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The focus of this paper is two‐fold. First, it examines the growth strategies adopted by fashion design houses to transform and reposition their businesses from relatively small, niche‐market and privately‐owned companies to stock market listed conglomerates which produce fashion and lifestyle products aimed at a lucrative and international middle retailing market. The second is to consider the geographical implications of these strategies as illustrated through an examination of their locational impact on London and New York. The findings of this research suggest that both cities have experienced unprecedented and parallel patterns of development, apparently as a result of the aggressive expansion activities of fashion designer companies. As such, the paper highlights the impact of internationalisation and strategic growth at the micro environmental level.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationships between digital technology, tangible/intangible assets and marketing capabilities to gain more insight into the factors related to small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) growth in the UK. Based on the resource-advantage theory, this research addresses the question “to what extent does digital technology influence marketing capability which leads to companies’ growth?”

Data were gathered through 21 in-depth interviews with managers from different multinational organizations and six focus groups with employees.

The study identifies the two key components of digital technology as information quality and service convenience. In addition, the relationships between digital technology, tangible/intangible assets and marketing capabilities perform the significant role of facilitator of a company’s growth.

The focus on UK SMEs limits the generalizability of the results. Further studies should be conducted in other sectors and country settings to examine the associations identified in the current study.

This study identifies the main impacts of digital technology on intellectual/physical assets. While managers and employees have specified that marketing capability is significant for organizations, there are a few other areas of concern with regard to consequences related to a company’s growth, competence and core competence, particularly in an SME’s setting.

This paper aims to shed light on financial development in Ethiopia and its implications for overall economic development. It does so with particular focus on development understood as industrial development and with special attention drawn on inequality and debt levels as well as the real estate market in Ethiopia. Two research questions are focussed on in particular, where the first serves as prerequisite for the assessment of the second: What kind of financial development took place in Ethiopia in the past quarter of a century? Furthermore, are processes of financialisation visible in Ethiopia, and if so, to what effect?

The paper is based on publicly available macro-data and qualitative and quantitative data collected by the author herself during a three months’ research stay in Ethiopia.

It is found that despite higher levels of financial inclusion and deepening, industrialisation is on a relative decline. What is more, inequality and debt levels increase, and the recent growth spurts seem to be rooted in the construction sector with prices in the real estate market surging. In can be concluded that despite a flourishing financial sector, the Ethiopian economy is faced with the peril of crises associated with an inflated real estate market, inequality, debt burdens and impeded industrialisation.

African economies and, in particular, the development and effects of financial markets are still a blind spot in economic research. By combining quantitative and qualitative data on and gathered in Ethiopia, this paper therefore conducts greenfield research.

The purpose of this paper is to rethink the focus of the smart cities debate and to open it to policymaking and strategy considerations. To this end, the origins of what is termed normative bias in smart cities research are identified and a case made for a holistic, scalable and human-centred smart cities research agenda. Applicable across the micro, mezzo and macro levels of the context in which smart cities develop, this research agenda remains sensitive to the limitations and enablers inherent in these contexts. Policymaking and strategy consideration are incorporated in the agenda this paper advances, thus creating the prospect of bridging the normative and the empirical in smart cities research.

This paper queries the smart cities debate and, by reference to megacities research, argues that the smart city remains an overly normatively laden concept frequently discussed in separation from the broader socio-political and economic contexts in which it is embedded. By focusing on what is termed the normative bias of smart cities research, this paper introduces the nested clusters model. By advocating the inclusion of policymaking and strategy considerations in the smart cities debate, a case is made for a holistic, scalable and human-centred smart cities agenda focused, on the one hand, on individuals and citizens inhabiting smart cities and, on the other hand, on interdependencies that unfold between a given smart city and the context in which it is embedded.

This paper delineates the research focus and scope of the megacities and smart cities debates respectively. It locates the origins of normative bias inherent in smart cities research and, by making a case for holistic, scalable and human-centred smart cities research, suggests ways of bypassing that bias. It is argued that smart cities research has the potential of contributing to research on megacities (smart megacities and clusters), cities (smart cities) and villages (smart villages). The notions of policymaking and strategy, and ultimately of governance, are brought into the spotlight. Against this backdrop, it is argued that smart cities research needs to be based on real tangible experiences of individuals inhabiting rural and urban space and that it also needs to mirror and feed into policy-design and policymaking processes.

The paper stresses the need to explore the question of how the specific contexts in which cities/urban areas are located influence those cities/urban areas’ growth and development strategies. It also postulates new avenues of inter and multidisciplinary research geared toward building bridges between the normative and the empirical in the smart cities debate. More research is needed to advance these imperatives at the micro, mezzo and macro levels.

By highlighting the connection, relatively under-represented in the literature, between the normative and the empirical in smart cities research, this paper encourages a more structured debate between academia and policymakers focused on the sustainable development of cities/urban areas. In doing so, it also advocates policies and strategies conducive to strengthening individuals’/citizens’ ability to benefit from and contribute to smart cities development, thereby making them sustainable.

This paper makes a case for pragmatic and demand-driven smart cities research, i.e. based on the frequently very basic needs of individuals and citizens inhabiting not only urban but also rural areas. It highlights the role of basic infrastructure as the key enabler/inhibitor of information and communication technology-enhanced services. The nested clusters model introduced in this paper suggests that an intimate connection exists between individuals’ well-being, their active civic engagement and smart cities sustainability.

This paper delineates the relationship between megacities and smart cities research. It identifies the sources of what is termed normative bias in smart cities research. To address the implications of that bias, a nested clusters model for smart cities is introduced, i.e. a conceptual framework that allows us to redraw the debate on smart cities and establish a functional connection between the array of normatively laden ideas of what a smart city could be and what is feasible, and under which conditions at the policymaking level.

This paper examines the growth strategies adopted by fashion design houses which have undergone significant transformation in the past decade from being privately owned, niche market companies to stock‐market‐listed businesses selling fashion and other lifestyle products to a lucrative and international middle retailing market. In order to illustrate this transition, the paper will focus upon the entry of American fashion design houses into central London. The expansion activities of these firms are identified and the resultant impact of their strategies upon central London fashion retailing is considered, providing invaluable insights to the impact of fashion retailer internationalisation and strategic growth at the micro environmental level.

The paper extends the organizational learning framework: Structural-Functional (SF)-single-loop or Conflictual-Radical (CR)-double-loop learning to the management accounting literature. The sociological approach of organizational learning is utilized to understand those contingent factors that can explain why management accounting innovations succeed or fail in organizations.

We view learning as enhancing an organization’s strategic competitive advantage by making it better able to adopt and diffuse innovation in respond to changes in its environment in order to manage improved performance. The success of management accounting innovations is contingent upon whether its learning process involves SF-single-loop or CR-double-loop learning to adopt and diffuse process innovation.

The paper suggests that the learning strategy that the organization chooses is the reason why some management accounting innovations are more successfully adopted than others and why some innovations are easily diffused in some organizations but not in others. We propose that the sociological approaches to learning provide an alternative framework with which to better understand the adoption and diffusion of process innovations in management accounting systems.

It has become evident that management accounting researchers need to pay particular attention to an organization’s approach to adoption and diffusion of innovation strategies, particularly when they are designing and implementing process innovation programs for an organization. According to Schulz (2001), there are two interrelated stages of the learning that can shape the outcome of the innovation process in an organization. The first stage is related to the acquisition/production (adoption) of knowledge that results in gathering information, codification, and exploration. This is followed by the second stage which is the distribution or dissemination (diffusion) processes. When these two stages – adoption and diffusion – are applied within an accounting context, they address issues that are commonly associated with the successes and/or failures of management accounting innovations.

Although innovation involves learning, the nature of the learning process does not completely describe the manner in which an innovation affects the organization. Accordingly, we suggest that the two interrelated organizational sociological dimensions of innovations processes, namely, (1) the adoption and diffusion theories of Rogers (1971 and 1995), to approach organizational learning, and (2) the SF (single loop) and CR (double loop) approaches to learning be used simultaneously to describe management accounting innovations.

When an innovation is implemented, it initially can be introduced as an incremental change, one that can be limited in both in its scope and its breadth of administrative changes. This means that situations which are most likely to benefit from its initiation can serve as the prototype for its adoption by the organization. If successful, this can be followed by systemic accounting innovations to instituting broader administrative changes within the existing accounting reporting and control systems.

This paper aims to identify the barriers that are linked to the institutional, external and social environmental factors in the emerging economies of South-East Asia (SEA). Through a comparative analysis of China, India and Pakistan, this study attempts to understand the constraints that might inhibit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in this region from becoming more successful.

This study proposes an empirical research framework to identify the constraints to determinants of SMEs’ growth (the CDSG model) in an important geographic and industrial cluster of SEA countries including China, India and Pakistan. Six propositions are tested, using data from 1,443 SMEs obtained from Enterprise Survey Data Repository database from the World Bank. Ordinary least-squares estimation is applied for statistical analyses and testing of the research propositions.

The results show the differential effects of the proposed CDSG model in China, India and Pakistan. Access to external finance is found to be irrelevant to the growth of SMEs in China, while it has a positive influence in India and Pakistan. Furthermore, in terms of the innovation process, partial mediation is traced. Using the tax rate factor, negative mediation is found between CDSG variables and SMEs’ growth. Both mediators play different roles in firm growth activities, while the level of significance of some variables is found to be more relevant to a specific region rather than to all.

The prudent management of the proposed CDSG variables could revolutionize the constraints facing SME growth, making them into success factors. This could invigorate the growth of SMEs’ in SEA countries. The paper concludes with practical implications for policymakers and investors.

This SMEs’ theoretical framework is the first to use innovation and tax rate mediators to highlight the determinants of business growth in three SEA regional economies (China, India and Pakistan).

The purpose of the current study is to help remove the obstacles to sustainable production and consumption by revealing the determinants of green consumption behaviour, which is one of the precursors of sustainable economic growth. This study aims to expand the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model and contribute to the relevant literature by investigating the factors of social media usage, social media marketing and digital marketing interactions that have not been investigated before in relation to green product purchasing behaviour.

This study examines the effect of the extended TPB model on consumers’ intention to buy green products in Turkey, which has a Middle Eastern culture and is a developing economy. In the study, data collected from 409 participants with the questionnaire method were analysed using SmartPLS 4.0 and IBM SPSS 26 statistical programs.

The study findings revealed that all the structural elements of TPB (attitude, subjective norms, personal behaviour controls) and social media marketing and digital marketing interactions contribute to consumers’ green product purchasing behaviour. The study findings also demonstrated that the use of social media is not effective in the purchasing of green products.

Understanding consumers’ perspective on purchasing green products is crucial for policymakers, businesses and marketers, as it helps formulate appropriate strategies to support sustainable economic growth. In this respect, this study has important implications for sustainable consumption and production. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to examine consumers’ green product purchasing behaviour in the context of sustainable economy.