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The purpose of this (qualitative, multiple-case) study is to determine how small-to medium-sized enterprise (SME) leaders in Nigeria use information and communication technology (ICT) adoption as a business strategy to increase profitability and compete globally.

The participants for this study consisted of executive-level SME leaders who had the authority to approve ICT implementation within their respective organizations. Individual interviews were undertaken with participants to gain an understanding of their experience of determining the merits of and implementing ICT. The technology acceptance model, which specifies the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward computer use and intention to use technology, was applied as a framework to explain the Nigerian SME’s ICT adoption strategies.

Four major themes emerged from the data analysis: ICT adoption factors, ICT roles and benefits, role of government and SME success factors. The findings of this study may help SME leaders and government leaders address many of the factors inhibiting the adoption of ICT in SMEs in Nigeria.

This study may ensure that SMEs are successful and able to create jobs, which in turn may help to promote socioeconomic development through adoption of ICT.

The findings from this study contribute to the knowledge base regarding factors that affect ICT adoption by SME leaders as a business strategy to increase profitability and compete globally, particularly within SMEs in Lagos, Nigeria. It further addressed the gap in existing literature regarding other factors such as the influence of culture on ICT adoption, cost of ICT implementation, available ICT skills, infrastructure and ICT knowledge gap as the primary impeding factors of ICT adoption in Nigerian SMEs.

The need for context-specific adoption models led to the development of the firm technology adoption model (F-TAM) model. Among small to medium-scale enterprises (SMEs); however, firm-level factors were rather insignificant in engendering SME level adoption of technological innovation. This study aims to examine the effect of firm size and other moderating and mediating factors on the relationships between personal, firm, societal and technological factors proposed in the stakeholder-oriented F-TAM among SMEs.

A research instrument was developed, reviewed by experts, and pilot tested with a sample of 25 respondents. Data were purposively collected from four hundred (400) SMEs and analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The study discovered that employees, societal and technological factors moderate the relationship between firm factors of adoption and firm adoption. Without these moderating effects, firm factors of adoption would have been insignificant at the SMEs’ level of organizational technology adoption. The study further discovered that firm size, as well as risk propensity, also affect the relationships proposed in the model.

Data was collected on voluntary adoption from the most cosmopolitan area of a developing country. It, therefore, needs further contextual validation across the country and different countries.

The engagement of innovations in firms must be planned with employees and society as major stakeholders.

The significance of this finding is the study’s emphasis on an eco-system approach for examining the phenomenon of innovation adoption. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effect of firm characteristics on is proposed eco-system of stakeholders.

This study aims to address how the ISO 14001 standardisation and certification process improves substantive performance in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the development of an environmental management control system (EMCS).

A qualitative cross-case interview design with those responsible for the implementation of an environmental management system (certified to ISO 14001) in SMEs is adopted to inductively “theorise” the EMCS.

The design and monitoring of environmental controls are often beyond the scope of the SMEs’ top management team and include extra-organisational dimensions such as the external audit and institutional requirements. This suggests more complex control pathways for SMEs to produce EMCS that primarily function as packages and are broader than the analytical level of the firm. Here, controlling for environmental performance exists at strategic and operational levels, as well as beyond the SMEs’ boundaries.

Various internal controls are put forward for SME owner-managers to meet environmental targets (e.g. gamification and interpersonal communication strategies). This builds upon a broader accountability perspective wherein formalised hierarchical control is only one route for ensuring sustainable action within the ISO 14001-certified SMEs.

This study contributes to a more sustainable society through developing an understanding of how environmental sustainability is substantively managed by SMEs to improve performance for current and future generations.

This paper, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is one of the first to establish how SMEs control for environmental sustainability from empirically derived evidence. In doing so, it provides an example of the EMCS for the SME context.

The purpose of this paper is to know which growth-impeding constraints are perceived to act upon operations of small- to medium-sized (SME) companies by their owner-managers and to recommend transitionary paths to elevate constraints and increase contribution levels made by SMEs’ operations. To do so, this research has been primarily founded upon Hayes et al.’s (2005) operations contribution model for differentiating between different levels of operations’ contribution, and secondarily on the theory of constraints philosophy to explain the perceptions of constraints found at each level – current and future.

An open-ended survey and a series of group workshops have gathered new empirical data about these perceptions, which were coded using the relational content analysis to identify a parsimonious set of perceptual growth-impeding constraint categories. The most popular transitions were identified and a correlation of frequency rank orders between “perceived current” and “perceived future” constraints categories was calculated, and likely transitionary paths for growth are discussed. Three SME case studies were documented in related action research to contextualise survey findings.

The most popular transition was from “neutral” to “leading”. A lack of people capability was perceived to be the most commonly reported growth-impeding constraint category, followed by a combined lack of process competence and product and service innovation, further followed by a lack of skills in information technology automation. In addition, a new conceptual model has been generated inductively to address shortcomings found in the original operations contribution model (Hayes et al., 2005) during its application to UK SMEs. The new model is referred to in this paper as the “Operations Growth Rocket”.

This research only used data from UK SMEs.

This work should help SME owner-managers to overcome growth-impeding constraints that act upon their operations and assist them to develop more effective actions and paths to increase the contribution levels made by their operations. This in turn should support growth of their organisations. Findings will also inform teaching about more effective operations management in SMEs.

This work should help UK SMEs to grow, which in turn will strengthen the UK economy.

A novel approach and new data from 208 SMEs modify a classical operations contribution model (Hayes et al., 2005). This is achieved by considering transitionary paths to be meta-categories continua abstracted from constraint categories combined with case data for moving towards higher levels of operations contribution, rather than using discrete growth-impeding and growth-constraining “levels”. This research has inductively generated a new version of the classical contribution model that should be more suitable for stimulating growth in (UK) SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine high-tech small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) supply chain partnerships. Partnerships are considered at the level of business function rather than the entire organisation. Second, the drivers of SMEs to engage in partnerships are assessed to see whether functions engage in partnerships for different reasons. Third, performance per function is assessed to see the differential effect of partnerships on the function’s performance.

In this study, the relationship between the drivers of SMEs to engage in partnerships, four types of partnerships (marketing and sales, research and development (R&D), purchasing and logistics, and production) and four types of functional performances of firms (marketing and sales, R&D, purchasing and logistics, and production) are examined. The data have been collected from 279 SMEs. The proposed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modelling.

The results indicate that there are considerable differences between business functions in terms of the degree of involvement in partnerships and the effect of partnerships on the performance of these functions. This paper contributes to research by explaining the contradictory results of partnerships on SMEs performance.

This study helps firms understand which type of partnership should be established based on the firm’s drivers to engage in supply chain partnership; and which partnership has a significant effect on which type of business performance of the firm.

The originality of this study is to investigate the relationship between different drivers to engage in supply chain partnership and different types of partnerships and different functional performance of firm in a single model.

This paper contributes to the theory of the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and innovation at small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by conducting a conceptual analysis of the question why Germany boasts by far the highest number of “Hidden Champion” SMEs. This is done by case studies from the army and public financial management of aid disbursal in developing countries. Implications for HRM at SMEs are discussed.

Conceptual analysis using case studies.

Contributing towards filling the gap concerning theoretical underpinnings of the link between HRM and innovation, we suggest that interdisciplinary work from relevant organisational case studies indicates that the concept of institutional design to provide motivational incentives may be relevant, especially concerning high performance systems with bundles of HRM practices. Specifically, the fundamental principle of subsidiarity is found to be important.

The research is broadly applicable to organisations of all kinds, as the diverse case studies indicate. We point towards tentative implications for the firms that account for the majority of the work force, namely SMEs, and among them the most successful ones, the so-called “Hidden Champions”.

HR managers can improve motivation, performance and innovation by decentralising decision-making as far as possible, while ensuring the overall organisational goals are well understood and shared, and resources are dedicated to train and educate staff. Additionally, the conception of rank-order competitions complements the institutional design.

Greater productivity and material performance as well as greater job satisfaction via larger autonomy and decision-making power on the local level can be achieved by the application of subsidiarity as key HRM configuration. This can be employed at SMEs, as discussed, but also other organisations. Further, the principle of subsidiarity and the greater emphasis on staff training and education may help reduce inequality.

Our paper contributes towards filling the gap in the literature on the link between HRM and innovation, by identifying the role of subsidiarity. We introduce an interdisciplinary perspective, with contributions from economics and psychology, among others. We also contribute to the history of HRM.

Studies show that corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are driven by ethical practices. The relationships between corporate ethics, CG and CSR have been heavily studied indicating significant associations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of CG on the relationship between ethics and CSR.

Data were collected through questionnaires from small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. The results were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that ethical practices have positive impact on CG, and in turn CG has a positive impact on CSR. The results also reveal a mediating effect of CG on the relationship between ethics and CSR.

The sample selected is based on two countries in the MENA region, Egypt and Lebanon. Only SMEs are considered.

The innovative capabilities of SMEs in developing and emerging economies could be enhanced through corporate ethical practices which guide management for more CSR engagement through good CG.

The study contributes to corporate ethics, CG and CSR literature by providing evidence from a significant region, with both developing and emerging economies, on the mediating role of CG on the relationship between ethics and CSR.

This study aims to develop and empirically test a model that describes the factors influencing a firm’s export performance; a model that can be adopted by future export researchers, policymakers and practitioners. Specifically, this study aimed to identify the main factors affecting the export performance of manufacturing small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Rwanda and determine the extent of influence of each identified factor on export performance.

The research design combines both exploratory research and causal research designs to test the proposed model. Interview guide and survey questionnaires were used to collect the raw data. The collected quantitative data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique with the Analysis of Moment Structures software.

The findings revealed that all the factors identified, namely, organisational, entrepreneurial and industrial, and market factors had a significant positive impact on the export performance of SMEs. Moreover, entrepreneurial factors were proven to be the most influencing factors in export performance followed by market-level factors. In this context, the proposed resource-market-based model of export performance was tested and validated in a less developed country, Rwanda, for exporting SMEs.

The proposed model of export performance extends the existing literature in two ways: firstly, it integrates internal and external factors to explain the export performance of an SME and secondly, it tests the relative importance of these factors in driving and maintaining international performance.