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This paper aims to explore the research field of digital transformation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), considering the importance of SMEs in the economic development of countries.

Considering the contributions of researchers and the challenges of SMEs to transform their business models, in this paper, the authors conducted a scientometric analysis using CiteSpace that included 448 documents indexed in Scopus.

The authors appreciated the growth in the number of publications that have studied the digital transformation process in SMEs, showing a niche of researchers interested in the flourishing research topic. Likewise, the authors identified the intention of SMEs to adopt digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, data analytics, electronic commerce and the Internet of Things.

This paper is a valuable resource for academics and researchers in information systems, decision-makers in digital transformation in SMEs and governmental organisations concerned with digital technologies adoption in SMEs to achieve digital transformation and increase competitiveness and productivity.

This study used CiteSpace to conduct a scientometric analysis to explore how researchers have focused on frameworks and maturity models for measuring SME readiness, the impact of Industry 4.0 on SMEs, guides for helping managers evaluate their Industry 4.0 positioning, the development and implementation of digital business strategies for SMEs, the presentation of cases of SMEs that have driven digital transformation and future research opportunities.

Introduction: Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the economic development of economies by generating job opportunities. Considering their significance, understanding the challenges and skills required in these enterprises becomes essential and timely.

Purpose: This study aims to discuss the limitations and skill gaps faced by SMEs in emerging economies, such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, China, Malaysia, Ghana, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, UAE, Iran, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, Zambia, Romania, and Vietnam.

Methodology: The study adopts a systematic review and meta-synthesis approach, utilising a literature review to comprehensively analyse, synthesise, and map the existing literature by identifying overarching themes.

Findings: The study examines the challenges SMEs encounter in emerging economies, including resource scarcity, limited access to credit, inadequate infrastructure, low technology adoption, restricted global market access, and ineffective marketing strategies. There is a notable shortage of skilled labour and development initiatives within SMEs in India even though the country has a sizeable pool of qualified workers. There is a pressing need for additional technical and managerial skills to remain competitive in the market. The findings of this study will assist HR managers in addressing skill shortages among employees in SMEs operating within emerging economies

The objectives of this study are twofold. Firstly, this study aims to examine the challenges of green public procurement (GPP) involvement among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) government suppliers. Secondly, it investigates the differences in the perceived challenges between the small- and medium-sized groups of companies.

The study draws on the quantitative method. The questionnaire was distributed to SMEs that supply green goods or services to the government and which are listed in the MyHijau directory. Using convenience sampling, a total of 394 questionnaires were distributed and 126 usable questionnaires were received, representing a response rate of 31.98%. A descriptive analysis of the mean score, standard deviation and mean score ranking was used to analyse the overall results. The t-test analysis was carried out to examine the differences between the small- and medium-sized groups of companies.

All five categories of the barriers, i.e. financial, legal, people, knowledge and organizational challenges, are perceived as the important challenges for SMEs’ involvement in GPP. Of the five categories, “having lack of knowledgeable staff on GPP” under the category of “people” challenge is ranked as the most major barrier. In relation to the differences between the two groups of enterprises (small- and medium-sized), medium enterprises are more affected by two items under the “organization” challenge, i.e. “The company has not targeted suppliers that promote environmentally-friendly products/services” and “The company has not established a clear objective on purchase of green products and services”, as compared to the small-sized enterprises through their GPP involvement.

By understanding the difficulties faced by SMEs in engaging with GPP, various practical measures can be formulated to support the SME businesses in mitigating the challenges faced for their involvement with GPP, which subsequently will lead to the country’s target to reach the sustainable development goals.

This study extends empirical evidence on barriers or challenges that may hinder the involvement in government green procurement, with a specific focus on SME government suppliers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the resistance behavior of smart factories in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing upon dual factor perspective, this study examines how two types of quality and perceived usefulness impact user resistance as enabling factors and how switching cost, skepticism, habit and inertia contribute to user resistance as inhibiting factors. Additionally, multi-group analysis is employed to compare small and medium enterprises.

Purposive sampling technique was employed to collect 460 Korean SMEs employees, consisting of 235 small enterprises and 225 medium enterprises. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

The results reveal that all three inhibiting factors, switching cost, skepticism and habit, are key antecedents of inertia. In small enterprises, skepticism has a greater impact on inertia, which in turn strongly affects resistance. Additionally, system quality is more crucial for small enterprises, whereas information quality holds more importance for medium enterprises in mitigating resistance. Moreover, when the implementation level of a smart factory is high, the effect of perceived usefulness on user resistance diminishes.

This study has revealed the importance of considering both enabling and inhibiting factors for the adoption of smart factory systems in the context of SMEs. Additionally, it has provided evidence that as the level of the smart factory system increases, the effect of perceived usefulness on user resistance decreases, thus making the transition to smart factory systems more challenging.

The objectives of this paper are twofold. First, it aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the activities and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) government suppliers involved in government green procurement (GGP). Second, it examines the differences in the impact of COVID-19 between small and medium-sized groups.

The study used a questionnaire survey that was distributed to SMEs listed in the MyHIJAU directory that supply green goods and services to the government. Of the total 394 sample respondents, 126 usable questionnaires were received, representing a usable response rate of 31.98%. Descriptive analysis of mean score, standard deviation and mean score ranking was used to analyse the overall results. A t-test analysis was carried out to examine the differences between the small and medium-sized groups of companies.

The study discovers that the SME government suppliers involved in GGP were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The top ranked impacts are that “the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened health and safety practices among the employees”, “the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced company’s turnover”, “the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the company to implement a cost reduction strategy”, “the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the company’s ability to deliver work, supplies or services to the government” and “the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the company to incur higher production costs for green products or services provided”. However, there is no significant difference between the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the small and medium-sized group of enterprises.

The present study is among the fewer studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular focus on SME government suppliers involved in GGP.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are fundamental to the socioeconomic development of a country or region. They directly contribute to increasing employment generation and improving income distribution. Despite the importance of SMEs, there are still opportunities for developing works that support and guide SMEs to use digital technologies, especially to digitalize their customer service. Therefore, this work aims to propose drivers containing recommendations for developing and improving the digitalization of customer service in SMEs.

This work uses a qualitative approach to systematize the main SMEs' characteristics and identify the boosting elements of the digitalization of customer service in the scientific literature. To this end, the authors conducted a content analysis of the most influential empirical and theoretical articles on the theme published from 2016 to 2021 in the Scopus database.

This work identified 38 boosting elements of the digitalization of customer service based on the scientific literature. These elements were grouped into six drivers for developing and improving the digitalization of customer service. The drivers contain recommendations that were adapted for SMEs according to their characteristics and based on the experience of the authors of this work.

This work contributes to promoting socioeconomic development, providing important solutions for managers and owners of SMEs to improve their customer service. The proposed drivers support and encourage the use of digital technologies for developing and improving customer service, overcoming the challenges of digitalization in these companies. Thus, SMEs will be able to increase the satisfaction of their customers and improve their competitiveness.

This research paper highlights the economic impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) due to Coronavirus outbreaks. It proposes factors that influence the strengthening and survival of SMEs.

In this research, resilience is reflected in the following aspects hope, problem resolution and persistence. This quantitative study analyses a purposive sample of 120 small and medium-sized firms in India. The study's primary data are the responses to questionnaires issued to respondents, analyzed and hypotheses formed and tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The study results show that all the variables significantly reduce the impact of COVID-19 on SMEs. The presented model is expected to help researchers, business modelers, analysts and real professionals with further studies in the SME context.

This new approach adds to the business resilience knowledge of SMEs and has practical implications for manufacturing organizations seeking to become robust during and after COVID-19.

Social media data from financial websites contain information related to enterprise credit risk. Mining valuable new features in social media data helps to improve prediction performance. This paper proposes a credit risk prediction framework that integrates social media information to improve listed enterprise credit risk prediction in the supply chain.

The prediction framework includes four stages. First, social media information is obtained through web crawler technology. Second, text sentiment in social media information is mined through natural language processing. Third, text sentiment features are constructed. Finally, the new features are integrated with traditional features as input for models for credit risk prediction. This paper takes Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises as an example to test the prediction framework and obtain relevant management enlightenment.

The prediction framework can improve enterprise credit risk prediction performance. The prediction performance of text sentiment features in social media data is better than that of most traditional features. The time-weighted text sentiment feature has the best prediction performance in mining social media information.

The prediction framework is helpful for the credit decision-making of credit departments and the policy regulation of regulatory departments and is conducive to the sustainable development of enterprises.

The prediction framework can effectively mine social media information and obtain an excellent prediction effect of listed enterprise credit risk in the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to structure existing research on knowledge management (KM) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to offer a comprehensive overview of research strands and topics in KM in SMEs to determine their evolution over time.

The paper, which is considered a follow-up literature review, is based on a systematic literature review that covers 180 scientific papers that were published since the review paper by Durst and Edvardsson in 2012 that covered 36 papers.

The findings of this review and those of the aforementioned review are brought together in the form of an overview that structures research on KM in SMEs based on themes that, in turn, allow the derivation of promising research directions and research questions aimed at structuring future research on KM in SMEs.

By combining the findings of this review with the findings from the review published in this journal in 2012, this paper offers, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the most comprehensive literature review on KM in SMEs produced to date.

In this paper, the authors review the literature on the nature of the small and medium-sized enterprise concept. The review examines the broad diversity of terms and definitions used to describe these kinds of firms in scholarly and practical settings. They relate this examination to the concept of small business for the purpose of comparison, in order to highlight differences and similarities between the concepts.

Relevant literature including articles from academia and defining documents from practical settings was identified through a scope literature review. Field data were subsequently collected via questionnaires sent to editors and authors of articles related to the theme. The data were content analyzed and the resulting codes consolidated into dimensions in accordance with the Gioia method. Chi-squared tests were applied to categorical data.

The use of the composite category “small and medium” was found to be predominant in the labeling of small businesses in scientific articles, including those in journals that specialize in small businesses, with no justifications presented for this, characterizing a widespread and consensual practice between authors and editors. In the defining documents of practical settings, however, the authors observed greater consistency and precision both in the terms used and in the delimiting values for a small business (self-employed, micro business, small business). In the sample of 27 defining documents mentioned in the articles, 25 specifically defined “small business” and 20 defined “micro business,” using indicators such as number of employees and annual turnover. The indicators delimiting values regarding the category of micro business were the same in all the documents analyzed and, regarding the category of small business, many documents used the same delimiting values.

Recognizing the “non-large enterprise” myth will provide a more effective posture for editors and authors to avoid using the term “small and medium,” resulting in greater precision, understanding and knowledge regarding small businesses. A better definition of a small business by academia can help public policymakers and managers of organizations that support small businesses to tailor their actions better according to the different sizes of companies. This will also lead to social gains, given the importance of small businesses in terms of job creation and countries' economies.

The authors identified and described the myth of the “non-large enterprise” among academics, characterized by the dichotomous view of the business universe, composed of “large enterprises” and “non-large enterprises,” the latter group being characterized by the widespread use of the term “small and medium.”