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The International Labor Organization (2020) estimates that eight out of ten enterprises (i.e. own-account workers and small economic units) are informal worldwide. However, less is known about the internationalization of informal enterprises. Here, it is argued that economic blocs, such as sub-Saharan Africa, with a greater proportion of informal enterprises, may provide broader societal legitimacy for them to operate internationally. Thus, informal firms would need to collaborate with other firms to overcome their resource constraints. Geographic colocation is one way to facilitate positive interfirm interactions that promote networking and subsequently cooperation. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to addresses two questions. Firstly, how and to what extent does interfirm marketing cooperation in geographic colocation influence the internationalization of micro and small informal manufacturing enterprises? Secondly, how do the perceived benefits of local external economies moderate this relationship?

The study draws evidence from 125 randomly selected informal enterprises located in two major clusters in Ghana, using a mixed-method approach.

The partial least square - structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis applied revealed two central points. Firstly, sharing marketing costs allows informal firms to upgrade their phases of export development directly. Secondly, the linkage of increasing sales activities and local external economies encourages the progress of the phases of export development and the scope of internationalization. Results confirm that the cluster benefits of interfirm cooperation and local external economies on the informal firm internationalization process complement each other in addition to their linear relationship.

The study contributes to understanding the nexus of the informal sector, geographic colocation and the entrepreneurial internationalization literature. The results should motivate researchers and policymakers to approach informal firm internationalization through collaborative business activities.

There is little known about investigating the importance of all proximity dimensions simultaneously as a result of geographical proximity on university-industry collaborative innovation. This paper aims to answer the question of how geographically proximate university and industry influence cognitive, social, organizational, institutional and cultural proximity within university-industry joint laboratories and finally, what is the outcome of these interplays on collaborative innovation.

The study uses an exploratory multiple-case study approach. The results are derived from 53 in-depth, semistructured interviews with laboratory directors and representatives from both the company and the university within 8 joint laboratories of Telecom Italia (TIM). The data collection was carried out in 2014 and 2015. The analysis follows a multi-grounded theory approach and relies on a mix of deductive and inductive reasoning with the final goal of theoretical elaboration.

This study finds the role of social and cultural proximity at the individual level as a result of geographical proximity as an enabler of collaborative innovation by triggering mutual learning, trust formation and frequent interactions. Cognitive proximity at the interface level could systematically influence collaborative innovation, while organizational and institutional proximity has marginal roles in facilitating collaborative innovation. The qualitative analysis offers a conceptual framework for proximity dimensions and collaborative innovation within university-industry joint laboratories.

The framework not only advances state-of-the-art university-industry collaboration and proximity dimension but also offers guidance for managers in designing collaborative innovation settings between university and industry.

With this study, the paper advances the understanding beyond solely the relationship between proximity and collaboration and shed light on the interplay between geographical proximity and other proximity dimensions in this context, which has received limited scholarly attention.

How does organizations' embeddedness in social and cultural communities influence their behavior? And how has this changed with recent communication technology advances and globalization trends? In this introductory chapter to Research in the Sociology of Organization's volume on Communities and Organizations we consider how diverse types of communities influence organizations, as well as the associated benefit of developing a richer accounting for community processes in organizational theory. Our goal is to move beyond the focus on social proximity and networks that has characterized existing work on communities. We highlight how the notion of community provides a distinct institutional order that enables actors to tailor community logics that give cultural meaning to and govern specific institutional fields and furthermore how communities can function as an organizational form.

Defined as local manufacturing systems, industrial districts have been recognized as particularly important for the location of firms’ manufacturing activities intertwined with innovation processes. The debate on the internationalization of production has stressed the low value related to manufacturing within value chain activities (smile framework), emphasizing the need to focus on high value-added activities (R&D or marketing). Following multinational enterprises’ internationalization strategies, also district firms have progressively offshored their production phases in the past years. However, recent studies focused on backshoring have revamped the attention on the domestic control of production for firms’ competitiveness. This chapter explores district firms’ location choices for manufacturing activities between local and global. Based on an empirical analysis of about 260 Italian district firms specialized in mechanics, furniture, and fashion and supported by a case study investigation, our results show that despite district internationalization processes, a non-negligible amount of firms still carry out – in-house or through outsourcing – production activities at district level. Larger firms couple district production and long-term upstream outsourced internationalization activities. The district system confirms its role of pooling specialized competences and product know-how, being decisive for firms’ innovation and responsiveness to national and international markets. Backshoring, instead, is a very limited phenomenon and linked to upgrading strategies.

One increasingly popular financing option for entrepreneurial ventures is to attract corporate venture capital (CVC) investments. Prior research tends to take a CVC-centric perspective assessing the benefits and contingencies for incumbent firms or corporate investors to engage with entrepreneurial ventures. Few studies have taken the opposite perspective of investigating factors that entrepreneurial ventures need to take into account when engaging with CVC investments. As such, this study aims to investigate pre- and post-IPO entrepreneurial venture performance that partners with CVC providers or corporate investors, as well as to assess organizational and environmental contingencies.

This study draws on a sample of 631 entrepreneurial ventures from the CSMAR database ranging from 2009 to 2019, along with CVC financing data from the CVSource database and financial data in entrepreneurial ventures’ annual reports from the Juchao Network. This study applies multiple linear regression modelling and fixed effect panel data analyses to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that CVC investment contributes to entrepreneurial ventures’ financial performance, both pre- and post-IPO. However, while research and development (R&D) intensity and geographic proximity strengthen the positive relationship between CVC investment and entrepreneurial ventures’ performance pre-IPO, R&D intensity has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between CVC investment and entrepreneurial ventures’ performance post-IPO.

First, in emerging economies, adopting a CVC financing strategy is an important strategic choice for entrepreneurial ventures that have a great demand for external capital, resources and technology support. Second, leveraging the relationship between external financing and internal R&D investment is essential for them to maintain their core competitiveness and sustainable growth. Moreover, entrepreneurial ventures should deal with the coopetitive relationship with incumbent companies and manage their dependency on other market participants in the external environment.

This study focuses on the performance implications for entrepreneurial ventures engaging with CVC investments pre- and post-IPO. First, this study broadens and expands prior research on the mechanism of the relationship between CVC and entrepreneurial ventures’ financial performance. Second, the research conducts a comparative study of the moderating effects of different timings. Third, this study applies learning theory to the field of CVC in emerging economies.

This chapter outlines opportunities for designing place-based or localized social media services and technologies for tourist settings. Following an exploration of how ephemeral, collaborative social networks emerge, consideration is given to understanding tourist places in terms of networking and socialization. In the field of information technology design, there are many examples of experimental mobile, location-based services that provide informational overplays for tourism sites and generally seem to merely replicate the functions of guidebooks or online information services. However, viewing the performance of tourism through a lens that emphasizes place-making as a social practice could inspire the innovation and design of new mobile social technologies to enrich tourist places and interactions.

As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practitioners, and global leaders wrote brief essays for this curated chapter on the role of global leadership in this extreme example of a global crisis. Their thoughts span helpful theoretical breakthroughs to essential, pragmatic adaptations by companies.

The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of colocation on office workers' perception of workplace design and interaction freedom in organizations.

The study was conducted at six different departments of an office organization that moved from geographically dispersed office buildings to one office building. The pre‐move data were collected three to six months before the move, and the post‐move data were collected almost one year after the move through questionnaire surveys. Out of 284 workers, 169 office workers filled out the questionnaire in the pre‐move survey, and 175 filled out the questionnaire in the post‐move survey.

Based on statistical analyses of the data, the study found that colocation did not help improve office workers' overall perception of interaction freedom in the organization, but it helped eliminate perceptual disparities concerning interaction freedom among its different departments. The study also found that office workers' perception of workplace design support for interaction and workstation location were strong predictors of their perception of interaction freedom in the organization. Overall, the findings of the study indicated that the purpose of colocation might be defeated if organizational behavior and culture were not modified simultaneously to promote workers' perception in support of interaction freedom.

The study considered only one type of colocation that involved bringing people of different organizational units together from geographically dispersed places to one place. Therefore, these findings cannot be generalized for all other types of colocation.

The findings of the study are important for corporate real estate (CRE) strategists and organizational leaders who are actively considering colocation as a strategy to improve interaction and team effectiveness in the organization.

The study investigates different mechanisms involving the effects of colocation on office workers' perception of workplace design and interaction freedom in organizations; and identifies important distinctions to consider for achieving the benefits of colocation in terms of face‐to‐face interactions in the workplace.

This chapter argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The chapter presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value for firms and discusses how intra-firm geographic mobility can create value for individual workers. The chapter concludes by presenting a future research agenda for intra-firm geographic mobility in light of emerging phenomena such as global collaborative patenting by multinationals, temporary colocation of knowledge workers, and nonstandard work.