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The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between collaborative innovation and the financial performance of information technology (IT) firms through the mediating role of strategic agility and absorptive capacity. Customer knowledge management capability (CKMC) is also explored as a potential moderator.

Data were collected from 300 respondents working in different small to medium IT enterprises operating in different cities around Portugal. The simple random sampling method was used for data collection, and Smart partial least squares-structural equation modeling (Smart PLS-SEM version 3.2.8) was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings demonstrate that collaborative innovation contributes significantly to the financial performance of IT firms in Portugal. The results also indicate that absorptive capacity and strategic agility both positively and significantly affect the relationship between collaborative innovation and firms’ financial performance. However, while the moderating role of CKMC has a positive and significant effect on the relation between collaborative innovation and strategic agility, CKMC insignificantly moderates the relation between collaborative innovation and absorptive capacity.

Few studies have explicitly connected collaborative innovation with firms’ financial performance; this study attempts to fill that gap. Moreover, this research investigates the mediating role of strategic agility and absorptive capacity in the relationship between collaborative innovation and financial performance. Finally, by discussing the moderating effect of CKMC, which leads to enhanced financial performance, this study proposes that when complex and unpredictable situations occur, managers should focus on customer-oriented strategies and innovation at the same time to outpace their competitors.

This study aims to examine how the effect of gender on entrepreneurial growth aspirations is moderated differently by individual resources (human and financial capital) compared to those within the social environment (availability of entrepreneurial knowledge and role models).

A multilevel estimator is used to investigate the determinants of growth aspirations of owners-managers of nascent start-ups. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor database is employed, covering the period 2007–2019, with 99,000 useable cases drawn from 95 countries.

The results suggest that individual financial resources and human capital have positive effects on entrepreneurial growth aspirations; yet these effects are weaker for female entrepreneurs relative to males. In contrast, the impact of the availability of entrepreneurial social knowledge and role models on their growth aspirations is more positive than for male entrepreneurs.

This study offers a novel insight into entrepreneurial growth ambition, as it utilises a global perspective to scrutinise whether individual and social resources contribute differently to male versus female growth-aspirations, employing a multilevel approach. It also integrates insights from the resource-based view and from the relevant business literature on entrepreneurs’ gender to develop theoretical explanations.

This paper introduces a new approach to theorising and learning from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women’s experiences of inequality in academia. It offers a versatile model with which the structure of a particular racist-sexist inequality regime can be theorised from empirical evidence.

The paper presents composite, fictionalised accounts of intersectional discrimination which are then analysed through critical realist frameworks, employing critical race feminist theory insights. This novel “whisper network” method centres the knowledge of BAME women in academia, and is translatable to other marginalised actors, offering a more protective means by which to access their knowledge as a foundation for organisational change.

Through theorising the ontological arrangement of key causal mechanisms responsible for the reproduction of inequality regimes, the paper illuminates links between micro-level intersectional discrimination and meso-level institutional inequality.

In order to preserve anonymity and reduce potential backlash, the vignettes in this paper are not intended to precisely capture specific empirical realities, but instead reflect wider patterns from the author's own whisper network knowledge. Nonetheless, the analytical method developed here could be applied to rigorously collected empirical data, with clear implications for improving organisational practice.

The paper offers a structured and systematic process by which qualitative data on institutional inequality can be analysed and stakeholders engaged to develop and propose solutions, even by individuals new to the field.

A methodical basis for strategic action addressing the issues revealed through such an analysis can be developed in order to galvanise and steer organisational change.

The novelty of the paper is twofold: in its original synthesis of critical realist depth ontology and ontological insights from critical race feminist theory about social structures of oppression, and in the development of the innovative “whisper network” method based upon a critical race theory counter-storytelling epistemology, in conversation with the emergent stream of literature within feminist organisation studies regarding the importance of “writing differently”.