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Cluster management organizations (CMOs) have emerged over the past few decades as intermediaries that support the competitiveness of place-based clusters of economic activity. Despite their economic origins, policymakers are now starting to experiment with a broader use for cluster policies that seeks to leverage CMOs to tackle societal challenges in approaches aligned with the concept of creating shared value (CSV). However, there remains a void in conceptual understanding around the specific roles that CMOs might play in overcoming the barriers faced by their members for CSV, which this paper aims to address. Bridging this gap presents an opportunity for cluster practitioners and policymakers in a context in which environmental and social sustainability are at the top of policy agendas.

Based on analysis of literature around collaborative approaches to CSV for mitigating transaction costs, the authors define the contours of a new conceptual framework for the roles that CMOs can play in fostering collective CSV. The authors illustrate how the different components of the framework are reflected in emerging cluster practice in the context of a new wave of European cluster-based projects tackling CSV elements.

The resulting framework reconciles the concepts of clusters and CSV by explicitly positioning CMOs as intermediaries for facilitating the CSV strategies of their members. CMOs embrace emergent strategy making that targets (tangible and intangible) collective CSV capabilities and addresses collective CSV challenges. Collective CSV can provide a theoretical anchor guiding future cluster policies to fully leverage the transformative potential of CMOs. This conceptual framework opens a promising empirical research agenda, particularly around evaluating the plurality of impacts of CMOs.

By stressing the social impact of CMOs alongside their well-understood economic impacts, and by enabling a categorization of functions that can support the monitoring of CMO activities toward collective CSV strategies, the framework provides a novel basis for inspiring further empirical research into the evidencing of these roles.

This research addresses a need in early childhood education for evidence-based teaching strategies that build emotional self-regulation skills in young children. The intervention assessed in this study focused on increasing the emotion vocabulary of preschool-aged students.

This mixed-methods, quasi-experimental study evaluated the impact a dialogic reading approach combined with direct instruction of emotion words during a shared book-reading activity had on students' emotion vocabulary knowledge. The study was conducted in a licensed daycare center in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, with ten four- and five-year-old students. Pre- and post-session surveys assessed the intervention's impact on the students' receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge, and observation notes captured the students' responses to the intervention activities.

The results showed significant increases with small to medium effect sizes between the students’ pre- and post-session survey scores for both receptive and expressive emotion vocabulary knowledge, a strong positive correlation between the level of student engagement during the intervention and their emotion vocabulary assessment scores, and the impact other variables had on the intervention’s effectiveness.

This research provides information on a culturally adaptable and quickly learned teaching strategy that could be used to build emotional self-regulation skills in the early childhood classroom.

This research uniquely applies this intervention as a universal strategy with preschool-aged children.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative picture of the state of the art of the literature on digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as an enabler for their internationalisation process and as a comprehensive view of the specific domains impacted by digital technologies as well as their repercussions on the international outreach.

A systematic review which leverages a descriptive analysis of extant literature and an axial coding technique has been conducted to shed light on the current knowledge and to identify primary research areas and future research lines.

The research indicates that digitalisation impacts the internationalisation of SMEs in three specific domains: (1) internationalisation through the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) technologies and e-commerce platforms; (2) international expansion through the digitalisation of value chain activities and (3) international outreach through knowledge acquisition on digital platforms.

The value of this study is threefold. First, the authors attempt to systematically review the literature on SMEs digitalisation and internationalisation and provide a holistic perspective on the intertwining of these two research streams. Second, the authors propose a novel conceptualisation on the dimensions of SMEs digitalisation as enablers to internationalisation. Third, the authors put forward promising future lines of research.

1. Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

2. Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

3. Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

4. Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

5. SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.