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This study aims to explore the effect of collaboration networks (domestic and international collaboration networks) on the innovation performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It also investigates the mediating role of business model innovation, the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation and government institutional support between them.

Hierarchical regression analysis is adopted to test the hypotheses based on survey data provided by 223 manufacturing SMEs in China.

The results reveal that domestic and international collaboration networks positively affect SMEs' innovation performance. Business model innovation mediates domestic and international collaboration networks-SMEs’ innovation performance relationships. Entrepreneurial orientation positively moderates international collaboration networks–SMEs’ innovation performance relationship, and government institutional support positively moderates domestic and international collaboration networks–SMEs’ innovation performance relationships.

The findings indicate that managers of SMEs should invest in domestic and international collaboration networks and business model innovation to enhance SMEs' innovation performance. Moreover, entrepreneurial orientation and government institutional support should be valued when SMEs try to enhance their innovation performance by embedding in domestic and international collaboration networks.

This study broadens the authors' understanding of the relationship between collaboration networks and firms' innovation performance by classifying collaboration networks into domestic and international dimensions and investigating their direct impacts on SMEs' innovation performance. Besides, this study reveals how and when domestic and international collaboration networks influence the innovation performance of SMEs.

Effective and flexible organizational models have become an avenue for driving smallholder competitiveness in the agricultural sector. However, little is understood about the processes by which resource-constrained actors deploy their organizational networks to generate and retain value in rapidly changing agrifood environments. This study examines the moderating effects of business contingencies on the interplay between organizational relationships and the resource-based performance of small-scale farmers in a developing country.

The authors propose a novel conceptual framework grounded in the relational view, netchain and contingency theories. Cross-sectional data obtained from 330 maize farmers in rural Zambia were analyzed using variance-based structural equation modeling, which involves mediation-moderation analysis.

The results show that all relational networks – vertical, horizontal and lateral – positively mediate the effects farm resources and social capital have on farmers' performance. However, these effects change depending on the predominant agency situations. Specifically, asymmetric power from customers and reputable competitors weakens the positive effect of closer horizontal relationships on business performance, while the positive effect of tighter informal vertical relationships on farmers' performance weakens under conditions of high affective trust. Moreover, the gender-based multigroup analyses highlight variations in the contingent relational view of men- and women-headed households.

The study relies on cross-sectional data from one agribusiness sector in Zambia, thus generalizations should be cautious.

The uniqueness of this study lies in the proposed theoretical framework and new empirical insights, which extend the scope of the relational view to small-scale farming households in developing countries.

Innovativeness is crucial for industrial cluster firms to gain sustained competitive advantage. This study aims to investigate the effects of inter-firm coopetition on firm innovativeness within a cluster and examines the moderating role of institutional support.

This research adopts an empirical survey method using multi-source data from 181 industrial cluster firms. Regression is used to test the hypotheses of this study.

The results show that cooperation and constructive conflict promote firm innovativeness, while destructive conflict is detrimental to firm innovativeness. Moreover, the study also finds that cooperation interacts with both types of conflict to affect firm innovativeness, where cooperation and constructive conflict interact negatively on firm innovativeness, while cooperation and destructive conflict interact positively on firm innovativeness. In addition, institutional support weakens the effects of cooperation and destructive conflict on innovativeness, respectively, but has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between constructive conflict and innovativeness.

These findings enrich the current research on coopetition. The interaction effects of cooperation and both types of conflict on innovativeness deepen the concept of coopetition and responds to the call to further explore the interaction effects within coopetition. The moderating role of institutional support fills a gap in the empirical research on the role of institutional factors affecting coopetition on innovation and also provides valuable suggestions for firm managers and governments in industrial clusters.

Corporate responsibility and sustainability (CRS) have emerged as an important topic today. At the same time, alliances and coopetition arrangements, as vehicles for inter-firm collaboration have been shown to support firm performance. Still, there has been a lack of research into how coopetition (collaboration with competing firms) in this area may support firm performance.

This study aims to untangle the relationship between coopetition arrangements including CRS and firm performance. The model permits garnering social performance, which is a key to CRS, and to move beyond the traditional view of the coopetition–firm–economic–performance relationship. This study is based on a survey and primary data from 215 firms in Australia. This study uses multiple indicators for the concepts. Relationships are estimated by multiple regression analyses.

Using survey data from 215 firms in Australia, the research findings confirm that coopetition in CRS can lead to improved firm performance, both in relation to financial and social performances. However, the association between coopetition in CRS and financial performance loses its significance when social performances is introduced as an additional control variable. Further, stakeholder attributes (i.e., effective power and legitimate stake) moderate the relationship between coopetition in CRS and firm financial performance. However, there was no evidence of moderation for the coopetition in CRS – firm social performance relationship.

This study contributes to both coopetition and corporate social responsibility research. This study demonstrates that improved firm performance may be achieved through the promotion of CRS initiatives when a coopetitive approach is adopted, particularly where an understanding of stakeholder attributes is also evident. Firms do not need to shoulder corporate social responsibility alone. They need to find well-fitting partners. There are new ways to improve sustainability in terms of nature and human relationships.

Firms do not need to shoulder Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) alone. They need to find well-fitting partners.

This study provides very novel insights by having integrated the literature on coopetition, corporate social responsibility and sustainability resulting in a new conceptual framework that combines coopetition in CRS and performance. The new conceptual framework has both practical and research implications for coopetition in CRS and firm performance.

This study develops a conceptualization of NPD (new product development) complexity and explores how inter-organizational collaboration and conflict influence NPD performance.

An empirical examination tests the proposed relationships in the context of Korean manufacturing firms, which currently engage in NPD projects with their key partners. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that a higher level of NPD complexity simultaneously calls for inter-organizational collaboration and conflict, and these two factors influence NPD performance in a conflicting manner: inter-organizational collaboration serves as a driver, and inter-organizational conflict acts as a barrier against NPD performance.

This study provides answers to the academic and practical calls by providing how NPD complexity should be managed in a way to increase NPD performance. This study provides insight into how manufacturing firms form inter-organizational collaboration practices and why they need to mitigate inter-organizational conflict.

Supply chain collaboration (SCC) is an important element that contributes to enhanced performance. Nonetheless, there is still a need to understand its role in servitization implementation and outcomes. This study aims to address this gap by looking at the impact of SCC on servitization and performance when considering service levels (base, intermediate and advanced).

Following a quantitative research design, data were collected from firms in pharmaceutical sector.

Moderation effects were tested. Results suggest that SCC is a crucial moderator when it comes to the influence of service levels on servitization consequences and performance, particularly to advanced and intermediate services.

This study contributes to the literature by providing further empirical evidence of the impact of intermediate and advanced services shedding light into the moderating role of SCC.

Little is known about the determinants of supply chain finance (SCF) adoption among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. This study aims to address this relevant research gap and hence, draws on the resource-based view and transaction cost economies to empirically investigate five factors that make SCF adoption practicable among SMEs in Ghana.

The approach involves a sample of 257 SME managers/owners and modelling via structural equations modelling.

All five factors (innovative capability, information sharing, inter- and intra-firm collaboration, external financing and trade process digitization) were found to impact positively and significantly on SCF adoption. The findings provide SME managers/owners with a research model which guides them on how to settle the SCF process.

This paper used a cross-sectional survey, which makes it impossible to access changes over time. In addition, the use of quantitative method limits respondents from expressing their feelings fully. Using a mixed or qualitative methodology will provide avenues for future research.

This paper offers a completive advantage for Ghanaian SMEs to strengthen their relationships while collaborating with each other. The findings suggest that by adopting SCF solutions, SMEs can optimize their liquidity and working capital. The factors underpinning SCF adoption are of incredible attractiveness for SME managers/owners to discover the relevant practice of SCF solutions. SMEs should adopt SCF strategies for improving their capability to respond promptly to transactions.

This paper is among the few papers that have examined these five factors in a developing economy context. The study also provides new understanding of the factors that influence SCF adoption in the context of a developing economy.

This study aims to investigate the importance and effect of asymmetric technological collaborations’ key success factors in developing countries. The number of collaborations between large enterprises and SMEs, known as asymmetric technological collaborations (ATC) is growing considerably. But this asymmetry in itself can increase the number and intensity of collaboration challenges. So far, limited studies have been conducted on the stability of ATCs, and most of them have been in the context of developed countries. Meanwhile, studying the strength and stability of collaboration in the nano industry with growing market value and increasing newcomers is of particular importance.

Here, with bionic engineering approach, we used chemistry for the first time to identify the main stability factors of ATCs and build our hypotheses and research model. To this end, we introduced the factors affecting the stability of the dative chemical bond as a bionic counterpart of corporate venture capital (CVC), which is a type of ATC, and proposed 4 hypotheses. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS) method to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The analysis of survey questionnaire data from 26 asymmetric collaborations in Iran’s nanotechnology industry shows that “learning of the acceptor company” with a negative effect, “network ties” and “development of the collaboration host region” with a positive effect and “diversity in the collaboration portfolio” with an inverted U-shaped effect are the most influential factors in the stability and continuity of CVCs, respectively.

The findings of this research can be the beginning of a broad path leading to exploring and getting inspiration from chemistry to analyze management issues.

Reverse logistics (RL) has become integral in modern supply chains, with many companies investing in circular economy (CE), a recuperative and effective industrial economy. The traditional linear model triggered many negative environmental consequences such as climate change, ocean pollution, loss of biodiversity and land degradation. The development of RL strategies that support the transition between RL to CE is crucial. The purpose of this paper is to connect RL with CE in the context of Industry 4.0 and develop a hierarchal structure to explore the relationship between RL and CE critical success factors in the context of Industry 4.0.

This study used both qualitative and quantitative approach. Literature review in collaboration with the Delphi method is used to identify and validate critical success factors. Then, the ISM-based model and MICMAC method were used to determine the relationship between CE and RL success factors and its driving and dependence power.

This study result shows that waste reduction, skilled employees and expert's involvement and top management commitment and support will provide guidelines and paths for implementing CE and RL, leading to the competitiveness of a firm.

The findings provide managerial insight, particularly useful to third-party logistics companies' managers who are looking to implement RL and CE, to help prioritize where to invest company resources to generate prime difference. Furthermore, this study also identified Industry 4.0 technologies, which would tackle top identified critical success factors within the hierarchical model such as block chain and digital platforms.

This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the connection between RL and CE in the context of Industry 4.0 that determines the critical success factors enabling sustainable inter-firm collaboration.

Many studies have investigated dynamic positions and their importance, but there is less attention paid to how to enter more central positions. Interorganizational relationships are an important factor in network structural change. In Chinese society, firms allocate significant human, financial and material resources towards cultivating guanxi. The purpose of this study is to explore whether and how the three aspects of guanxi, namely renqing, ganqing and xinyong, can make firms more central, and to examine the mediating role of interaction.

The study used a mixed method to collect data from 256 Chinese Cops (complex product systems) firms. And, hypotheses were tested using SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 26.0.

The results indicate that renqing, ganqing and xinyong have significant positive effects on the increase in centrality, but with varying magnitudes. Additionally, the interaction was found to mediate the relationship between the three aspects of guanxi (renqing, ganqing and xinyong) and the increase in centrality.

The study provides new insights to help firms become more central by combining guanxi (renqing, ganqing and xinyong) with change in centrality, enriching the literature on network dynamics and guanxi-related research. Moreover, the study provides managers with a clear understanding of how to use guanxi to make the firm more central in situations with limited resources.