personalizing learning experiences and cultivating essential soft skills in extensive student cohorts.

This study highlights the critical role of transversal skills in work readiness. It also uncovers that despite its challenges, large-scale teaching presents unique opportunities. The diversity of large student groups mirrors modern workplace complexities, and technological tools aid in personalizing learning experiences. Approaches like peer networking, innovative teaching methods, real-world simulations and collaborative resource utilization enrich education. The importance of experiential learning for augmenting large-scale teaching in honing soft skills is emphasized.

This manuscript contributes to the discourse on large-scale teaching, aligning it with employer expectations and the dynamic requirements of the job market. It offers a nuanced perspective on the challenges and opportunities this educational approach presents, providing insights for crafting engaging and effective learning experiences in large cohorts. The study uniquely integrates experiential learning, co-creation in education and industry-academia feedback loops, underscoring their importance in enhancing student work readiness in large-scale teaching.

Despite the importance of green supply chain integration (GSCI) in advancing green innovation (GI) is recognized, it remains unclear how firms can translate their GSCI efforts into GI. Therefore, this study aims to understand how GSCI affects GI, with its dimensions (exploitative GI and exploratory GI), as well as to investigate the mediating role of green knowledge integration capability (GKIC) and the moderating role of blockchain technology (BCT) adoption.

On the basis of data collected from 247 managers working in Indian firms in the automotive industry, the authors tested the proposed model using the PROCESS macro tool via SPSS software.

The empirical results indicate that GSCI is positively associated with both exploitative and exploratory GI, with a higher effect on exploitative GI. In addition, GKIC mediates the link between GSCI and exploitative GI in contrast to exploratory GI. Notably, the relationship between GSCI and GKIC is stronger when BCT adoption is high.

This study opens the black box of how GSCI affects exploitative and exploratory GI by revealing the mediating role of GKIC and the moderating role of BCT adoption. It provides valuable insights for practitioners to translate GSCI efforts into GI through developing GKIC and adopting BCT.

Reputation transfer between countries and companies, and its impact on the internationalization process of organizations is an emerging topic in the international business and marketing field. Using the resource-based view (RBV) and institutional theory as a theoretical framework, this study aims to describe the relationship between Colombia's reputation and its companies' perception from the perspective of the food and software industries.

This qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study is based on data collected through the application of 24 interviews with experts and Colombian and global company's leaders. An analysis of the concepts, categories and relationships was conducted, followed by thick descriptions.

There is reputation transfer between countries and organizations in the following cases: (1) during initial stages of the internationalization process, (2) within companies and industries that share values with the country of origin perceptions and (3) when the country of origin institutional context leverages the reputation transfer between companies and countries.

It contributes to the field by helping to the conceptualization of the process and adding important elements to the transfer process, such as actors and values, especially in country repositioning cases.

The study provides inputs to policymakers for the creation of the country brand and the management of country image, and to businesses in their corporate image and reputation strategies.

The uniqueness of this paper is based on the analysis of reputation transfer in an emerging country that is repositioning its image and reputation.

We seek to quantify the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in China using recent advances in econometric techniques.

This study adopts a smoothed instrumental variables quantile regression (SIVQR) estimator to obtain consistent estimates of the effects of urbanization on economic growth in China. Our approach accounts for the differential impacts of urbanization across the conditional distribution of economic growth while allowing for an identification strategy that addresses the endogeneity of urbanization. Our main findings reveal that ignoring urbanization endogeneity leads to inconsistent estimates of urbanization effects. Further, we find a positive relationship between urbanization and growth resembling an inverted U-shape. This supports the hypothesis that the beneficial effects of urbanization intensify at initial stages while diminishing beyond a certain threshold, due perhaps to weakening scale economies.

Our main results indicate that the individual productivity gains brought by urbanization outweigh the negative effects thereof that impede productivity, thus contributing to the economic growth in China. Further, we find that ignoring differential impacts of urbanization underestimates the beneficial effects of urbanization for provinces whose quality of governance is in the vicinity of the center of quality distribution. Ignoring the endogeneity of urbanization generates inconsistent estimates of the elasticity of economic growth with respect to urbanization. Finally, we estimate an inverted U-shape resembling relationship between urbanization and growth.

First, future studies would benefit from incorporating more data as provinces further east on the mainland become more urbanized and urbanization runs its course. Second, controlling the barriers to rural-urban mobility would contribute to the robustness of the estimated relationship between urbanization and growth once such data became available. Unveiling the impact of government-imposed barriers is key to designing optimal policies that help fuel economic growth in the country. Finally, future research could benefit from information on urbanization sources not considered here such as inter-provincial migration, as such data become publicly available.

Quantifying the beneficial effects of urbanization on economic growth can help guide the government in China to further fuel the growth through a set of relevant policy tools that promote urbanization.

Rural-urban migration in China lays the groundwork for economic advancement in recipient cities and economies, as it may induce scale economies. This can benefit both the economy at large and the migrants.

The SIVQR estimator accounts for potential heterogeneous effects of urbanization across the entire conditional distribution of growth while allowing for an identification strategy that addresses the endogeneity of urbanization. An additional distinguishing feature of the current study is our use of the most recent novel, provincial-level data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Our focus on a single country allows sidestepping issues arising from the inconsistency of the definition of urban across different countries while accounting for intra-country urbanization drivers intrinsic to China, such as natural features and geographic characteristics. Therefore, our approach has the potential to sidestep the bias resulting from the differences in mechanisms behind urbanization-growth relationships across different countries.

The world is on the verge of entering the deglobalization age, and industrialized economies have ushered it in. However, there is still a scarcity of comprehensive and rigorous studies in this field. This research has tried to analyze the evolution and characteristics of deglobalization research.

The authors have employed bibliometric analysis for examining the existing evidence on accelerating deglobalization thinking based on a thorough analysis of articles published during a roughly 25-year span between 1996 and 2022. This study has used the TISM-P technique to study the relationship among the factors accelerating deglobalization thinking. This research reviews the articles on several dimensions of deglobalization using the “what”, “why”, “how”, “who”, “when” and “where” approaches.

The authors specify the critical factors, policy reforms, approaches and observed characteristics explored in this developing research area.

The authors have analyzed the factors accountable for rising deglobalization thinking and also suggested strategic recommendations based on the findings to minimize the adverse impact of globalization.

Although there is a wealth of literature on globalization, very little study has been done in the field of deglobalization. This is the first substantive review being done in the deglobalization domain. The contemporary research has used the bibliometric approach and the “5W and 1 H” framework to gain a comprehensive understanding of the changing paradigm.

This study aims to reveal the impact mechanism of franchisor-owned resources, franchise relationship quality and franchisee's dynamic capabilities on franchisee performance, with the moderating role of cultural sensitivity.

The sample consisted of 290 middle managers and team leaders at 113 hotels and food and beverage settings participating in the international- and domestic franchises in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) is used to analyse the data.

The result reveals that franchisor-owned resources, franchise relationship quality and franchisee's dynamic capabilities significantly impacted franchisee performance. Furthermore, cultural sensitivity has a beneficial role in the effect of franchise relationship quality on franchisee performance.

This study develops an integrated analytical framework of franchisee performance from the franchisee's perspective, contributing to integrating international business theory in franchising studies, namely the resource-based view, dynamic capability view and relationship-marketing theory.

This paper aims to investigate how emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) are integrating and expanding into other emerging market host countries, focusing on Chinese mining companies in Peru.

Adopting a qualitative approach, an in-depth analysis of two Chinese state-owned enterprises’ strategies was conducted, building on stakeholder theory and the business ecosystem perspective.

This study reveals a reliance on high-level political lobbying rather than localized engagement strategies. However, findings point to increasing grassroots resistance among local stakeholders, undermining EMNEs’ bargaining power.

This paper argues for a paradigm shift toward inclusive, cooperative “translocal governance” approaches as empowered communities gain voice. Key contributions include advancing theoretical understanding of changing stakeholder relationships and power configurations in emerging countries, underscoring the rising significance of microlevel sociocultural embeddedness for MNE success and highlighting practical imperatives for EMNEs to embark on rapid localization strategies in Latin America. By elucidating multilayered integration realities in Peru, this interdisciplinary study yields contextualized insights and enriches perspective on the conditions and pathways for EMNEs to build sustainability in Global South emerging market environments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a distinct set of characteristics that influence Muslim customers’ intentions to purchase Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract in Malaysia.

The study studied the impact of perceived value, perceived quality, perceived financial advantages, religious commitment and product knowledge on the purchase intention Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract using a quantitative research approach. A Google Form-based online survey was created and distributed through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, among others. The survey data were analysed using structural equation modelling with a partial-least-square estimation property (PLS-SEM).

The study results suggested that Muslim customers in Malaysia had a greater propensity to buy Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract. Analysis of the data revealed that perceived value, perceived quality, perceived financial benefits and religious commitment had direct effects on the desire to buy Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract in Malaysia. In addition, the results reveal that religious commitment, perceived quality and perceived financial benefit are the top three important factors in explaining Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract buying intentions in this country.

Muslim customers may use Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract as a short-term credit alternative to enhance their financial standing. Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract generates a substantial quantity of credit demand and supply, which not only allows Muslim customers to adhere to Islamic standards but also contributes to the expansion of the economy. The result would aid and advise Ar-Rahnu finance resources and legislators in measuring the efficacy of the program in Malaysia, especially among Muslim customers.

Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract as a financing alternative has been explored extensively, but this study takes a whole new approach to the subject by looking at dimensions of perceived value, perceived quality and perceived financial benefit along with individual product knowledge and religious commitment. Consequently, this study will contribute to the understanding of how Muslim customers will respond to the Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract and will assist financial institutions in increasing the possibility that Muslim consumers would acquire Ar-Rahnu Islamic financing contract.