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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential link between Sweden’s high reliance on equity capital financing among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and its recognition as the most innovative economy in Europe according to the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). This paper examines the idea that the high levels of trust within Swedish society can explain why private equity financing is more prevalent among Swedish SMEs.

To test these ideas, the authors use data from the Survey on Access to Finance for Enterprises to measure the private equity reliance of firms. The authors also use the EIS to measure the innovation capacity of nations and various aspects of SMEs’ innovation activities. Finally, societal levels of trust are measured through the World Value Survey.

First, the authors find that European countries with a higher proportion of SMEs relying on equity financing tend to be ranked as more innovative by the EIS. Second, the authors find that the correlation between a nation’s share of SMEs relying on equity financing and their level of innovation activities is marginally stronger for product innovations than for business process innovations. Third, the authors find that countries with higher levels of trust tend to have higher equity capital reliance among SMEs.

This study builds upon previous research on equity capital and SMEs’ innovation activity while introducing new insights into the relationship between societal trust and equity financing.

The paper aims to disentangle the physiological credit risk from the credit risk coming from the inefficient screening and monitoring management process. The analysis is conducted on a sample of 338 Italian banks–56 joint-stock banks (SpA), 23 cooperative banks (Popolari) and 259 mutual banks (BCCs)–over the time period 2006–2017.

The authors use the maximum likelihood method to estimate the efficient frontier, as a set of best management credit practices, which minimises the credit risk defined on the basis of the level of loans granted, the technical structure of the loan portfolio (such as credit lines, mortgages, consumer loans and other technical loan categories) and the interest rate charges.

The empirical results show that the increase in non-performing loans (NPLs) is related both to the severe and protracted recession in Italy, which significantly reduced borrowers' capacity to service their debt, and to other factors, such as banks' lending monitoring policies with limited capacity to work-out defaulted loans.

The authors propose a new approach to the study of the performance of the credit process. With the stochastic frontier, the physiological credit risk, assumed by the bank according to its lending activity and management choices, is separated from the credit risk resulting from an inefficient management of the screening and monitoring process. In addition, the authors analyse the determinants of the excess of NPLs. This aspect is considered particularly original because the scientific contributions which consider the causes of NPLs have largely focused on the level of NPLs not considering the physiological part, linked to the structure of the bank's loan portfolio and its operational strategy and therefore not compressible and in any case not attributable to mismanagement or moral hazard.

The study aims to explain the relationship between accounting and finance through measuring the effect of rational working capital management on profitability.

Employing the methodology of semi-structured interviews with sixteen financial managers.

The findings pointed out the relationship between accounting and finance is complementary, since it supports the accountant by the critical skills and information, like project evaluation, managing the company funding resources and working capital management. These skills put the accountant up to the financial manager stage. The working capital investment and financing policies have the most significant impact on profitability. These policies related to risk and return theory; since the conservative policy will reduce both the risk and return and the aggressive one will have the opposite impact.

It recommends accountants to be in professional stage and increase the profitability of the company to grab both accounting and finance information and skills.

This study aims to determine if the quality of national institutions and banking development condition the maturity of debt depending on the horizon of short or long term.

Analysis is performed on a sample of 116 nonfinancial companies from Peru and Brazil. The measures of quality of national institutions and banking development were obtained from World Bank data and included factorial analysis for dynamic considerations.

The findings, through the treatment of pointed indicators, the factor analysis and the subsequent estimation of a dynamic econometric model, called GMM-SYS, show that institutional quality fosters the maturity of long-term debt and banking development boots short-term financial relations.

Evaluating different measures of the quality of national institutions and banking development is necessary to demonstrate the robustness of the results beyond the sample evaluated in Latin America.

The research allows to understand the interaction between national institutions and system banking through debt maturity, and this is useful for establishing common target between both groups.

It is important for corporate finance to understand the mechanisms of the interaction between national institutions and system banking, because this affects internal decisions of firms regarding financial implications.

The treatment of measures of national institutions and banking development include dynamic considerations, and the application of this study in Latin America provides new findings regarding these kind of indexes and their interaction with firms´ features such as debt maturity.

Access to finance, especially by the poor and marginalized section of the population, is a prerequisite for creating employment opportunities, economic growth, poverty reduction and social cohesion. Access to finance makes transactions quicker, cheaper and safer. Most people around the world having an account in a formal financial institution serve as an entry point into formal financial sector. This study aims to analyze the status of financial inclusion in Assam with respect to demographic penetration, geographic penetration and usage ratio, i.e. credit–deposit ratio.

The study covers a period of 12 years from 2007–08 to 2018–19. Both the parametric and non-parametric statistical tools have been used to analyze the various dimensions of financial inclusion.

The study clearly indicates that there is a significant difference between Assam and aggregate India in financial inclusion and the status of Assam is somewhat lower as compared to the aggregate financial inclusion status of India. To achieve a satisfactory level of financial inclusion, it is not enough to open a bank account for the excluded people, but banks must look at flexibility and timeliness in services to offer a complete package to this segment of the population.

The study is a significant attempt to meet the shortcomings and improve banking coverage for achieving financial inclusion.

Previous studies have postulated that an advance payment system (APS) positively impacts the contractor's working capital and is paramount to ensuring an efficient and effective project cash flow process. However, scant research has been undertaken to empirically establish the cash flow performance and domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance.

The epistemological design adopted a positivist philosophical stance augmented by deductive reasoning to explore the phenomena under investigation. Primary quantitative data were collected from 504 Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) registered contractors (within the grade bandings 1–9) in South Africa. A five-point Likert scale was utilised, and subsequent data accrued were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Emergent findings reveal that the mandatory use of an APS does not guarantee a positive project cash flow, an improvement in organisational performance or an improvement in project performance.

The ensuing discussion reveals the contributory influence of APS on positive cash flow and organisational performance, although APS implementation alone will not achieve these objectives. Practically, the research accentuates the need for various measures to be concurrently adopted (including APS) towards ensuring a positive project cash flow and improved organisational and project performance.

There is limited empirical research on cash flow performance and the domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance in South Africa, nor indeed, the wider geographical location of Africa as a continent. This study addresses this gap in the prevailing body of knowledge.

This work aims to investigate the current financial structure of Italian agri-food micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to understand how MSMEs face innovation challenges, which are also required to support sustainable development.

To reach the goal, an empirical longitudinal analysis is performed on a sample of Italian agri-food firms. In detail, to highlight the changes in the use of financial sources between 2013 and 2019, a descriptive ratio analysis is carried out on the data extracted by the AIDA database. In addition, statistical analyses were performed, including t-tests and U Mann–Whitney. Finally, a fixed-effects model is created to analyse the panel data. To ensure homogeneity, the sub-sectors of production and transformation are separately considered.

The financial structure analysis shows an increase in the equity percentage in the funding sources, attributable to an attempt to compensate for the reduction of banks' funding. However, even though this change has not compromised firms' profitability, the undercapitalisation of companies is still present. Therefore, more equity investments are required to support the innovation process.

The value of the present research is to highlight the choice of using new alternative financing sources instead of traditional banks' credit to implement sustainable and innovative development Italian agri-food sector (AFS). This choice is forced by reducing finance from banks and other financial institutions because of the credit crunch. This issue is even more relevant, considering that MSMEs have structural financial problems but have to fulfil the mission of pursuing innovation in the same way as large companies. Therefore, this paper expands the literature on agri-food, delving into an issue typical of MSMEs and combining agri-food with the need for innovation.

This study aims to investigate the impact of stakeholders’ nonfinancial resources (NFRs) on companies’ profitability, filling a significant gap in the literature regarding the role of NFRs in value creation.

Data from 76 organizations from 2017 to 2019 were collected and analyzed. Four primary NFRs and their key value drivers were identified, representing core elements that support different dimensions of a company’s performance. Statistical tests examined the relationship between stakeholders’ NFRs and financial performance measures.

When analyzed collectively and individually, the results reveal a significant positive influence of stakeholders’ NFRs on a firm’s profitability. Higher importance assigned to NFRs correlates with a higher return on sales.

This study contributes to the literature by empirically bridging the gap between stakeholder theory and the resource-based view, addressing the intersection of these perspectives. It also provides novel insights into how stakeholders’ NFRs impact profitability, offering valuable implications for research and managerial practice. It suggests that managers should integrate nonfinancial measures of NFRs within their performance measurement system to manage better and sustain companies’ value-creation process.

The influence of website quality on online compulsive buying behavior (OCBB) in the context of online shopping based on the usage of a credit card (UCC) and online impulsive buying behavior (OIBB) was investigated in this study.

The authors used a research model to examine the relationships between the study components as per the prescription. For this investigation, the authors used an online survey form to obtain primary data from 350 respondents on social media. A covariance-based structural equation modeling approach was used to evaluate the structural research model and data.

The findings reveal that the quality of online shopping websites positively affects consumers' UCC and OIBB, and these in turn positively influence their OCBB.

The study emphasized impacting elements on consumer behavior and gave advice for future research based on the results. Using several dimensions of website quality, this study bridges the knowledge gap between UCC, OIBB and OCBB.

Based on UCC and OIBB, the authors developed a new model to investigate the link between website quality and OCBB. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is the first experimental result that assesses the impact of website quality on OCBB.

Highly deprived urban contexts, such as informal settlements in the global south, can turn into niches of extreme innovation and sparkle ingenuity out of necessity. But what are the rationales behind the participation of disadvantaged communities in social innovations? Why do they engage in grassroots innovations? What is it that makes these grassroots try novelties and continue experimenting with them, even when the perceived benefits are not clear yet? This paper aims to examine and conceptualize the rationales for engaging in grassroots financial innovations in the context of extremely deprived urban settings.

This paper is based on the case of grassroots organizations which have started experimenting with the development of a community currency in Kisumu, Kenya. This paper is informed by in-depth interviews with members of three grassroots organizations involved in the community currency, together with observations and meeting participation since 2019.

The rationales argued by the participants for engaging in this grassroots innovation are framed in various ways: as a means for seeking poverty alleviation (the development framing); as a challenge to conventional imaginaries of innovations (the digital framing); and as an innovation embedded in community and trust relations (the community framing). These framings have a mobilizing effect that initially draws participants into the innovation. Yet, what explains persistent participation despite the decreasing influence of these framings over time is the organizational space and strategies of incompleteness accommodating these experiments.

This paper contributes to the emerging body of grassroots innovations movements literature. While research has progressed in its understandings of the challenges of scaling up innovative practices, the examination of the grassroots initiatives stemming from extremely deprived settings, and the rationales and framings behind, have been under examined. This paper comes to bridge this gap.