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Prior research on interfirm collaborations has demonstrated that trust and contract are two central governance mechanisms that influence a firm’s knowledge sharing decision and the subsequent effect on performance. However, we know little about how effective these mechanisms are in different market conditions and levels of organizational innovativeness. This study aims to advance the literature on interfirm knowledge sharing by exploring these contingencies and by providing an alternative explanation of the contradictory effects of knowledge sharing on firm performance.

The authors collected 156 firms’ relationships with their suppliers in two batches from 300 firms in the 2017 list of Statistics in the Zhejiang province in China. The authors used unstructured interviews and formal questionnaires to collect data from these firms.

Market turbulence served as a boundary condition for the effect of interfirm trust and formal contracts on knowledge sharing. Both interfirm trust and formal contracts, as governance mechanisms, are effective in raising interfirm knowledge sharing only when the firms operate in high turbulent markets. On the contrary, knowledge sharing negatively affected firm performance when firms exhibit low organizational innovativeness. Moreover, a three-way interaction among market turbulence, organizational innovativeness and knowledge sharing revealed that when market turbulence and organizational innovativeness were both low, interfirm knowledge sharing was detrimental to firm performance.

Based on the results, this study recommends managers consider external (market turbulence) and internal (organizational innovativeness) when firms decide to share knowledge and benefit from such activities.

This study extends prior research on the determinant of knowledge sharing and clarifies the inconsistent findings of knowledge sharing on firm performance. Thus, strategic organizational leaders need to pay attention to when they need to share information with suppliers to best benefit from those collaborations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that shape the adoption of mobile phones for vegetable marketing by Vietnamese smallholders.

A structured questionnaire was given to 185 smallholders randomly chosen from 345 vegetable smallholders in the Vinh Thanh district of Vietnam. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and a binary logistic regression were applied to analyse the data.

The research results show that the smallholders’ adoption of mobile phones for vegetable marketing is significantly affected by their number of extension contacts, distance from smallholders’ homes to local markets, community-based organisation participation, gender, training/credit programme participation, age, education level, income and farm size (χ² = 143,111, p < 0.000).

A combination of factors related to socio-economic, situational and institutional characteristics of smallholders should be considered when promoting smallholders’ uptake of mobile phones for vegetable marketing in developing nations.

This research provides useful insights into the determinants of mobile phone adoption for vegetable marketing by smallholders and highlights areas that need to be considered when designing policies to improve the uptake of information and communication technologies in developing countries.

This paper investigates financial resilience within selected micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and how it is used as a growth tool amidst coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) threats.

An appreciative inquiry qualitative approach using a positive orientation with a case study design instead of the conventional problem-oriented approach was used. It focuses on successful MSMEs that experienced growth amidst the first wave of COVID-19 despite the large number of MSMEs that were affected negatively by the pandemic.

The results indicate that the MSMEs that were growing at an epic rate during COVID-19 exhibited financial resilience due to savings, innovative leadership, financial knowledge, experience and social capital. These businesses maintained client relationships and accessed financial capital.

The study was qualitative based on a few cases.

Business owners/managers should learn financial literacy, entrepreneurial skills and leadership skills and build social capital which are tenets of financial resilience during turbulent times.

The study contributes to the continuity of MSMEs in developing economies during times of uncertainty.

Based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory, this study examines how supply chain digitalisation affects firms’ performance by enabling firms to build supply chain agility and innovation capability.

Drawing from the dataset of 271 firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), we used structural equation modelling to validate the models. Mediation and moderation analyses were performed to test the research hypotheses.

The results suggest a positive correlation between supply chain digitalisation and a company’s performance, fully mediated by both supply chain agility and innovation capability. The interplay between supply chain agility and innovation capability has the potential to result in unfavourable outcomes for a firm’s performance. These results provide valuable insights into supply chain management during digital transformation.

The study advances the extant research on the antecedents of a firm’s performance by incorporating supply chain digitalisation and mediating mechanisms of supply chain agility and innovation capability that serve as a conduit between supply chain digitalisation and a firm’s performance based on RBV.

This study aims to investigate the role of consumption coping in managing collective tragedy stress and stress outcomes using the COVID-19 pandemic context.

A mixed-method study with a sample size of 931 was conducted to develop the questionnaire, followed by a quantitative study with 1,215 respondents to test the hypotheses.

The results of this study empirically validated the use of consumption coping and found it effective in managing collective tragedy stress and its outcomes (subjective well-being and continuance intention).

This study advances the literature on stress coping in a collective tragedy context, with a specific focus on consumption coping.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all elements of the marketing mix. Understanding pandemic-induced stress and the role of consumption coping can help managers to proactively formulate strategic responses suitable for changing consumer habits.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all elements of the marketing mix. Understanding pandemic-induced stress and the role of consumption coping can help managers to proactively formulate strategic responses suitable for changing consumer habits. This should lead to better social outcomes.

This study developed a scale for pandemic-induced stress that integrates various well-established theories to identify the role of consumption coping in managing collective tragedy stress and the psychological mechanism behind the shift in consumer behavior after a collective tragedy.

This empirical study aims to examine the association between gender-diverse boards and corporate carbon emissions and estimates the effect of board gender diversity on stock price reactions to climate activism. This study contributes to the inconclusive literature on the link between gender-diverse boards and firms' financial performance by examining a single and plausibly isolated channel of association (i.e. attention to climate change).

The authors use parametric and non-parametric panel data techniques to examine the association between gender-diverse boards to corporate carbon emission. The system generalized methods of moments (SYS-GMM) estimator is used to address endogeneity concerns. The authors use the event study methodology to examine difference in stock price reactions to climate activism.

The results show that high board gender diversity is associated with lower corporate carbon emissions and higher stock returns to climate activism.

This is the first study to isolate public attention to climate change as a relevant channel through which gender-diverse boards have an impact of firms' financial performance. This study is timely and important due to the immediate threat of global warming and the recent introduction of mandatory board gender quotas in many countries around the world.

This study aims to critically evaluate resource dependence theory’s (RDT) assumptions and explanations about dependence and the dependent firm’s strategic options. The authors argue that RDT’s perception of dependence is problematic because it evaluates dependence as a purely negative situation in which all firms, by definition, seek to develop strategies to change the power structure of such relationships. On the contrary, the authors argue that there are situations in which dependent firms are in agreement with dependence and, therefore, develop strategies that do not aim to change the balance of power in the relationship, but rather to strengthen their position within the relationship.

The research is designed as a theoretical discussion. The authors critically evaluate and discuss current understanding and assumptions about RDT’s dependence explanations. Drawing on insights from the strategic management literature, the authors offer a new perspective on the problematic areas in the dependence explanations of the RDT.

Drawing on insights from the strategic management literature, the authors argue that dependent firms enjoy certain advantages due to the dependence relationship to gain sustainable competitive advantages over their rivals and potential competitors. These advantages include factors such as increasing growth potential, developing capabilities and competencies, building relationships of trust with powerful firms and leveraging their reputations and references that contribute to the sustainable strategic advantages of dependent firms. The authors believe that this study has the potential to spur new research that further challenges the assumptions of the RDT and empirically tests its propositions.

The authors propose a research framework on dependence as a strategic option that has the possibility of expanding RDT’s current dependence explanation.