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This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

This paper explores the relationships between firm absorptive capacity, novel business model design (NBMD), product differentiation strategy and performance in a transition economy.

The study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze firm-level data from a unique sample of Albanian manufacturing and service firms.

The study shows that absorptive capacity enables and shapes the NBMD that, in turn, leads to performance gains. The authors also find that the NBMD capacity mediates the impact of realized absorptive capacity on performance, whereas product differentiation strategy moderates the relationship between new business model and performance.

All variables were measured based on a self-assessed scale leading to potential method bias. Also, based on relevant literature, the study focuses on only one type of business model (BM) design.

Since dynamic capabilities are the foundation of NBMD, firms should invest carefully in developing such capabilities. Thus, the study results provide an integrative framework for understanding the role of absorptive capacity in NBMD adoption and for explaining the relationship between NBMD adoption and performance, an aspect that helps organizations in a dynamic environment.

This study strives to investigate the relationships between absorptive capacity, business model design, product strategies and performance by answering the call of Teece (2018) to “flesh out the details” of such relationships.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the influence of the knowledge base (KB) of the company on driving forces of innovation processes in knowledge-intensive services (KIS) and to compare the level of innovativeness of the final services.

The paper investigates through qualitative research 11 KIS organisations with different KB.

The research results identified and described the influence of the KB on driving forces of innovations processes and its results in companies with four newly identified KBs (analytical, synthetic, symbolic and compliance).

Further research, based on a larger number of companies, is needed to confirm the results of this research and to complement the effect of the KB on driving forces of innovation.

This research can help organisations understand how to develop strategic plans and new ideas for innovative services depending on the KB of the organisation.

The description of successful innovation processes and results in several leading companies presented in the study may help other companies in identifying knowledge-integration practices to improve performance and innovation processes that support multiplicity, productivity and creativity.

The study systemised the sources of new ideas for innovation in companies with different KB, several driving forces of innovation were identified and how these forces are affected by each KB; lastly, innovation results were compared in companies with different KB.

Intangible capital (IC) is an important factor for economic growth and firm performance. The role IC has played has become even more crucial in recent decades, possibly influencing debt capacity and default risk assessment. This paper studies how entrepreneurial and employee-based IC affects financial leverage.

Employer–employee unbalanced panel data provided by Statistics Finland that refer to Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are used. Intangibles are measured with an expenditure-based method. Employee-based IC and entrepreneurial knowledge are used to explain debt financing in SMEs.

The findings imply that IC-intensive firms have less debt capacity due to weak pledgeability and asymmetric information between borrower and lender. Entrepreneurs with managerial or financial knowledge increase the firm's debt capacity compared to other entrepreneurs, especially in knowledge-intensive services (KIS). One explanation is that the entrepreneurs are more competent in negotiating with lenders as the entrepreneurs possess better financial skills. Entrepreneurs with technical knowledge decrease the firm's debt capacity in all industries.

While some earlier research focused on the IC–financial leverage relationship, hardly any study has looked at entrepreneurial IC. This paper provides new insights by including entrepreneurial IC alongside employee-based IC.

This paper aims to identify the key issues that healthcare knowledge-intensive organizations (KIPOs) should focus on to define themselves as socioenvironmentally and governance responsible for integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) logic into their business strategy. At the same time, this provides an understanding of how healthcare KIPOs contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

Taking a cue from the model developed by the World Economic Forum, an “ESG Processing Map” was constructed to identify qualitative disclosures that a healthcare company should consider when implementing sustainability logic. The aspects investigated were processed, considering national and international standards, frameworks and disclosures. The social network analysis technique was used to systemize and combine the outcomes of these processes and analyze their consistency with sustainable development.

Through the “ESG Processing Map,” 13 areas of action and 27 topics specific to the health sector were defined on which to intervene in sustainability in order to concretely help HCOs to place specific corrective and improvement actions over time concerning socioenvironmental and governance aspects.

The paper provides contribute, on the one hand, to enriching and updating the academic literature on ESG logic in a still underexplored field and, on the other hand, to provide these types of organizations with a “compass” to guide and orient their business strategies towards sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to structure existing research on knowledge management (KM) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to offer a comprehensive overview of research strands and topics in KM in SMEs to determine their evolution over time.

The paper, which is considered a follow-up literature review, is based on a systematic literature review that covers 180 scientific papers that were published since the review paper by Durst and Edvardsson in 2012 that covered 36 papers.

The findings of this review and those of the aforementioned review are brought together in the form of an overview that structures research on KM in SMEs based on themes that, in turn, allow the derivation of promising research directions and research questions aimed at structuring future research on KM in SMEs.

By combining the findings of this review with the findings from the review published in this journal in 2012, this paper offers, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the most comprehensive literature review on KM in SMEs produced to date.

Intellectual capital (IC) plays a crucial role in today’s volatile business landscape, yet its measurement remains complex. To better navigate these challenges, the authors propose the Integrated Intellectual Capital Measurement (IICM) model, an innovative, robust and comprehensive framework designed to capture IC amid business uncertainty. This study focuses on IC measurement models, typically reliant on secondary data, thus distinguishing it from conventional IC studies.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis across Web of Science, Scopus and EBSCO Business Source Ultimate in February 2023. This yielded 2,709 IC measurement studies, from which the authors selected 27 quantitative papers published from 1985 to 2023.

The analysis revealed no single, universally accepted approach for measuring IC, with company attributes such as size, industry and location significantly influencing IC measurement methods. A key finding is human capital’s critical yet underrepresented role in firm competitiveness, which the IICM model aims to elevate.

This is the first SLR focused on IC measurement amid business uncertainty, providing insights for better management and navigating turbulence. The authors envisage future research exploring the interplay between IC components, technology, innovation and network-building strategies for business resilience. Additionally, there is a need to understand better the IC’s impact on specific industries (automotive, transportation and hospitality), Social Development Goals and digital transformation performance.

The purpose of this study is to review and analyze the status of word-of-mouth (WOM) research in the business-to-business (B2B) context and discuss and identify new possible future directions.

A systematic review was conducted and 36 articles on B2B WOM were collected to evaluate the current state of the literature and clarify possible future research directions.

This thematic analysis categorize these articles into three themes: WOM generation, WOM usage and reference marketing. Under each theme, the authors reveal research findings unique to B2B research and different from business-to-consumer (B2C) WOM research. This study identifies several research questions that should be addressed by future research.

Both academic researchers and business practitioners recognize that WOM plays an essential role in B2B marketing. However, no review paper focuses on WOM in the B2B context. Findings in the B2C WOM literature suggest that WOM substantially influences firms’ performance, but that managers cannot simply attempt to extrapolate B2C findings to the B2B arena. By synthesizing and assessing prior research on WOM in the B2B context, this study contributes to a better understanding of the B2B WOM phenomenon and facilitates future research on this topic.

Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.

The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.