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Digital technologies over time are becoming increasingly pervasive and relatively affordable, finding a large diffusion in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) also for internationalization purposes. However, less is known about the specific mechanisms by which this can be achieved. Specifically, we focus on how SMEs can face the international environment, leveraging digital technologies and thanks to their intellectual capital (IC).

We analyze the relationship between digital technologies and the internationalization of SMEs, exploring the mediating role of IC in its three dimensions: human, relational and innovation capital, and assessing the possible moderating effects posed by international institutional conditions, specifically the Sino-US trade frictions. The relationships are tested using a sample of companies listed on China’s A-share Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) from 2010 to 2021.

Digital technologies help to internationalize SMEs. However, this positive relationship is affected (mediated) by the presence of an already consolidated IC. In addition, the institutional conditions of the international market, such as the Sino-US trade friction, moderate the components of IC differently. Specifically, the overall mediating effect of human and relational capital is boosted, while this does not happen for innovation capital.

First, this study contributes to the literature on organizational resilience, especially digital resilience, confirming its validity in the context of internationalization and, in particular, those processes adopted by SMEs. Second, we clarify the mechanisms through which digital technologies exert their impact on the process of internationalization and in particular the prominent necessity of having IC. Third, our conclusions enrich the understanding of how IC components react to turbulence in international markets.

How does the family influence individual entrepreneurial entry? The literature does not provide a satisfactory answer. In this paper, we develop an individual entrepreneurial capital perspective to systematically evaluate the impact of current households on entrepreneurship at both theoretical and empirical levels.

Based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database from 2010 to 2018, we used logit regression models to examine the relationship between household size and opportunity- and necessity-motivated entrepreneurship.

The empirical results show that with the expansion of household size, the possibility of opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship shows a trend that first declines and then rises, and the possibility of necessity-motivated entrepreneurship shows an upward trend, suggesting that there are two types of opposing mechanisms that affect the relationship between household and entrepreneurial entry.

Family households are the starting point of individual growth and provide initial cognitive and social resources for decision-making. For entrepreneurs, it is necessary to make full use of household-based capital and networks to promote entrepreneurial activities. For the government, it is necessary to explore the development and implementation of household-based entrepreneurial policies.

Through analyses of the U-shaped relationship between household size and opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship and the positive relationship with necessity-motivated entrepreneurship, we reveal the relationship between household and entrepreneurship, reconcile the contradictions in the literature and contribute to the two fields of family studies and entrepreneurship.

Organizational diversity training is designed to enhance employees' skills and competencies regarding diversity and its management. The question of its effectiveness, and the conditions under which it thrives, remains a matter of debate. Unlike previous studies that have predominantly focused on the perspective of training participants, this study shifts the lens to the viewpoints of diversity training providers in Germany – a country where the formal requirement for diversity management was implemented relatively recently. The primary objective is to ascertain the critical factors influencing training effectiveness from the providers' perspective.

This research draws upon case studies based on document analysis and qualitative interviews with diversity training providers across Germany.

The investigation reveals that the effectiveness of diversity training, as perceived by providers, hinges on several key factors: the organizational environment (including the widespread recognition of diversity issues and the presence of an organizational diversity framework), the attributes of diversity trainers (notably their personal familiarity with diversity) and the setting and design of the training (such as venue, duration and a blend of instructional approaches). A notable barrier to achieving effective training outcomes is the lack of supportive conditions within client companies, exemplified by limited training budgets, which impedes the accurate assessment of training effectiveness.

This study marks a novel contribution to the field by explicitly focusing on the perspective of diversity training providers in Germany. It provides new insights into the importance of the organizational context surrounding diversity education within the private sector.

This study aims to delve into the lived experiences, challenges and visions of women entrepreneurs in Jordan, placing a magnifying glass on those spearheading or co-pioneering start-ups. It aims to understand the myriad factors that influence their entrepreneurial journey, from motivation to the future of their niche.

Adopting a qualitative lens, this study is anchored in semi-structured interviews encompassing 20 Jordanian women entrepreneurs. Following this, thematic analysis was deployed to dissect and categorize the garnered insights into ten salient themes.

The study reveals that personal experiences and challenges are pivotal in directing these women towards niche markets, aligning with the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Tools such as digital instruments, customer feedback and innovative strategies like storytelling and augmented reality are integral to their entrepreneurial success, resonating with the resource-based view (RBV). Additionally, challenges like cultural barriers and infrastructural limitations are navigated through adaptive strategies, reflecting the resilience inherent in these entrepreneurs. Networking, mentorship, embracing technological advancements and implementing sustainable practices are highlighted as crucial elements underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT).

Contrary to the extant body of research, this study provides new insights into the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Jordan, highlighting the practical relevance of theories like TPB, RBV and SIT for both policymakers and the start-up community in niche markets.

This study explores the relationship between economic freedom and gender ideologies on the allocation of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries. Opportunity entrepreneurship is typically understood as one’s best option for work, whereas necessity entrepreneurship describes the choice as driven by no better option for work. Specifically, we examine how economic freedom (i.e. each country’s policies that facilitate voluntary exchange) and gender ideologies (i.e. each country’s propensity for gendered separate spheres) affect the distribution of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries.

We construct our sample by matching data from the following country-level sources: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Adult Population Survey (APS), the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (EFI), the European/World Value Survey’s Integrated Values Survey (IVS) gender equality index, and other covariates from the IVS, Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) World Bank (WB) databases. Our final sample consists of 729 observations from 109 countries between 2006 and 2018. Entrepreneurial activity motivations are measured by the ratio of the percentage of women’s opportunity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship to the percentage of female necessity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship at the country level. Due to a first-order autoregressive process and heteroskedastic cross-sectional dependence in our panel, we estimate a fixed-effect regression with robust standard errors clustered by country.

After controlling for multiple macro-level factors, we find two interesting findings. First, economic freedom positively affects the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship. We find that the size of government, sound money, and business and credit regulations play the most important role in shaping the distribution of contextual motivations over time and between countries. However, this effect appears to benefit efficiency and innovation economies more than factor economies in our sub-sample analysis. Second, gender ideologies of political equality positively affect the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship, and this effect is most pronounced for efficiency economies.

This study offers one critical contribution to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how economic freedom and gender ideologies shape the distribution of contextual motivation for women’s entrepreneurship cross-culturally. We answer calls to better understand the variation within women’s entrepreneurship instead of comparing women’s and men’s entrepreneurial activity. As a result, our study sheds light on how structural aspects of societies shape the allocation of women’s entrepreneurial motivations through their institutional arrangements.

This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to the proposed framework.

The article critically examines the current state of women’s entrepreneurship research regarding the institutional context and highlights the benefits of a shift towards feminist phenomenology.

The prevailing disembodied and gender-neutral portrayal of entrepreneurship has resulted in an equivocal understanding of women’s entrepreneurship and perpetuated a male-biased discourse within research and practice. By adopting a feminist phenomenological approach, this article argues for the importance of considering the ontological dimensions of lived experiences of situatedness, intersubjectivity, intentionality and temporality in analysing women entrepreneurs’ agency within gendered institutional contexts. It also demonstrates that feminist phenomenology could broaden the current scope of IPA regarding the embodied dimension of language.

The adoption of feminist phenomenology and IPA presents new avenues for research that go beyond the traditional cognitive approach in entrepreneurship, contributing to theory and practice. The proposed conceptual framework also has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research, such as a phenomenological intersectional approach and arts-based methods.

The article contributes to a new research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship research by offering a feminist phenomenological framework that focuses on the embodied dimension of entrepreneurship through the integration of IPA and conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).

In the global context, artificial intelligence (AI) technology and environmental, social and governance (ESG) have emerged as central drivers facilitating corporate transformation and the business model revolution. This paper aims to investigate whether and how the application of AI enhances the ESG performance of enterprises.

This study uses panel data from Chinese A-share listed companies spanning the period from 2012 to 2022. Through a multivariate regression analysis, it examines the impact of AI on the ESG performance of enterprises.

The findings suggest that the application of AI in enterprises has a positive impact on ESG performance. Internal control systems within the organization and external information environments act as mediators in the relationship between AI and corporate ESG performance. Furthermore, corporate compliance plays a moderating role in the connection between AI and corporate ESG performance.

This paper underscores the pivotal role played by AI in enhancing corporate ESG performance. It explores the pathways to improving corporate ESG behavior from the perspectives of internal control and information environments. This discussion holds significant implications for advancing the application of AI in enterprises and enhancing their sustainable governance capabilities.

The paper examines the key driving factors behind the rapid and uneven growth of social enterprises in China based on Kerlin’s Macro-Institutional Social Enterprise (MISE) model of social enterprise development, with an emphasis on testing key local institutional factors.

The study adopts the quantitative method approach. The hypotheses have been tested based on a cross-regional empirical analysis with two national datasets on China.

This study shows that among the state, market and civil society, local government support in terms of favorable policies is the sole determinant factor driving China’s social enterprise growth. On the other hand, the market is irrelevant and local civil society impedes social enterprise growth. This demonstrates that the current growth model is the result of government intervention.

The datasets have a limited sample size. We suggest that future studies may collect a larger sample size with more comprehensive information. We think this study will encourage more comparative qualitative studies at the local level to reveal the underlying mechanisms of growth.

Since government policy is the determinant factor, the quality and quantity of government-backed incubation programs and platforms would matter the most for social enterprise growth. Our study also helps social entrepreneurs understand what factors matter when they try to develop social enterprises in China. They are advised to work on aspects of gaining legal legitimacy and political support in order to grow the sector.

This conclusion suggests that professionals and practitioners should review the implications of the current growth of social enterprises in China, in terms of their sustainability, given their institutional isolation from other sectors.

Current studies have yet to thoroughly explore the role of meso- and micro-institutional factors in social enterprise development, especially in different contexts. With reference to Kerlin’s framework and the tri-sector model, this paper advances the understanding of social enterprise growth in China.