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Despite the increasing attention given to product-service integration (PSI), little is known about this innovation strategy from a key decision-maker’s perspective. To address this gap, our study draws from personality psychology and decision-making (DM) logics theory to better understand why and how companies’ decision-makers strategize for PSI.

Using an abductive, empirics-first approach, we identify the study’s theoretical building blocks, followed by an exploratory quantitative analysis to generate new theory. We propose a fit-as-mediation conceptual framework suggesting that (1) specific personality traits [i.e. honesty-humility (H), emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C) and openness to experience (O) (HEXACO)] make decision-makers more likely to include PSI in their company’s strategy and (2) depending on their personality, they apply different DM logics (i.e. causation or effectuation) to do so. To empirically examine this, we use data from 289 SMEs’ decision-makers.

We report several meaningful relationships among our key theoretical constructs. For instance, we find that conscientious decision-makers are more likely to develop a PSI strategy via causation, whereas extravert decision-makers are more likely to do so via both causation and effectuation.

This service study is the first to apply the well-established HEXACO Personality Inventory to companies’ key decision-makers. Moreover, it contributes to the microfoundations of PSI strategy and DM logic theories.

We introduce and summarize the selected papers of the Special Section on the “Micro-Foundations of Small Business Internationalization and briefly summarize the state-of-the-art of this literature stream.

We briefly summarize the state-of-the-art of the literature regarding the micro-foundations of small business internationalization. Then, we summarize the selected papers of the Special Section, highlighting their main contributions. We end with suggesting future research avenues.

We move beyond the usual suspects such as gender, education and experience to bring together internationalization studies that open up the individual lens to small business internationalization. To do so, we selected papers examining deeper-level behavioural and psychological constructs impacting the internationalization process, going from internationalization intention to internationalization behaviour and eventually leading to internationalization performance.

We stress the importance of the entrepreneur as a person to better understand small business internationalization. We address the current lack of attention attributed to psychological and behavioural drivers (e.g. motives, attitudes, ambitions and aspirations) throughout the internationalization process, and we urge future researchers to further develop this research stream.

This study aims to explore how an entrepreneur's implicit need for achievement and risk reception contribute to internationalization performance.

This study involves 176 Indonesian entrepreneurs. The authors use the Operant Motive Test to assess the entrepreneur's implicit needs and apply hierarchical Tobit regression to assess the interplay between implicit need for achievement, risk perception and internationalization.

The authors show that an entrepreneur's basic needs and risk perception play an essential role in SME internationalization. More specifically, the authors reveal a positive association between the entrepreneur's need for achievement and small and medium enterprises (SME) internationalization. They also show a U-shaped relationship for the moderation effect of risk perception on this relationship. That is, for a high need for achievement-motivated entrepreneur, the level of internationalization is at the highest when risk perception is either very low or very high.

In this study, the authors argue that analyses at the entrepreneur's individual level are indispensable to better understand firm internationalization. The authors argue that the role of psycho-cognitive characteristics of individuals (such as motivational dispositions) received too little attention, compared to factors at the firm or environmental level. This study examines such personality aspects and finds that implicit need for achievement and risk perception impact SME internationalization.

In the study of entrepreneurial behavior types, “ambitious entrepreneurship” recently emerged as a new research concept. Unfortunately, a systematic overview of what is known (and not known) about this topic is missing. In particular, insights into the various definitions, measures, and antecedents of ambitious entrepreneurship are lacking. In this chapter, we offer a state-of-the-art review and analysis of extant research on ambitious entrepreneurship. We structure the literature review by providing insights into antecedents of ambitious entrepreneurship, and extensively discuss the conceptualization and operationalization of this research concept. We clarify the differences between related concepts such as growth intention, expectation, and aspiration, and argue how all these concepts fit into a unifying framework of ambitious entrepreneurship. We summarize promising future research avenues for the study of ambitious entrepreneurship, both from a methodological and a conceptual point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, review and evaluate international marketing (IM) studies in the domain of cultural country classification (1985‐2006).

First, articles in which an “original” classification is developed are identified. Then, the paper characteristics are summarized using Ronen and Shenkar's characteristics. Eventually, Hunt's evaluation criteria are used to evaluate these classifications.

Summarizing and evaluating the selected papers reveals that the authors of the selected papers do not always seem to explicitly consider Ronen and Shenkar's useful recommendations concerning questionnaire and sample characteristics. Moreover, evaluation seems to indicate that Hunt's evaluation criteria are not always met.

It is recommended that future cultural country classification researchers consider Ronen and Shenkar's recommendations. Moreover, researchers might explicitly specify the concept of culture and/or incorporating other influencing factors. It is also recommended that researchers develop their own classification scheme to check whether the scheme meets Hunt's evaluation criteria. Other researchers might try to contribute to a convergence of the cultural country classification domain by empirically testing newly developed typologies; refining studies; assigning other countries; and testing comparatively existing classifications.

Practitioners might think of grouping countries culturally for fine‐tuning marketing strategy. When seeking for co‐ordination and synergy, multinationals can use country cluster offices as a step‐stone or alternative to more centralized, global headquarters.

Besides, Ronen and Shenkar's paper in 1985 – another evaluation paper in the domain of cultural country classification and IM was not discovered. The paper tries to offer some useful recommendations to both scientific researchers and practitioners.

Current publication practices in the scholarly (International) Business and Management community are overwhelmingly anti-Popperian, which fundamentally frustrates the production of scientific progress. This is the result of at least five related biases: the verification, novelty, normal science, evidence, and market biases. As a result, no one is really interested in replicating anything. In this essay, the author extensively argues what he believes is wrong, why that is so, and what we might do about this. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This is an essay, combining a literature review with polemic argumentation.

Only a tiny fraction of published studies involve a replication effort. Moreover, journal authors, editors, reviewers and readers are not interested in seeing nulls and negatives in print. This replication crisis implies that Popper’s critical falsification principle is actually thrown into the scientific community’s dustbin. Behind the façade of all these so-called new discoveries, false positives abound, as do questionable research practices meant to produce all this allegedly cutting-edge and groundbreaking significant findings. If this dismal state of affairs does not change for the good, (International) Business and Management research is ending up in a deadlock.

A radical cultural change in the scientific community, including (International) Business and Management, is badly needed. It should be in the community’s DNA to engage in the quest for the “truth” – nothing more, nothing less. Such a change must involve all stakeholders: scholars, editors, reviewers, and students, but also funding agencies, research institutes, university presidents, faculty deans, department chairs, journalists, policymakers, and publishers. In the words of Ioannidis (2012, p. 647): “Safeguarding scientific principles is not something to be done once and for all. It is a challenge that needs to be met successfully on a daily basis both by single scientists and the whole scientific establishment.”

Publication practices have to change radically. For instance, editorial policies should dispose of their current overly dominant pro-novelty and pro-positives biases, and explicitly encourage the publication of replication studies, including failed and unsuccessful ones that report null and negative findings.

This is an explicit plea to change the way the scientific research community operates, offering a series of concrete recommendations what to do before it is too late.