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This paper discusses motorsport from the viewpoint of environmental sustainability amid growing concerns about the impact of human activity on the environment. It reviews the literature that positions motorsport in a global environmental context and explores the often used but rarely defined concept of sustainability. The author suggests that while motorsport is a significant sporting activity for economic and social reasons, there are considerable doubts as to whether it is currently managed and marketed in an environmentally sustainable way.

Collaboration in supply chain networks (SCN) becomes extremely important for manufacturers seeking a sustainable competitive advantage. Such competitiveness depends on the SCN resources a manufacturing firm can allocate, the capabilities to identify and deploy these network resources effectively, and practices and applications the firm arranges for these resources. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework that investigates the relationships between these network constructs and their influences on firm performance.

An extensive literature review of supply chain management was conducted to explicate why some manufacturers outperform others. A resource-based view, dynamic capability theory, and extended resource-based view were employed to develop a conceptual model that investigates relationships between the resources, capabilities, and practices of a SCN. The relationships were then examined to analyze their influences on firm performance. Several cases and practical examples were included in the study to give a better understanding of the conceptual research model. Various keywords were used in searching literature for the constructs of the research model. For example, “knowledge” and “supply chain network” were used to search the literature regarding the SCN intangible resources.

This study uses a conceptual model to identify SCN resources that are dispersed in the internal territory among different network members, SCN capabilities that are developed based on these network resources and lead to the firm’s competitive performance, and SCN practices used to acquire network resources and build network capabilities.

The conceptual model of SCN resources, capabilities, and practices needs further empirical validation.

The conceptual model provides a framework for managers to identify the critical resources, capabilities, and practices of a SCN that help a firm achieve sustainable competitive performance.

This research builds a comprehensive picture of relationships between a manufacturing firm’s strategic resources, capabilities, and practices in a SCN. It also provides a theoretical foundation for future research on developing instruments for resources, practices, and capabilities of a SCN and empirically testing the relationships among the appropriate constructs.

The purpose of this guest editorial is to highlight the importance of knowledge management and organizational learning in firm innovation, offering an integrative framework to understand this complex business phenomenon.

Based on the literature review, the guest editorial shows a general review on “A Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation” articulating and integrating a total number of ten theoretical and empirical contributions about this topic.

Theoretical and empirical works are organized in three main topics. The first one refers to the importance of external knowledge, networking, and relationships as key drivers of firm technological innovation, offering an “open or relational innovation framework”. The second one shows several papers on the growing importance of KIBS (Knowledge‐Intensive Business Services) in a Knowledge Economy and Society. Finally, this general review integrates papers about organizational context, and its role on knowledge management and firm innovation.

The paper and special issue tries to offer some new relevant advances for the academic community in the growing body of knowledge management and firm innovation. Nevertheless, due to its special issue nature, the theoretical and empirical advances showed on it represent only a partial view of a “Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation”.

Managers need to understand the precise nature and sources (internals and externals) of firm innovation. In this vein, this journal number shows empirical research developed in different countries and industries illustrating some interesting insights about this complex business phenomenon.

This general review shows new lines of theoretical and empirical research regarding knowledge management, organizational learning, and firm innovation in a useful integrative framework: “A Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation”

This paper explains how the location of motorsports events is an integral part of the marketing of the sport of motor racing and of all its attendant commercial interests. Case studies of the major motorsports events staged in public street circuits in Australia are used to illustrate how the locations have particular symbolic significance that adds legitimacy to the sport of motor racing, and the messages and impacts associated with these events. The paper examines the wider significance of allowing special public spaces in cities to be used for motorsports events, and contends that the marketing of sporting events should not be considered independently of the major challenges facing the world.

The literature on interfirm networks devotes scant attention to the ways collaborating firms combine and integrate the knowledge they share and to the subsequent learning outcomes. This study aims to investigate how motorsport companies use network ties to share and recombine knowledge and the learning that occurs both at the organizational and dyadic network levels.

The paper adopts a qualitative and inductive approach with the aim of developing theory from an in‐depth examination of the dyadic ties between motorsport companies and the way they share and recombine knowledge.

The research shows that motorsport companies having substantial competences at managing knowledge flows do so by getting advantage of bridging ties. While bridging ties allow motorsport companies to reach distant and diverse sources of knowledge, their strengthening and the formation of relational capital facilitate the mediation and overlapping of that knowledge.

The analysis rests on a qualitative account in a single industry and does not take into account different types of inter‐firm networks (e.g. alliances; constellations; consortia etc.) and governance structures. Cross‐industry analyses may provide a more fine‐grained picture of the practices used to recombine knowledge and the ideal composition of inter‐firm ties.

This study provides some interesting implications for scholars and managers concerned with the management of innovation activities at the interfirm level. From a managerial point of view, the recognition of the different roles played by network spanning connections is particularly salient and raises issues concerning the effective design and management of interfirm ties.

Although much of the literature emphasizes the role of bridging ties in connecting to diverse pools of knowledge, this paper goes one step further and investigates in more depth how firms gather and combine distant and heterogeneous sources of knowledge through the use of strengthened bridging ties and a micro‐context conducive to high quality relationships.

A sponsorship performance cycle of business-to-business (B2B) exchange is conceptualized, where distinct types of resources are invested by sponsoring firms into sponsored properties and the competitive success of those properties enhances returns to sponsors. While the latter return channel in this cycle is well-documented, the former investment channel has remained opaque. Recognizing this empirical missing link, this paper aims to illuminate the investment channel through a longitudinal analysis.

Based on 50 years of Formula One (F1) team and sponsor alliances, this study models the effects of three different sponsorship categories on team performance in the annual F1 constructors’ championship.

The results demonstrate that each incremental sponsor offering performance-based resources is associated with four additional team points in the championship, controlling for factors such as past success and team experience. Conversely, sponsors offering access to financial or operational resources have no competitive impact. This performance-based sponsor effect is illustrated in models of the current and following seasons.

In combination with related literature, this study substantiates a complete sponsorship performance cycle in the motorsports context.

The findings contribute an empirically-based strategy for sustainable sponsorship support that emphasizes acquisition of performance resources in the business-to-business exchange over operational or strictly financial alternatives.

While scholars have discerned that sponsors invest heterogeneous resources into sponsored properties, and the competitive success of those properties can enhance returns to sponsors, this study demonstrates that particular resources invested by sponsors are related to the property’s competitive success.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the Intellectual Capital perspective can be altered in order to include ethically questionable practices of knowledge acquisition.

The paper explores the relationship between formal and illicit forms of intellectual capital acquisition through a case study of the Formula 1 industry. The paper is based on secondary data from public sources.

Ethically questionable practices are a part of the knowledge economy. In the case study, the view on what was ethical and accepted was changed due to uncovered practices of espionage.

Firms in knowledge‐intensive industries often employ unrecognized informal channels for intellectual capital acquisition. Managers should consider the boundary between right and wrong in their particular industry, and whether they have the tools for dealing with ethically questionable practices.

The paper suggests a complementary interpretation of the Formula 1 industry not only as a best‐practice case of how community and trust knowledge spillovers facilitate innovation, but also how ethically questionable practices of intellectual capital acquisition exist as an accepted part of the process.