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In developing countries like Tanzania, gems and jewellery industry mainly consists of disintegrated and unstable micro and small workshops which operate in a way that misalign value addition processes. This study is aimed to bridge gap by focussing on exploitation of industrial clusters in social normalisation and economic resilience to developing countries. The world economic shocks has been not only individually experienced but also globally shared while disrupted lives across all countries and communities and negatively affected global socio-economic growth.

Furthermore, the explorative design was adopted in this study in order to explore needs of respondents, and with the aim to direct the study towards a descriptive design. The sample frame consists of participants in gems and jewellery activities in Tanzania whereby sample was drawn from Dar es Salaam and Arusha. Semi-structured interview was used to collect quantitative data to establish evidence of Tanzanians’ SSJs linked to global value chains (GVCs).

Results revealed the benefits of exploitation of artisanal industrial clusters to Tanzanians’ SSJs when linked to global value chains (GVCs). Findings of the study demonstrate the importance of artisanal industrial clusters in facilitating Tanzanians’ SSJs to access GVCs. Further, insufficient education, trust and social protection directly affects inclusive GVCs, inferring that the impact of artisanal industrial clusters on inclusive GVCs in social normalisation and economic resilience.

Study findings reveals shortcomings in existing regulatory framework of linking Tanzanians’ SSJs to artisanal industrial clusters, for improvements to better support the inclusiveness in GVCs. Findings of this research invite interventions on institutional capabilities and entrepreneurial competencies to enhance the capabilities of small-scale jewellers (SSJs). Like other studies, this study involved cross-sectional data, limit targeted study population as representative of SSJs in industrial clusters and GVCs in economic crises at limited time.

The study findings makes important practical contributions to the Tanzania’s SSJs by examining mediating role of artisanal industrial clusters hence informing policymakers of mining sector how to improve accessibility on GVCs by focus on offering great institutional capabilities and entrepreneurial competencies. These findings will help SSJs and policy makers to get better understanding of the relationships in exploitation of artisanal industrial clusters when accessing GVCs. Therefore, they can make better decisions on implementing artisanal industrial clusters as well as management accessing GVCs, so that SSJs will attain the best possible performance.

This emphasises the importance of community empowerment in the GVCs process through artisanal industrial clusters. Study findings indicate the influence of industrial relations to social dynamics which are previously inadequately addressed and scantly researched. In actual fact study propose initiatives that ensure local communities benefit socially from the integration of SSJs into GVCs through artisanal industrial clusters. Findings suggest local communities that take into account inter-sectionality of artisanal industrial clusters and inclusive GVCs, by considering how factors like education, trust and social protection status intersect to influence the social inclusiveness of SSJs.

There is limited evidence of linking Tanzanians’ SSJs to GVCs in social normalisation and economic resilience and few researchers have explored this topic. This article leverages exploitation of industrial clusters in normalisation and economic resilience to developing countries such as Tanzania as way of improving shared prosperity, sustainability, inclusive growth, cohesion, value chain upgrading and financial inclusion to SSJs.

Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) concept, research on its value-adding activities receives less attention. Thus, in this article, the authors investigate the role of EEs in supporting global value chain (GVC) activities.

The authors employ the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) technique to identify practical configurations of EE’s framework and systemic conditions spurring GVC activities in 80 countries.

The findings suggest different configurations of EE`s framework and systemic conditions necessary for various GVC activities regarding input-output structure, geographical scope, upgrading, and forward and backward participation.

This study contributes to the extant literature by pioneering the EE approach to explaining GVC development. Moreover, the findings provide novel insights for understanding the EE – GVC interplay. As a result, the study offers a more nuanced understanding of how the EE supports GVC activities.

While implementing green innovation-driven strategies when facing growing grim environmental problems and the realistic demands of achieving high-quality development is increasingly urgent, changing abruptly is inevitably detrimental to the smooth functioning of social and economic development. Restrained by resources, innovation-driven strategy is a huge strategy for an organization to shift from traditional technological innovation to green innovation. Supports and implementation in green technology investment would necessarily crowd out other business investment and lead to reduction of innovation outputs and mount of financial uncertainty. Under the guidance of harmonious balance, the equilibrium allocation between green research and non-green counterpart is badly needed to be addressed for decision-makers inside and outside the organizations. The differentiated inputs of them would lead to different effects on organizational performance in practice.

The authors first conducted a Hausman test on green research intensity (GRI) and innovation performance, economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance, respectively. Adopting the fixed effects model for estimation seems accurate, if there is no significant heteroscedasticity shown in the BP test. The authors then adopted the least square dummy variable method to handle individual heterogeneity (Xia et al., 2020). After controlling the industry effect and time effect simultaneously, the results were consistent with that of fixed effects model, thereby eliminating the impact of heteroscedasticity.

The authors construct a multi-dimensional performance system—innovation performance, economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance—to probe into the influence of GRI from the resource-based view and allocation theory. Different performance does not benefit equally from increasing the intensity of green research. Performance increase may squeeze out the quantity of total innovation but can compensate quality for knowledge spillovers of green technology. The organization's growth and long-term value may be beneficial from the increase, but not the short-term financial performance. While the relationship between GRI and social performance has the characteristic of reverse U-curve, there has to be some scale of green research to gain considerable and nonlinear environmental performance. Low level of green research may increase pollution until green research has cross over the inflection point. These relationships are intensely moderated by the environmental regulation.

Because of the focus of this study is on the organizational performance of green research, the analysis comes with some limitations that should be addressed in future research. Data were inter-professional, with large enterprises and small businesses innovating green technology at the same time. Though the hypotheses presented here were grounded in existing theoretical rationale, the generality of this study cannot be assumed. Multi-performance of green activities in small- and medium-sized businesses should be further explored. Additionally, concrete index of the corresponding evaluation system constructed here contribute more to practical activities of green innovation. Refinement of synergy performance index is the task for future work. Further, grounded in Chinese context, the authors' results could be compared with other scenario with institutional heterogeneity to provide detailed evidences for institutional theory. Future studies could also move forward to longitudinal case study to delicately investigate the performance differentiation of green research when in different development stage.

First, what and how the authors do is novel as the authors use listed Chinese manufacturing companies to probe into the complex relationship between GRI and multiple performance rather than discussing the performance of green innovation input from a single perspective merely. Second, the authors systematically define the performance as economic performance, environmental performance, social performance and innovation performance in depth, which consider adequately the tangible and intangible value as well as internal and external benefits of green research. And finally, in the context of environmental regulation, the study discusses the differentiation of the increase of green research intensity from the perspective of resource constraints, providing reference for optimizing the resource allocation in green and non-green research and solving the decoupling between earnest social appeal and sluggish or reluctant green behaviors.

This study aims to analyze and discuss the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms’ performance, as well as to examine the interplay between CSR and the economy, society and innovation.

This paper collects data from 420 manufacturing firms across various geographical regions in China. By using a structural equation model, the paper investigates the impact of CSR on enterprise innovation, customer management capability, market competitiveness (MC) and firm financial performance.

The findings demonstrate that CSR performance positively contributes to enhancing the level of enterprise innovation, as well as customer management capability and market competitiveness. Furthermore, it assists enterprises in improving market competitiveness and elevating customer management capabilities. Thus, CSR can have a positive effect on the firm financial performance.

The outcomes presented in this paper offer valuable evidence regarding the influence of implementing CSR on different aspects of enterprise performance and innovation. Moreover, it provides practical recommendations for enterprises seeking to transition towards low-carbon practices and upgrade their manufacturing industry.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of enterprise is influenced by the enterprise digital transformation. In addition, this study explains how enterprise digital transformation affects ESG performance.

The sample covers 4,646 nonfinancial companies listed on China’s A-share market from 2009 to 2021. The study adopts the fixed-effects multiple linear regression to perform the data analysis.

The study finds that enterprise digital transformation has a significant inverted U-shaped impact on ESG performance. Moderate digital transformation can improve enterprise ESG performance, whereas excessive digital transformation will bring new organizational conflicts and increase enterprise costs, which is detrimental to ESG performance. This inverted U-shaped effect is more pronounced in industrial cities, manufacturing industries and enterprises with less financing constraints and executives with financial backgrounds. Enterprise digital transformation mainly affects ESG performance by affecting the level of internal information communication and disclosure, the level of internal control and the principal-agent cost.

The government should take multiple measures to encourage enterprises to choose appropriate digital transformation based on their own production behaviors and development strategies, encourage them to innovate and upgrade their organizational management and development models in conjunction with digital transformation and guide them to use digital technology to improve ESG performance.

This study shows that irrational digital transformation cannot effectively improve the ESG performance of enterprises and promote the sustainable development of the country. Enterprises should carry out reasonable digital transformation according to their own development needs and finally improve the green and sustainable development ability of enterprises and promote the sustainable development of society.

This study examines the relationship between enterprise digital transformation and ESG performance. Different from the linear relationship between the two in previous major studies, this study proves the inverse U-shaped relationship between enterprise digital transformation and ESG performance through mathematical theoretical model derivation and empirical test. This study also explores in detail how corporate digital transformation affects ESG performance, as well as discusses heterogeneity at the city, industry and firm levels. It is proposed that enterprises should take into account their own characteristics and carry out reasonable digital transformation according to their development needs.

The changing roles of the United Nations (UN) and national institutions have made addressing climate change a critical concern for many multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) survival and growth. This chapter discusses how such institutions, which vary in their nature and characteristics, shape firm strategies for climate change adaptation. Exploring different versions of institutional theory, the chapter demonstrates how and why institutional characteristics affect typical patterns of firm ownership, governance, and capabilities. These, in turn, influence companies’ internationalisation and climate-change strategies. Climate change poses challenges to how we understand firms’ strategic decisions from both an international business (IB) (HQ–subsidiary relations) and global value chains (GVC) (buyer–supplier relations) perspective. However, climate change also provides opportunities for companies to gain competitive advantages – if firms can reconfigure and adapt faster than their competitors. Existing IB and GVC research tends to downplay the importance of climate change strategies and the ways in which coherent or dysfunctional institutions affect firms’ reconfiguration and adaptation strategies in a globally dispersed network of value creation. This chapter presents a perspective on the institutional conditions that affect firms’ climate change strategies regarding ownership, location, and internalisation (OLI), and GVCs, with ‘investment’ and ‘emerging standards’ playing a significant role. The authors illustrate the discussion using several examples from the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh) and the Global North (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany) with a special emphasis on the garment industry. The aim is to encourage future research to examine how a ‘business systems’, or varieties of capitalism, institutional perspective can complement the analysis of sustainability and climate change strategies in IB and GVC studies.

The purpose of this paper is to have a deeper understanding of the nonlinear relationship between the impact of climate change on tourism development. Current studies on the effects of climate change on tourism development primarily rely on linear correlation assumptions.

Based on the New Institutional Economics theory, the institutional setting inherently motivates and ensures the growth of the tourism industry. For a precise evaluation of the nonlinear consequences of climate change on tourism, this paper concentrates on Chinese cities between 2011 and 2021, methodically analyzing the influence of climate change on tourism.

The study findings suggest that there is an “inverse U”-shaped nonlinear relationship between climate change and tourism development, initially strengthening and subsequently weakening. Based on these findings, the research further delves into how institutional contexts shape the nonlinear association between climate change and tourism growth. It was found that in a higher institutional backdrop, the “inverse U” curve tends to flatten and surpass the curve adjusted for a lesser institutional context. Upon deeper mechanism analysis, it was observed that cities with more advanced marketization, improved industrial restructuring and enhanced educational growth exhibit a more evident “inverse U”-shaped nonlinear connection between climate change and tourism evolution.

First, previous studies on climate change and tourism development largely rely on questionnaire data (Hu et al., 2022). In contrast to these studies, this paper uses dynamic panel data, which to some extent overcomes the subjectivity and difficulty of causality identification in questionnaire data, making our research conclusions more accurate and reliable. Second, this study breaks through the linear relationship hypothesis of previous literature regarding climate change and tourism development. By evaluating the nonlinear relationship of climate change to tourism development from the institutional pressure perspective, it more intricately delineates their interplay mechanism, expanding and supplementing the research literature on the relationship mechanism between climate change and tourism development. Thirdly, the conclusions of this study are beneficial for policymakers to better understand and assess the scope of climate change impacts. It also aids relevant departments in clarifying the direction of institutional environment optimization to elevate the level of tourism development when faced with adverse impacts brought about by climate change.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

Since the early 1990s, Brazil has adopted an experimental approach to environmental management. Its reforms continue to this day and have produced robust water-management policies. This article reveals the different positions, the power structures involved, and the result of the disputes and agreements concerning the social construction of legitimate environmental behaviour in jeans manufacturing.

Comparative case study. Data collection for this research started in 2017 and ended in 2020. The data were gathered by concentrating on a few cases in two clusters. The author visited public agencies, trade associations, and firms of all sizes and levels of specialization in the industry and conducted semi-structured interviews with them. The intention was to acquire systemic and deep knowledge of the local industry.

The article's findings demonstrate a divergence in typologies that reflects the ecological limits in the use of natural resources, law-enforcement policies, and firms' legal status. The article extends our understanding of the ability of organizations to respond to institutional pressures to become sustainable. This study's findings provide insights for policy design in times of increasingly catastrophic pollution in regions that are immersed in global competition.

The study focuses only on two industrial textile clusters in Brazil, which may not be representative of the wider industry in the country or in other regions. The findings may not be generalizable to other industries or locations with different ecological limits, legal frameworks, and firm structures.

The article's practical implications include the need for tailored regulatory frameworks, effective law enforcement policies, promoting a culture of environmental responsibility among businesses, and collaboration among stakeholders in promoting sustainability. Policymakers, regulators, and businesses in industrial textile clusters in Brazil and other regions facing similar ecological and regulatory challenges can use these insights to develop more effective policies and practices that balance economic growth with environmental sustainability.

State actors emerge as the most important stakeholder group in forging the upgrading of water-management systems and technology. The optimal solution to the problem is cross-institutional and multilevel collaboration and coalitions between the different authorities and organizations involved who need to pay due attention to the relevant ecological limits and social needs. Only when this multilevel collaboration is achieved and maintained will the state's agents be able to collaborate with industrial actors and society at large.

The article examines the various factors that influence water usage and analyses the dynamics of change in two distinct locations in an emerging market. It demonstrates that, despite the existence of the same regulatory framework in both locations, different outcomes can arise due to the construction of diverse coalitions between social actors.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0154

This study aims to examine the role of returnee managers that can affect the strategic-divestment decision of emerging-market firms (EM firms). Drawing on arguments from the upper echelons theory and international human resource mobility perspectives, this study aims to propose that returnee managers influence corporate divestitures when the business outlook is negative. In addition, this study aims to examine the interplay between returnee managers and CEOs, whose characteristics can foster or undermine the efforts of returnee managers to engage in corporate divestments.

This study examines 278 firms from nine emerging economies. The negative binomial regression was employed to estimate the model. In the robustness checks, the logistic regression was adopted to confirm the earlier findings.

The empirical results support the notion that returnee managers strengthen the relationship between firm performance and divestments. Because of the limited liabilities of foreignness and outsidership, returnee managers can gain social trust and credibility through communication and social interaction. Furthermore, the results provide mixed support for the moderating effect of CEO characteristics on the performance–divestment relationship.

This study reveals that returnee managers are a great asset for EM firms that aim to find synergies and upgrade their capabilities through asset reconfiguration, which is an essential activity of emerging market firms to integrate themselves into the global competition. Meanwhile, CEO characteristics can foster (through their education level) or hinder (due to their age) divestment attempts, influenced by returnee managers.

This study explores an understudied phenomenon in international business (IB): strategic divestment of EM firms. The literature that examines strategic divestment and corporate refocusing in emerging markets is extremely limited. Furthermore, this study explores the novel topic that intersects the international business (IB) and international human resource management (IHRM) research areas. Specifically, this study investigates the impact of returnee managers on strategic divestments.