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This research focuses on the demand from medium-sized firms to access public equity as a source of finance. The acceptance of public equity differs strongly between countries, particularly between the United Kingdom and Germany. Therefore, this research aims to identify the impact of national culture on the decision to go public in these two countries.

The theoretical framework builds on the satisficing theory of rationality, the pecking-order theory as well as Hofstede's cultural dimension theory. Using a questionnaire, over 1,000 medium-sized businesses in the United Kingdom and Germany were surveyed.

The findings demonstrate that British medium-sized firms are more open to using public equity as a source of finance than their German counterparts. The results indicate that national culture not only affects the decision to go public but also has a negative impact on uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation.

The originality of the research lies in the focus on medium-sized firms and the effects of cultural differences between the United Kingdom and Germany. No previous research has explored how culture influences the decision to go public using a dataset generated from medium-sized firms in the United Kingdom and Germany.

The manufacturing domain presently focusing on Industry 4.0 (I4.0). One such domain is the automotive sector. The purpose of this study is to analyse the I4.0 research studies with a focus on the automotive sector using a systematic literature review (SLR).

This paper presents a SLR of previous studies on I4.0 characteristics from its inception to performance measures focusing on the automotive sector. A total of 90 papers published in reputed journals during 2014–2020 were collected from major publishers, namely, Elsevier, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Emerald, Institute of Electrical and Electronics, MDPI, etc.

The findings of the study provided vital insights on various perspectives of I4.0 in an automotive organization. Moreover, this systematic analysis would help the automotive industry policymakers in implementing I4.0 in an organization. Based on the SLR, a conceptual framework is established to guide industry practitioners towards I4.0 implementation. The review findings could be used to carry out future studies in assessing the readiness of I4.0 in the organization with the help of a survey.

The limitation of the study is in the adoption of the sampling approach. In the present study, conference papers and refereed journals have been considered based on the relevance of I4.0 in the automotive industry. As I4.0 is a growing concept, non-refereed articles, book chapters and white papers may cover practical aspects regarding I4.0 implementation that need to be considered for depth analysis. Moreover, the framework needs to be validated with various automotive industries for ensuring practical validity.

The unique contribution of the study is the SLR of I4.0 in manufacturing with a focus on the automotive sector.