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Past research is mixed on family small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) use of external advisors and the limited empirical evidence is confined to developed markets. Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm, this research focuses on the “familiness” characteristic of SMEs and their use of external accountants as advisors in an emerging marketplace. Using internal resources for basic tasks is proposed to strengthen this relationship from a managerial cognition lens. Focusing also on SME internalization, this research probes the performance ramifications of using external accountants as advisors.

Hierarchical regression is used to test the hypotheses. The mediation hypothesis is tested by bootstrapping the indirect effect. The interaction hypothesis is visualized with simple slope analysis.

The results indicate that the familiness of SMEs is positively associated with the use of external advisors, and thereby, with high performance. SMEs with higher international exposure also use these external advisors to a greater degree. Family SMEs that have a focused use of internal resources for basic tasks benefit more from the use of external accountants for advising tasks.

This research sheds light on how family involvement in management influences firm performance, showing the moderating role of the use of internal advisors for basic tasks and the mediating role of the use of external accountants for advising. We add to the knowledge-based view by describing how family SMEs can utilize internal and external knowledge resources simultaneously.

Organizations increasingly use knowledge arbitrage to stimulate innovation and achieve competitive advantage. However, in knowledge management its use in startups is yet unexplored. This study aims to examine the utilization of knowledge arbitrage by startups, specifically during COVID-19.

This study employed an open-ended essay methodology to explore the drivers and barriers that startups face in utilizing knowledge arbitrage. We collected data from 40 participants to understand the role of knowledge arbitrage in startups’ knowledge management practices.

This study’s findings highlight the significance of knowledge arbitrage for startups. The benefits identified include organizational benefits such as building networks, innovating new products and achieving competitive advantage and financial benefits such as cost reduction and sales growth. The study also identifies several technological and organizational drivers and barriers that startups confront during knowledge arbitrage.

This study contributes to the existing literature on knowledge management by extending our understanding of knowledge arbitrage’s role in startups. Additionally, it sheds light on the importance of knowledge arbitrage for startups and the challenges they face, particularly in a disrupted environment reared by COVID-19. The study provides insights for the scholars and practitioners interested in effective knowledge management in startups.

Due to the constantly increasing competitiveness along with the complexity of knowledge, firms perceive collaboration as a key strategy that preserves firms' radical innovation performance. In this context, this paper aims to examine how firms’ partners’ diversity in open innovation activities influences the development of radical innovations, critical for social development. In particular, this study analyzes how the functional and geographical breadth of the firm’s collaboration portfolio affects its radical innovation performance. Furthermore, it also explores the role of firm size as a moderator in the relationships proposed.

This research employs panel data analysis, using a sample of 4,677 Spanish firms, with data sourced from the PITEC database.

The results of this study show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the functional and the geographical breadth of collaborations and the firms’ radical innovation performance. Moreover, this study finds partial support for the moderating role of firm size, in the sense that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms vary in their optimal number of diversity of partners.

This research provides a better understanding on how partners’ functional and geographical diversity, along with organizational characteristics such as firm size, affect how firms benefit from collaboration for innovation. This study shows that both SMEs and large firms experience diminishing returns when their collaboration networks become overly diverse in pursuit of radical innovation, due to increased costs. However, in SMEs, the turning point occurs at a later stage, consistent with the idea that small firms need broader functional networks to access complementary and novel resources they usually lack.

A growing body of literature analyzes eco-innovation in the wine industry, specifically focusing on the internal and external factors that contribute to sustainable innovation in wineries. The purpose of this study is to classify wineries according to their eco-innovation strategy and investigate variations in innovation groups concerning networking and socio-demographic characteristics.

The authors use an original firm-level survey conducted between June 2022 and January 2023 to study eco-innovation practices of 234 Hungarian winemakers using four groups of indicators: marketing, organizational, process and product innovations. The authors apply principal component analysis and cluster analysis to identify eco-innovation dimensions and group wineries. The authors also investigate the relationship between eco-innovation strategies, determinants and firm-specific characteristics.

The estimations identify two innovation modes: with Cluster 1 (characterized by innovative wineries) surpassing Cluster 2 (comprising less innovative wineries) in all aspects. Marketing and process innovations were more widespread than product and organizational innovations. The results confirm the importance of firm and manager characteristics, corporate organization and size, age and education of management influence innovation activity.

The cross-sectional nature of the survey provides a snapshot of the wine industry. To identify changing trends, it is beneficial to conduct follow-up research and ongoing monitoring for a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of eco-innovation over time. The study offers valuable information about the Hungarian wine sector, but generalization of results to other geographic areas or wine-producing regions should be careful. The unique characteristics of particular regions might have a different effect on the dynamics of eco-innovation. Comparative studies across different wine regions or countries may reveal regional variations in eco-innovation strategies and the impact of local contexts.

The study highlights the priority of human elements, such as the commitment of owners and managers to sustainability in driving force for innovation. The ability of businesses to absorb new knowledge and the exchange of information within organizations is crucial in promoting innovation. Considering the results of the survey, managers should proactively strive to improve knowledge transfer and information sharing within their organizations and establish cooperative alliances with universities, research institutes, suppliers, industry bodies and associations and global consultancy firms. Such knowledge-based cooperation can counterweight the innovative inertia of the micro and small enterprises representing the Hungarian wine sector.

To address the issue of “innovative inertia” faced by micro and small businesses in the wine sector, policymakers may implement focused supports, such as educational initiatives and grants, to augment their understanding and promote sustainable innovation. They should initiate intra- and inter-cluster connections and cooperations. Incentives, such as tax reduction or financial support, may stimulate wineries to introduce eco-innovation practices. Policymakers could also streamline the process of obtaining funding or grants for wineries interested in investing in cutting-edge solutions, such as renewable energy or advanced cultivation technologies to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices.

This study contributes to the eco-innovation literature by providing insights into the drivers and practices of wineries in Hungary. The results emphasize the significance of networking, sharing of knowledge and firm/manager-specific characteristics in influencing eco-innovation in the wine industry.

Breakthrough technological innovation is of vital significance for firms to acquire and maintain sustainable competitive advantages. The construction of an innovation ecosystem and the interaction with heterogeneous participants have emerged as a new dominant model for driving sustained breakthrough technological innovation in firms. This study aims to explore the effects of collaborative modes within the innovation ecosystem on firms’ breakthrough technological innovation and the ecological legitimacy mechanisms involved.

The research employs data from 212 innovative firms and conducts empirical research using a two-stage structural equation modeling (SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) analysis.

The results indicate that firm-firm collaboration (FF), firm-user collaboration (FU), firm-government collaboration (FG), firm-university-institute collaboration (FUI) and firm-intermediary collaboration (FI) all have significant positive effects on breakthrough technological innovation (BTI), with FU being particularly crucial. Furthermore, the results confirm the positive moderating effects of ecological legitimacy (EL) on the relationships between FF and BTI, as well as between FU and BTI. Conversely, EL has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between FUI and BTI, as well as between FI and breakthrough technological innovation. Additionally, EL does not have a significant influence on the relationship between FG and BTI.

Through resource dependence theory (RDT), this study unveils the black box of how collaboration modes within innovation ecosystems impact breakthrough technological innovation. By introducing ecological legitimacy as a contextual factor, a new research perspective is provided for collaboration innovation within innovation ecosystems. The study employs a combination of SEM and ANN for modeling, complementing nonlinear relationships and obtaining robust results in complex mechanisms.

This study examines green absorptive capacity as an important intervening variable that elucidates the relationship between green supply chain management (GSCM) practices (specifically, green purchasing, customer cooperation and investment recovery) and firm performance.

Drawing from the theoretical underpinnings of the natural-resource-based view theory and information processing theory, a research model is developed and tested using data obtained from 368 manufacturing firms in Ghana. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that green purchasing, customer cooperation and investment recovery have a direct positive and significant effect on firm performance. Additionally, green purchasing and customer cooperation have a positive and significant effect on green absorptive capacity but investment recovery does not. Further, the results show that the paths from green purchasing and customer cooperation to firm performance are positively mediated by green absorptive capacity.

The study reveals to supply chain managers that green absorptive capacity is an important conduit through which firms can achieve enhanced firm performance from GSCM initiatives.

This study makes a contribution by integrating the absorptive capacity literature and green management literature and establishes green absorptive capacity as a mechanism through which GSCM practices enhance firm performance.

This paper examines the relationship between open innovation (measured by exploratory and exploitative linkages) and firm-level innovative activity in the offshore renewable energy (ORE) sector.

A unique, purpose-built survey that targeted firms operating in the ORE sector and its supply chain was used. The data provides novel insights into the research activities and networking capabilities of an industry in its infant stages of development. Regression models are used to estimate the relationship between firm-level external linkages and innovative activity.

Exploratory linkages are positively related to more innovative activity. This relationship is subject to diminishing returns, distinguishing the ORE sector from other sectors. Collaborating with suppliers and accessing scientific journals are conducive to research and development (R&D) activity and process innovation, whilst collaborating with customers is associated with the decision to introduce new products and processes.

This study provides evidence of a positive, but curvilinear, relationship between external knowledge linkages and innovative activity, adding novel insights into the relationship between open innovation (OI) strategies, research and innovation outcomes for firms predominantly in the introductory stages of the technological life cycle with limited commercialisation experience. The nuanced finding that specific linkages matter for certain research and innovation (R&I) outcomes adds deeper complexity to March’s (1991) framework, where tailoring certain exploratory or exploitative linkages to specific innovation activities is important.

This study aims to explore how managers exercise agency in strategic investment decisions (SIDs) by drawing on their knowledgeability of the strategic context. Specifically, the authors address the role of position–practice relations and irresistible causal forces in this conduct.

The authors examine SID-making (SIDM) practices in four case organisations operating in highly competitive markets, conducting interviews with managers at various levels and analysing company documents. Drawing on strong structuration theory, the authors show how managerial decision makers draw upon their knowledge of organisational context when exercising agency in SIDs.

The authors provide insights into how SIDM behaviour, specifically agents’ conduct, is shaped by a combination of position–practice relations and the agents’ comprehension of their organisation’s context.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice. Particularly, the authors contribute to this literature by identifying irresistible causal forces and illuminating why actors might not resist in SIDM processes, despite having the potential to do so.

This study aims to explore how to overcome and address the loss of exploratory innovation, thereby achieving greater success in exploratory innovation. This phenomenon of loss occurs when enterprises decrease their investment in and engagement with exploratory innovation, ultimately leading to an insufficient amount of such innovation efforts. Drawing on dynamic capabilities, this study investigates the relationship between organizational foresight and exploratory innovation and examines the moderating role of breakthrough orientation/financial orientation.

This study used survey data collected from 296 Chinese high-tech companies in multiple industries and sectors.

The evidence produced by this study reveals that three elements of organizational foresight (i.e. environmental scanning capabilities, strategic selection capabilities and integrating capabilities) positively influence exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this positive effect is strengthened in the context of a high-breakthrough orientation. Moreover, the relationships among environmental scanning capabilities, strategic selection capabilities and exploratory innovation become weaker as an enterprise’s financial orientation increases, whereas a strong financial orientation does not affect the relationship between integrating capabilities and exploratory innovation.

Ambidexterity is key to successful enterprise innovation. Compared with exploitative innovation, it is by no means easy to engage in exploratory innovation, which is especially important in high-tech companies. While the loss of exploratory innovation has been observed, few empirical studies have explored ways to promote exploratory innovation more effectively. A key research implication of this study pertains to the role of organizational foresight in the improvement of exploratory innovation in the context of high-tech companies.

This paper contributes to the broader literature on exploratory innovation and organizational foresight and provides practical guidance for high-tech companies regarding ways of avoiding the loss of exploratory innovation and becoming more successful at exploratory innovation.

Since previous literature provides fragmented and conflicting results about the use of digital data for product innovation, the article aims to comprehensively explore and shed light on how agri-food firms utilise external and internal digital data sources when dealing with different product innovations, such as incremental, architecture and radical innovation.

This paper adopts an exploratory multiple-case study and a theory-building process, focussing on the agri-food industry. We collected primary and secondary data from eight manufacturing companies.

The findings of this research show an empirical framework of six agri-food firms’ digital data utilisation behaviours: the supervisor, the passive supervisor, the developer, the passive developer, the pathfinder and the conjunction behaviour. These digital data utilisation behaviours vary according to a combination of data sources, such as internal data related to inside phenomenon measures (e.g. data generated by sensors installed in the production plan) or external data (e.g., market trends, overall sector sales), and innovation purposes.

This article offers guiding principles that assist agri-food companies when utilising internal and external digital data sources for specific product innovation outcomes such as incremental, architectural and radical innovation.

The significance of external and internal data sources in stimulating product innovation has garnered substantial attention within academic discussions, highlighting the critical importance of analysing digital data for driving such innovation. Nonetheless, the predominant approach is to study a single innovation outcome through the lens of digital technology. In contrast, our study stands out by adopting a fundamental perspective on data sources, enabling a more nuanced explanation of the overall product innovation outcomes within the agri-food sector.