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The vulnerability of the tourism industry to an array of risks, encompassing family-related, small- and medium-sized enterprise-specific, strategic, tourism-specific and external factors, highlights the landscape within which small and medium family enterprises (SMFEs) operate. Although SMFEs are an important stakeholder in the dynamic tourism sector, they are not one homogenous group of firms, but have different strategic orientations. This study aims to investigate the interplay between strategic orientation and risk perception to better understand SMFEs risk perception as it is impacting their decision-making processes, resilience and long-term survival. The authors investigate how different strategic orientations contribute to different perspectives on risk among owner-managers.

Based on a qualitative data corpus of 119 face-to-face interviews, the authors apply various coding rounds to better understand the relationship between strategic orientations and the perceptions of risks. Firstly, the authors analysed the owner–manager interviews and identified three groups of different strategic orientations: proactive and sustainability-oriented SMFE, destination-affirmative and resilience-oriented SMFE and passive SMFE. Secondly, the authors coded the interviews for different risks identified. The authors identified that the three groups show differences in the risk perceptions.

The data unveil that the three groups of SMFEs have several differences in how they perceive risks. Proactive and sustainability-oriented SMFEs prioritize business risks, demonstrating a penchant for innovation and sustainability. Destination-affirmative and resilience-oriented SMFEs perceive a broader range of risks, tying their investments to destination development, emphasizing family and health risks and navigating competitive pressures. Passive SMFEs, primarily concerned with external risks, exhibit limited awareness of internal and strategic risks, resist change and often defer decision-making to successors. The findings underscore how different strategic orientations influence risk perceptions and decision-making processes within SMFEs in the tourism industry.

The authors contribute to existing knowledge include offering a comprehensive status quo of perceived risks for different strategic orientations, a notably underexplored area. In addition, the differences with respect to risk perception shown in the paper suggest that simplified models ignoring risk perception may be insufficient for policy recommendations and for understanding the dynamics of the tourism sector. For future research, the authors propose to focus on exploring the possible directions in which strategic orientation and risk perception influence one another, which might be a limitation of this study due to its qualitative nature.

Varying strategic orientations and risk perceptions highlight the diversity within the stakeholder group of SMFE. Recognizing differences allows for more targeted interventions that address the unique concerns and opportunities of each group and can thus improve the firm’s resilience (Memili et al., 2023) and therefore leading to sustainability destinations development. The authors suggest practical support for destination management organizations and regional policymakers, aimed especially at enhancing the risk management of passive SMFEs. Proactive SMFE could be encouraged to perceive more family risks.

Viewing tourism destinations as a complex stakeholder network, unveiling distinct risk landscapes for various strategic orientations of one stakeholder has the potential to benefit the overall destination development. The proactive and sustainability-oriented SMFEs are highly pertinent as they might lead destinations to further development and create competitive advantage through innovative business models. Passive SMFEs might hinder the further development of the destination, e.g. through missing innovation efforts or succession.

Although different studies explore business risks (Forgacs and Dimanche, 2016), risks from climate change (Demiroglu et al., 2019), natural disasters (Zhang et al., 2023) or shocks such as COVID-19 (Teeroovengadum et al., 2021), this study shows that it does not imply that SMFE as active stakeholder perceive such risk. Rather, different strategic orientations are in relation to perceiving risks differently. The authors therefore open up an interesting new field for further studies, as risk perception influences the decision-making of tourism actors, and therefore resilience.

Organisational learning drives tourism organisations towards more sustainable tourism. Digital transformation also provides opportunities for sustainable tourism development. This study aims to combine these perspectives and explore how digital transformation enables organisational learning to contribute to sustainable tourism, following organisational learning theory (OLT).

Based on a critical realist paradigm, this study focuses on developing an in-depth understanding of organisational learning in tourism organisations. Thirty qualitative interviews with tourism organisations participating in an executive development programme (EDP) show how tourism organisations create, retain and transfer knowledge.

This study demonstrates that the EDP initiates knowledge creation through content transmission and exchange, triggers knowledge retention through utilisation of digital technologies and reinforces digitalisation through data value creation. Furthermore, this study enables knowledge transformation as implementation, which contributes to the three pillars of sustainable tourism and facilitates the development of networks encouraging sustainable tourism.

This study identifies approaches that enable economic, social and environmentally sustainable tourism development by facilitating collaborations via digital transformation, digital technologies that guide guest streams, online mobility offers and online environmental awareness campaigns that reduce environmental impacts. Thus, this study strengthens OLT and has implications for organisational learning and tourism policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to create awareness on the need for lifting up the level of analysis in service research by focusing on systems, networks, and ecosystems to contribute to the research expansion of the traditionally narrow view of service.

This conceptual paper is built upon three blocks. First, the viable systems approach is revised to highlight the survival, viability, and complexity of service systems. Second, the dynamics of service networks is discussed using an ecological view of service with a nested, networked configuration. Third, these two previous perspectives are integrated using the fundamentals of ecosystems thinking.

This paper outlines a novel, tri-level approach reorienting and reframing our thinking around systems, networks, and ecosystems. Some research challenges and directions that could expand the body of knowledge in service research are also discussed.

The tri-level approach proposed in this conceptual paper could be enriched with other theoretical perspectives and empirical explorations.

Lifting the level of analysis by focussing on service systems, service networks, and service ecosystems would allow practitioners to expand their business perspective to better face the challenges of complex business settings, enabling them to co-create value for all their stakeholders.

The paper contributes to set the foundation for the next stage of service research by going beyond dyadic interactions to address dynamic systems, networks, and ecosystems across different interaction patterns in complex business configurations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine shopper marketing through service-dominant logic and service ecosystem lenses. In doing so, the authors reveal challenges and opportunities for supply chain management.

The work is conceptual, drawing on contemporary service-dominant logic thinking.

Examination of shopper marketing reveals that it is currently stuck in goods-dominant logic and micro-level ways of thinking. By taking a macro service ecosystem view, all actors, including shoppers, are seen as resource integrators seeking resource density. The macro view highlights a significant amount of goods and information flow and variance now being added throughout shopper marketing systems.

A guiding framework with appropriate terms defined offers new research directions and new ways practitioners can approach challenges in the industry. Research programs are suggested in the areas of facilitating resource density, examining the extent of ecosystems, measurement, mapping of resources, and creating shopper marketing innovations.

This study provides an alternative way of looking at problems that arise in supply chain management planning and execution of shopper marketing initiatives.

Few scholastic articles address shopper marketing even within marketing and essentially none do so in supply chain management despite it having significantly disrupted supply chains since 2004. This article offers an overview of shopper marketing and helps supply chain managers identify quickly how they can add value and supply chain management researchers begin to address the challenges.

Despite the abundant research on social movements, there is sparse scholarly investigation of the link between community settings and how they contribute to persistent protest participation. This paper illuminates the cultural and social mechanisms within a religious retirement community that engender members’ sustained commitment to a ten-year long peace protest. A shared religious-based collective identity also deepens activists’ commitment to this cause. This study draws on semi-structured interviews with 14 peace protesters who reside in this community at two points in time: 2010 and 2013.

Focuses on street vending in Chicago, in the USA, taking a historical perspective. Shows how it was used to alleviate unemployment in the volatile progressive era but then became mired in complaints about corruption and vice. Uses a case study of an entrepreneurial Mexican family and highlights the wisdom of earlier days by showing how street vending offers a series of choices that are different from the choices made by larger forms only in that they are more accessible to the poor.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the conversion of knowledge into value by examining the confluence of service-dominant logic (S-D logic), supply chain management (SCM), human resource management (HRM), and neuroeconomics. S-D logic suggests that knowledge is the raw material of value creation. SCM provides an organized foundation to study the conversion of raw materials into value. HRM recognizes the centrality of human decisions in the process of converting knowledge into value. Neuroscience gives insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of the human decisions processes. Global SCM provides more than markets and raw materials – global SCM provides the human resources central to value creation.

This paper combines literature review with interviews from members of supply chain teams engaged in performance-based logistics (PBL) to develop a model of the S-D logic knowledge conversion process.

The model describes individual-based decision constructs managers can expect to face as they convert knowledge, from a global supply chain team, into value. The model relates the decision maker mindset, based in neuroscience principals, to the efficiency of the knowledge conversion process. These principals are extended to suggest how managers can modulate human resource processes to improve the efficiency of economic exchange and increase supply chain resiliency.

This paper provides theoretical and practical insight into how differences in culture, neuronal predisposition, and genetics may influence managerial decisions. These findings provide a mechanism that researchers and managers may take to expand the boundaries of HRM in a global supply chain.

This work uses a foundation of SCM research to explain efficient conversion in a knowledge-based economy. This perspective demonstrates the criticality of global HRM mindsets and decision processes necessary to achieve competitive advantage in a knowledge-based economy. This provides a context for the study and improvement of neuroeconomic efficiency of firms.