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The purpose of this paper is to set forth a conceptual model describing the actors and roles in ecosystems created to enable productive black entrepreneurship in the USA.

This paper provides a systematic literature review of entrepreneurship ecosystems. It further leverages such literature review by using an autoethnographic approach recommended by Guyotte and Kochacka (2016), drawing on the authors’ practical experience in studying, owning, educating or consulting employer businesses owned by persons of color in the USA and abroad.

Each actor in the ecosystem has practical wisdom and assets that can be shared and leveraged through interacting with the other actors either as role model institutions or capacity development institutions, thus mitigating social inequalities and boosting economic progress by extending entrepreneurial opportunities beyond those that are greatly resourced.

Our literature review is based on selected samples of relevant articles on entrepreneurship ecosystem research and ethnic minority entrepreneurship, and thus, is not exhaustive. The selection was partly influenced by the authors’ opinion of whether a given study was relevant or not to a black entrepreneurship ecosystem. There is the possibility that some relevant studies were excluded. Thus, other actors are encouraged to revise or adapt this model to inform their distinct roles and goals.

The proposed model can help actors involved in the operation or support of a black-owned business make optimal business decisions, enabling each actor to be instrumental in another’s understanding of how to facilitate the success of black American entrepreneurs and business owners and thus, deploy marketing campaigns to boost the visibility and role of each actor. These campaigns play a role in their entrepreneurial marketing efforts.

Responding to Gines and Sampson’s (2020) call, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to explicitly provide a comprehensive black entrepreneurship ecosystem model that identifies the actors, roles and activities that can help black Americans address social inequalities that limit their ability to become a successful employer business. The proposed model may aid in deepening the theoretical discussion on entrepreneurial ecosystems and be of inspiration for the future works of scholars and practitioners interested in the entrepreneurship and marketing interface.

The purpose of this study was to explore the information behaviors (IBs) of performers and artisan/vendors in American Renaissance faires. This research is exploratory in nature and seeks to discover how existing IB theories, including embodied information practices, can explain the information seeking and use of performers and artisan vendors working in American Renaissance faires.

This study used semi-structured qualitative interviews with three artisan/vendors and 12 performers at Renaissance faires to explore their IBs around the roles at the festivals. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analyzed from an exploratory framework, looking for how existing IB theories might explain the findings.

Although the participants in this study described information practices that were embodied and corporeal, they shared more experiences around the complex and fraught nature of information sharing within the Renaissance faire community. Information sharing prohibitions were related to power dynamics and the participants' roles as gig or contingent workers.

This was the first study to explore the IBs of Renaissance faire performers and artisan/vendors and as such, was exploratory in nature. The findings point to several areas for additional research.

This study aims to identify the factors to food safety certification adoption among farmers in Malaysia.

This study was conducted qualitatively using a method of interviewing with unstructured questions. To identify the factors that influence and prevent the adoption of food safety certification among Malaysian farmers, nine (n = 9) agricultural industrial experts were randomly chosen.

Based on data analysis using thematic analysis, the respondent highlighted 14 factors to food safety certification. Specifically, the most frequent determinant highlighted by the respondent is enforcement (12). Additionally, it has been proven that the identified factors aligned with existing theories: technology, organization and environment (TOE) framework and eco-innovation theory. These theories help researchers to create effective strategies and produce significant findings from their research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate food safety certification adoption among farmers in the Malaysian agriculture industry using the integration of the TOE framework and eco-innovation theory. The stakeholder is expected to receive the benefits of creating efficient campaigns to encourage more farmers to obtain food safety certification. This study provides further knowledge by improving the understanding of the processes involved in certification adoption, providing context-specific insights, best practices, policy guiding development and emphasizing the effects of certification on sustainability and competitiveness.

This study aims to explore the internationalization trajectory of emerging country digital economy ventures by specifically concentrating on how ambidexterity facilitates international market expansion. Further, this paper examines how these ventures develop dynamic capabilities by using their ambidextrous skills in the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE).

This study adopts a multiple-case research design where data were gathered from five digital economy ventures in Turkey, serving an international array of customers.

The analyses reveal that, to a large extent, internationalization is enabled by the extensive use of ambidextrous skills in the ecosystem domain. We found evidence for practicing exploration and exploitation while interacting with several ecosystem pillars grouped as founder-related, firm-related and business context-related factors. These interactions portray how ventures sense, seize and transform resources to support their international expansion.

This study extends the current literature on internationalization by discussing the role of ambidexterity as a dynamic capability. The findings also demonstrate the EE as a construct to explain international entrepreneurial activity. Further, the study extends the existing literature by considering the calls for research on dynamic capabilities of international new ventures (INVs). Finally, the findings point to several implications both for practitioners and policymakers.

Building on contingency theory, this paper aims to investigate the extent to which the “4Ps international adaptation strategy” and internationalization intensity shape the servitization–profitability relationship.

The authors use primary (survey) and secondary (archival) data to perform multiple regression analysis.

The results indicate a positive relationship between servitization and profitability, and international intensity strengthens this association. The effects, however, are not consistent across the 4Ps – the price international adaptation strategy strengthens the positive relationship between servitization and profitability, while product and place international adaptation strategies weaken that relationship.

The findings have implications for the role of international intensity and the 4Ps in the marketing servitization context.

The study provides guidance for small firms in realizing higher performance by leveraging the 4Ps in the servitization context. Counter to expectations, placement and product lead to lower performance with increasing servitization, whereas price strengthens this relationship. The study adds to the international industrial management and marketing literature, providing evidence that contingency factors such as international marketing mix adaptation/standardization strategies moderate the servitization–profitability relationship.

Knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms (KIE) strongly rely on scientific and strategic research and development (R&D) capabilities to achieve higher performance levels. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to disentangle the effects of scientific capabilities and strategic R&D on KIE performance; and how the constituent elements of these dimensions can be configured to generate conditions for high performance.

The authors’ empirical setting involves companies that submitted projects to the Innovative Research in Small Businesses (PIPE) program in Brazil. The authors then run partial least square structural equation modeling to verify how scientific and strategic R&D capabilities influence the performance construct. Second, the authors apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify configurations that are equifinal in terms of generating superior performance.

Findings indicate a strong association between scientific capabilities and KIE performance. The configurational approach outlines the existence of multiple paths to success, but human capital stands as a core condition throughout estimations.

The authors’ assessment has implications for how KIE firms are managed according to their organizational profiles and trajectories. Also, it advances the authors’ comprehension on how entrepreneurship policies can better target these distinct profiles.

The authors’ analysis provides new evidence on the inherent complexity behind the generation of high performance in KIE when addressing their portfolios of knowledge-related capabilities. More than that, the authors were able to identify the existence of heterogeneous profiles that can equally lead to higher levels of performance.

This paper aims to offer practical, data-led guidance for the decolonisation of marketing strategy, especially as it relates to customer engagement. It does so with an acute understanding of the constraints of brand legitimacy.

The findings of this paper are informed both by a conceptual unpacking of institutional, decolonisation and customer engagement literature, as well as an empirical methodology that presents an embedded single case study of a top-ranking banking brand, using in-depth qualitative interviews as well as content analyses of brand communications.

The paper examines the notion of institutional brand legitimacy alongside the decolonisation of customer engagement. It offers five empirically driven decisions that marketers must consider when they attempt to decolonise their customer engagement strategies. These revolve around a decolonised bottom-up approach; establishing new biases for customer insights; the management of opposing forces; being strategically transformative; and going beyond diversity.

A single brand case study is offered that uses a relatively small sample of interviewees and does not include customers of the brand. Further research is therefore needed to reflect other organisational contexts and stakeholders. Just so, the paper specifically looks at the ways in which decolonisation and institutional legitimacy intersect for customer engagement. Further studies that focus on other organisational concepts impacted by decolonisation would be thought-provoking.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical investigation that offers practical guidance for the decolonisation of marketing strategies – as it relates to customer engagement or any other facets of marketing.

“My Story” is based on a life story approach. This study aims to facilitate therapeutic alliances by providing a format for older and younger people to interact.

Three pairings were studied to explore the experiences of the older and younger person using “My Story”. The focus of the case studies was on how and if any therapeutic alliance emerged.

This study found that in the two of the pairings, “My Story” helped to create a bond and mutual benefit for the participants’ central to a therapeutic alliance. This led one of the pairings to develop into an intergenerational friendship and potentially help with loneliness.

As this was an exploratory and small pilot, more cases and research are required to fully assess if “My Story” is a useful approach to develop intergenerational befriending.

Intergenerational befriending may be one solution that could help with loneliness and social isolation through forming a therapeutic alliance to make the befriending successful.

Loneliness and social isolation for older people remain a problem.

An original pilot was undertaken to test the approach by bringing together older people identified as lonely by a voluntary sector provider and pairing these with a student volunteer. The students visited the older person over six weeks to discuss their life story and create an artefact based on the story for the older person.

This article aims to investigate collaborative procurement as a sourcing strategy amongst competing small enterprises in an effort to reduce their material supply costs through increased efficiencies, bargaining power and economies of scale.

A case study approach is applied to a network of breweries that are regionally clustered. Interview data from producers, suppliers and industry experts is inductively interpreted to understand the viability, organisational impact and benefits/limitations of joint procurement activities.

The craft brewing industry follows a market place strategy of differentiation to achieve competitive advantage. This has supply chain implications that promote raw material diversity, which is in conflict with standardisation – a necessary factor for collective buying. Competition impacts information sharing and governance mechanism, while the structural factors of size asymmetry along and across the supply chain influence returns. These issues impact the potential economic benefits of collaborative procurement.

The research propositions have been developed in a specific industry but are generalisable to other companies with a differentiation strategy, especially in the consumer packaged goods sector.

Enabling conditions and constraints are captured in a framework and capability matrix, which can be used by practitioners to assess industry and product feasibility for collaborative procurement.

Previous studies of collaborative procurement have been in the public sector amongst large organisations. This work focusses on coopetition in the context of small businesses to identify the viability and cost-benefit of this strategy.

This study aims to examine the effects of firm performance on chief executive officer (CEO) turnover and the moderating role of CEO attributes on the firm performance–CEO turnover relationship.

Probit regressions were used to examine the relationship between various CEO attributes and CEO turnover and the moderation effect of firm performance on the CEO attributes–CEO turnover relationship. The sample comprises firms from the FTSE 350 Index covering the period 1999–2018.

The results indicate that firm performance negatively and significantly impacts CEO turnover. Further analysis reveals that selected CEO attributes, namely, CEO internal experience, CEO network size and CEO age, moderate the relationship between firm performance and CEO turnover. Specifically, CEO internal experience and performance combine to reduce the likelihood of CEO turnover. However, CEO network size and age when combined with firm performance increase the likelihood of CEO turnover.

The results imply that boards should pay more attention to CEO attributes in their decisions to hire and fire executive managers as these factors may affect a wide variety of firm outcomes.

This paper makes key contributions to the CEO turnover and corporate governance literature by providing evidence of key factors other than performance that can affect the CEO dismissal decision. Specifically, this study shows that CEO attributes such as CEO internal experience, CEO networks and CEO age far outweigh the importance of performance as a factor influencing CEO turnover decisions.