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Small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are coming under increasing market pressures due to larger more agile companies encroaching on their markets and increasing integration in the supply chain. Thus SMEs need to increase their innovativeness to improve and survive. The aim of this paper is to see how quality practices can be used to instill innovation within SMEs. The research methodology involved a statistical analysis of over 60 SMEs to determine their approach to quality and innovation. This approach was followed up with ten in‐depth case studies to determine deep rich data. The case study data, presented in this paper, show that quality is an essential foundation for progressing to large scale innovation and also continues to act as a catalyst for innovation.

Utilizing the expectation states theory in sociology, this study probes into the influence of the board's informal hierarchy on the quality of enterprise innovation, originating from the perspective of internal directorial interactions, while analyzing the boundary effects exhibited by the nature of property rights and the intensity of geo-culture.

The study selects China's A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2021 as the research sample, employing the Tobit regression analysis method to scrutinize the hypotheses presented in the text.

The regression results demonstrate a positive correlation between the board's informal hierarchy and the enterprise innovation quality (EIQ). Upon introducing variables specific to property rights and geographical culture, the authors found that in comparison to non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), the influence of the board's informal hierarchy on the quality of corporate innovation is diminished in SOEs. Conversely, the intensity of geo-culture across Chinese provinces enhances their mutual positive influence. In the additional analysis, the authors also found that the elevation of corporate risk tolerance is a significant pathway for the positive effect of the board's informal hierarchy on EIQ. Moreover, this positive influence is more profound in high-tech enterprises, businesses implementing equity incentive plans and companies that have subscribed to director and officer liability insurance.

The findings not only deepen the understanding of how the board's internal status characteristics influence corporate decision-making but also enrich the application scope of expectation states theory. Furthermore, this study offers valuable guidance for optimizing innovation decision-making by adjusting the personnel structures of corporate boards.

Digital transformation and innovation-driven development have become an international consensus. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of relationships, mechanisms and economic consequences between digital transformation and enterprise innovation quality in order to provide a benchmark for developing countries to implement digital transformation strategies and innovation-driven strategies and provide a major support for economic recovery in the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era.

Using microdata from A-share listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2021, this study examines the relationship between digital transformation and enterprise innovation quality and further reveals the internal logic and economic consequences of digital transformation to improve enterprise innovation quality through the mediating effect and moderating effect models.

The results demonstrate that digital transformation is beneficial for improving enterprise innovation quality. The heterogeneity test demonstrates that digital transformation has a larger effect on improving enterprise innovation quality in non-state-owned enterprises and eastern enterprises in China. The mechanism test demonstrates that digital transformation can improve enterprise innovation quality by improving internal control quality and analyst attention. Furthermore, with the increase in enterprise innovation inputs, digital transformation plays a significantly stronger role in improving enterprise innovation quality. The extended analysis demonstrates that digital transformation can significantly improve enterprise financial performance by improving innovation quality.

First, the construction of the core explanatory variable digital transformation index in this study is based on the Python data analysis software, which calculates the frequency of digital transformation in the text of the business situation analysis portion of the annual report of the listed companies and then obtains the degree of digital transformation of the company in this year. There may be some deviation from the degree of digital transformation in the actual production and operation of enterprises. Second, in addition to internal control quality and analyst attention, are there other mediating mechanisms for the impact of digital transformation on the quality of enterprise innovation? Third, whether the moderating effect of innovation input on digital transformation and innovation quality is related to human capital factors of the research and development (R&D) team, such as the technical background of R&D personnel, etc.

This study enriches the relevant theories of digital transformation and broadens the research boundaries of digital transformation and enterprise innovation. This study's result provides an empirical basis for enterprises to improve enterprise innovation quality and financial performance from the perspective of digital transformation at the micro level and points out specific practical directions, combining theory with practice.

Online open innovation platforms provide opportunities for product users to participate in the innovation process and contribute their ideas to the platform. Nonetheless, they also present a significant challenge for platform managers, who select high-quality innovations from a massive collection of information with diverse quality.

In this study, the authors employed a machine learning method to automatically collect a real dataset of 2,276 innovations and 30,004 detailed comments from the online platform of IdeaExchange and then conducted empirical experiments to verify the study hypothesis.

Results show that extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience positively and directly influenced the quality of their innovation. Furthermore, an individual's social network position mediated among extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to experience and the quality of an innovation.

Results showed that extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience positively and directly influenced the quality of their innovation. Furthermore, an individual's social network position mediated among extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, openness to experience and the quality of innovations.

This study combined the Big Five personality traits theory and social network theory to examine the association between user intrinsic personality traits, social network position and the quality of their innovative ideas in the context of online innovation platforms. Additionally, the findings provide new insights for platform managers on how to select high-quality innovation information by considering user personality traits and their social network position.

This study aims to analyze the moderating effect of managerial discretion on the relationship between cross-border knowledge search and the high-tech firms’ innovation quality in a global health emergency and addresses the following issues: the influence mechanism of different types of cross-border knowledge search on the high-tech firms’ innovation quality in a global health emergency; and the moderating role of different dimensions of manager discretion on the above relationship.

Based on the firms’ strategy selection methods, the authors divided cross-border knowledge search into three aspects, namely, breadth, depth and balance, and analyzed the impact of cross-border knowledge search on the innovation quality of high-tech firms in a global health emergency, taking managerial discretion as the moderating variable, and divided it into position rights, pay rights and operation rights according to the key rights of firms’ strategic management. Furthermore, the authors constructed a theoretical model, and for an analysis sample, the authors collected data from Chinese high-tech firms from 2013 to 2021.

The empirical results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between cross-border knowledge search breadth, depth and balance and the innovation quality of high-tech firms. The position rights, pay rights and operation rights of managerial discretion have partially significant moderating effects on the relationship between cross-border knowledge search breadth, depth and balance and the high-tech firms’ innovation quality.

Considerable literature has grown around the theme of the impact of knowledge search on the firms’ innovation quality. Nevertheless, only a few studies draw on the combination of global health emergency, cross-border knowledge search and the innovation quality; in particular, no literature has analyzed the relationship between the three from the managerial discretion perspective. Exploring the above relationships has great theoretical value for enriching and improving knowledge management and innovation management theories and provides a theoretical basis and practical support for high-tech firms to face challenges of a global health emergency and to break through the innovation dilemma.

Based on the literature on disruptive innovation, this research explores how disruptive innovation directly and indirectly (via innovation speed and innovation quality) influences firm performance in relation to the contingency of market-supporting institutions.

A sample of 207 firms was gathered through questionnaires targeting senior managers and R&D managers from high-tech firms in China with two waves including explanatory variables and outcome variables.

This empirical results indicate that disruptive innovation positively affects firm performance, and that innovation speed and innovation quality mediate the relationship between disruptive innovation and firm performance. Meanwhile, market-supporting institutions positively moderate the relationship between innovation speed and firm performance, but negatively moderate the relationship between innovation quality and firm performance.

This study suggests that disruptive innovation is important to firm performance, innovation speed and innovation quality play mediating roles, and market-supporting institutions acts as moderating effects. A research limitation is that the data were collected mainly through a questionnaire.

Firms should incorporate disruptive innovation as an important strategy and improve innovation speed and innovation quality to promote firm performance, and policymakers should improve the levels of market-supporting institutions to facilitate innovation and performance.

This study contributes the literature of disruptive innovation by uncovering the positive effect of disruptive innovation and firm performance and the mediating effects of innovation speed and innovation quality on the abovementioned relationship, and revealing their contingency effects of market-supporting institutions.

The key to the success of multinational corporations’ (MNCs) business models is the improvement of their innovation quality. From the cross-border knowledge management perspective, this paper aims to analyze the improvement path of innovation quality of MNCs and construct the functional path of the relationships among the knowledge creation, knowledge application and innovation quality of MNCs in the cross-border knowledge management process, so as to achieve the success of their business models. Based on this, this paper introduces cultural distance to further analyze how such relationships will change with the cultural distance level.

Using data from Chinese A-share listed MNCs with production operations located in the Asia-Pacific region from 2014 to 2018, this paper constructs a panel data model to test the mediating effect of knowledge application and the moderating effect of cultural distance on such relationships.

This paper obtains the following research findings: knowledge creation and knowledge application each have a significant, inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation quality; knowledge creation has a significantly positive correlation with knowledge application and knowledge application has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between knowledge creation and innovation quality; cultural distance has a moderating effect on such relationships. The specific moderating direction depends on the extent of the knowledge creation and knowledge application.

The findings are helpful to MNCs’ managers, providing guidance and serve as a reference for them to make strategic decisions on cross-board knowledge management and business models innovation.

The theoretical contributions are summarized as follows: First, it further enriches and expands the theoretical of knowledge management and innovation quality relationship. Second, it further enriches and expands the theoretical framework of knowledge management. Third, it further enriches the theoretical framework of cross-cultural management.

Higher education institutions, particularly in developing countries, are striving for superior innovation performance to cope with the challenges of contemporary educational environment. Drawing on the knowledge management capability model and knowledge-based view of firms, this study aims to determine the impact of knowledge management enablers, namely, top management knowledge value, knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge-based rewards, on innovation speed and quality and assessing the mediating role of knowledge sharing process.

Data are collected from 234 academics of higher education institutions in Pakistan and analyzed through the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results indicate that top management knowledge value and knowledge-based rewards have a positive effect on innovation speed and quality. Although knowledge-oriented culture also contributes to innovation quality, it does not influence the innovation speed. Moreover, the knowledge sharing process mediates the effect of all these knowledge management enablers on innovation speed and quality.

This study underscores the importance of three key knowledge management enablers in higher education institutions. The findings of this study suggest that signaling knowledge value from the top management, fostering knowledge-oriented culture and enacting a knowledge-based reward system are critical in facilitating knowledge sharing process and enhancing innovation speed and quality in higher education institutions.

This is among one of the earlier studies that investigates the influence of top management knowledge value, knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge-based rewards on innovation speed and quality, particularly in higher education institutions, and determines the mediating role of the knowledge sharing process.

The present study focuses on two basic determinants of company innovation, namely, quality practices of top management and process quality management. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of these determinants on product and process innovation. Determining the impact of these dimensions of innovation on the market performance of a company is also an aim of the present study.

A research study was carried out on a sample of 433 Greek manufacturing and service companies. Data were obtained through a structured questionnaire from the chief executive officers of the companies. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are applied to extract and validate all the latent factors considered in the suggested model, while their relationships are determined through structural equation modeling.

The analysis of the empirical data shows that both the dimensions of company innovation examined in the present study (product and process innovation) are positively influenced by the quality practices of top management and process quality management. Improving these two dimensions of company innovation, in turn, results in increased market performance.

First, the sample of the responding manufacturing and service Greek companies which includes both small and medium-sized enterprises and large companies and which operate in circumstances of financial crisis; second, the subjective data collected from only one company representative; and third, the examination of only two factors influencing company innovation, are the main limitations of the present study. Based on these limitations, future research studies are recommended.

The empirically validated theoretical model of the present study can guide the policy makers of a company to select a quality management and innovation strategy through which the company can lay the foundations to increase its market performance, and thus, overcome the current economic downturn and financial crisis. Researchers can also use the suggested valid model as an assessment tool, a benchmarking tool and a tool for the design of their future research studies.

The present study contributes to the literature by determining a valid model that describes simultaneously the relationships between quality management factors, product and process innovation and market performance. This is also the first study reflecting Greek companies’ efforts to withstand the current downturn and penetrate the market through innovation.

Many organizations are adopting quality and innovation as practices that allow them to achieve competitive advantage owing to an increase in competitiveness. The goal of this paper is to examine whether quality can be regarded as a resource that sets up the necessary bases for implementing innovations in organizations. First, the concepts of quality and innovation are determined, so that we can analyse how they relate to each other. Later on, the different contributions existing that deal with the relationship between quality and innovation are revised. In the second part of the research, we formulate and verify some hypotheses, which are empirically tested using a sample of bank employees in several financial entities. Results allow us to establish that quality relates to innovation both directly and indirectly, in the latter case through employees’ satisfaction.