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Despite the increasing numbers of research studies about social media business, the concept of social media agility is still an emerging topic that has been understudied. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of social media agility on business performance by using a sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand. Moreover, this study explored whether the effect of social media agility on business performance could be moderated by the characteristic of firm in terms of size, as well as the characteristic of market environment in terms of environmental dynamism.

The sample of 337 firms was obtained from the business directory using the simple random sampling method, and the model assessment was performed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The data analysis indicated that social media agility positively affected the business performance of SMEs. Moreover, the moderating effect analysis showed that smaller firms tended to gain higher business performance from social media agility than larger firms. In addition, social media agility positively affected business performance to a greater extent when firms operated under low environmental dynamism than when they operated under high environmental dynamism.

Because SMEs are the key driving of economic development and economic growth, the recommendations from this study could be helpful for the government sector responsible for the competency development of SMEs to offer a development program that might enable entrepreneurial firms to develop social media marketing competencies and enhance their potential to be successful in the digital transformation.

The authors found new evidence showing that the degree to which social media agility affected business performance depended significantly on the firm characteristics in terms of firm size, as well as the environmental factor in terms of environmental dynamism. These findings provide valuable contributions to the existing literature that still lacks evidence about the moderating conditions that could increase or reduce the benefits that firms obtain from social media agility.

This study aims to understand the leadership characteristics of founders of social and environmental enterprises in Latin America who have achieved business success with a focus on sustainability despite difficult social, economic, political and even health contexts in which they live.

This nonexperimental research is a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study. Twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with social/environmental entrepreneurs of the Kunan Network (an organization that groups the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Peru).

The study analyzes the leadership profile and characteristics of entrepreneurs who have created profitable businesses with a social/environmental focus that solve relevant social problems and contribute to improving people’s quality of life and caring for the environment.

Although only 21 business leaders with outstanding participation and positive social and environmental impact were included in this study, they were supported and recognized by the Kunan Network.

The study contributed to the conceptualization and understanding of the profile of leaders of social and environmental enterprises, whose main challenges are to solve social or environmental problems of society and contribute to improving the quality of life of people and the environment. Knowing the profile of these entrepreneurs generates value to the knowledge of the subject and contributes to understand and propose strategies to improve the ecosystem of social-environmental entrepreneurship in emerging countries such as Peru. This will contribute to the creation of relationships and alliances with various social actors: public, private, third sector, academia, among others, for the management and promotion of sustainable business.

This paper investigates the development of moralised business ideologies (MBIs) amongst sustainable banks as they navigate social and environmental business prospects.

Empirical evidence is drawn from top-management-level interviews with 16 UK-based small and medium-sized banks that specialise in financing social and environmental projects.

MBIs have emerged in the literature review and empirical data analysis as a new concept taken on by sustainable banks with roots closer to sustainability such as ethical practices, moralised values, sustainable business models and ecological standards. The results confirm that MBIs help banking institutions create a more sustained positive impact in terms of social and environmental business opportunities.

This paper offers novel evidence on the intersection between banking and MBIs, with a focus on social, sustainability and environmental considerations.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors leading to adoption of social networking sites (SNS) by librarians of entrepreneurial libraries to provide support to business community in their market research. Identification of these adoption factors will help to design SNS in the way that led to their seamless diffusion in university libraries, making them capable of providing reliable and useful market knowledge to the business community.

To meet the research objectives, this study is based on the technology adoption model (TAM). The survey was conducted with 50 librarians of various universities across Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia, sampled through non probabilistic sampling techniques-purposive and snowball sampling. The collected data are analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to estimate the formulated structural equation model using SmartPLS 3.2.9 software version.

The results indicate that university librarians have high perception about usefulness and ease of using SNS for meeting their business objectives. The perceived usefulness (PU) is solely based on the prolonged adoption of SNS technology in personal lives of the librarians. The perceived ease of use (PEU) is triggered by the increasing quality of evolving SNS technology, especially user friendliness. The prolonged use of technology, increasing market entry of brands and improving quality of SNS will overcome librarian resistance to use SNS for market research related support to business community. Evolving technologies are more likely to be adopted seamlessly in entrepreneurial libraries.

This study has implications for librarians, entrepreneurs and technology providers. Librarians should have flexible technology adoption policies in place to keep technology adoption synchronized with changing market conditions. Entrepreneurs should share clear and accurate business needs as well as practicing ethical and lawful business practices. They should also help libraries to gain new skills to make future adoption easier. Technology providers should focus on improving the quality of their technology by increasing their functional utilities, performance and reliability as well as making them more user-friendly.

This study investigates technology adoption of SNS in libraries from the perspective of providing market research related services to entrepreneurs rather than just digitalizing library services for student users.

This study examines the role of passion in gender-specific entrepreneurial responses in times of crises and how passion manifests itself in a digital environment. Entrepreneurial passion feeds energy, tenacity, self-confidence and momentum, creating added value for a given economy.

A qualitative approach was used to conduct semi-structured interviews. To reach the research objectives, the author examined a sample of 22 female entrepreneurs and 19 male entrepreneurs in a comparative design.

The results obtained through a qualitative study prove that entrepreneurial passion is a driver of self-confidence for entrepreneurs. Moreover, the nature of entrepreneurial passion differs across gender in times of crises. Indeed, female entrepreneurs try to take their lives into their own hands by creating their own destinies. They have seized opportunities arising from purely technological progress to create their own businesses on social networks and solve the unemployment problem. Meanwhile, male entrepreneurs pursue opportunities based on market supply and demand to increase their market share and face a crisis.

These findings offer novel insights into research on social media entrepreneurs. This study could help new entrepreneurs highlight their abilities, particularly those that are most salient and central.

This study adds a new dimension to the literature on the role and nature of entrepreneurial passion in times of crises.

This study explores the influence of the Top Management Team (TMT) social capital on business model innovation in business ecosystems.

This study examines the impact of internal and external TMT social capital on enterprises’ business model innovation, explores the relationship between internal and external TMT social capital, and investigates how business ecosystem health moderates the relationship between external TMT social capital and enterprises’ business model innovation. These hypotheses are proposed and tested using a hierarchical regression analysis with data from 168 Chinese firms.

First, both internal and external TMT social capital exert a significantly positive influence on an enterprise’s business model innovation. Second, internal TMT social capital positively contributes to the development of external TMT social capital, affecting business model innovation. Finally, the moderating effect of business ecosystem health on the relationship between external TMT social capital and business model innovation depends on the dimensions. Specifically, the productivity of the business ecosystem negatively moderates this relationship, whereas the niche creation capability of the business ecosystem has a positive moderating effect.

These findings enrich prior research on business model innovation within the business ecosystem, thoroughly exploring the critical role of TMT social capital. This study reveals the diverse impacts of internal and external TMT social capital on business model innovation and the intricate relationship between these elements. Furthermore, it emphasizes that the success of enterprise’s business model innovation within a business ecosystem depends on the alignment and adaptation to dynamic ecosystem conditions. By presenting these insights, this study provides valuable practical implications for enterprises aiming to cultivate social capital within business ecosystem to facilitate business model innovation.

Integrating transaction costs economics and task-technology fit theory, this study distinguishes two categories of social media–enabled interactions, namely task-related interactions and tie-related interactions, and explores the match between these two and firms' use of contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes in interfirm governance.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, this study collaborated with a professional market research firm and collected responses from Chinese manufacturing firms in a survey. In Study 2, this study designed a scenario-based experiment and collected 239 participants from the Credamo platform.

This study categorized social media–enabled interactions into task-related interactions and tie-related interactions and conducted two studies to reveal that the safeguarding purpose of contract specificity is amplified by tie-related interactions, whereas the coordinating purpose of contract specificity is strengthened by task-related interactions.

This study assumes that firms permit and encourage the use of social media. However, some firms might prohibit the use of social media due to risk issues, or their partners may be prohibited from using social media.

Given that social media–enabled interactions have joint effects with contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes, a firm's employees should match their goals with an appropriate type of social media–enabled interactions.

This study enriches the interfirm governance literature by uncovering the roles of these two types of interactions in matching contract specificity to achieve safeguarding and coordinating purposes, which provides actionable insights for managers in governing interfirm relationships.

Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

This study aimed to develop and test the impact of a social media-based intervention for improving the business skills and income of young smallholder farmers.

First, the researchers used an exploratory approach to develop a social media-based intervention for acquiring business skills and improving income. Second, the researchers tested the effectiveness of the developed programme on a sample of 506 young smallholder farmers. Finally, the intervention and data collection took place over five years (2017–2021).

The result showed steady improvements in business skills and income from 2017 to 2021 for the treatment group, unlike the control group. Also, improvements in business skills led to a reduction in expenses and an increase in profit from 2017 to 2021. A further evaluation of the result showed that an addition of 5.1 mean scores in business skills led to the addition of $91 income between 2017 and 2018; for 2018–2019, 2.6 improvements in business skills increased income by $123. For 2019–2020, a 2.7 improvement increased income by $209, whilst for 2020–2021, a 1.6 improvement increased income by $320.

The results of this study could help explore ways of using social media to change behaviour aimed at improving income amongst young smallholder farmers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of entrepreneurs’ social competence (SC) on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance.

Primary data of 250 manufacturing SMEs were collected through a survey method. The influence of SC on performance was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Overall, the findings suggest that SC dimensions have a positive influence on SME performance in terms of nonfinancial perspective. More clearly, the findings show that out of five dimensions of SC, which include social adaptability, social perception, social expressiveness, persuasiveness and impression management; social perception, persuasiveness and impression management have direct effect on customer perspective; persuasiveness, social expressiveness and social adaptability have a direct influence on internal business processes and social adaptability, social perception, impression management and social expressiveness are directly related with learning and growth. Contrary to expectations though, social perception and social adaptability were significantly and negatively associated with internal business processes and customer perspective, respectively, while there was no significant correlation between social expressiveness, persuasiveness and impression management with customer perspective, business processes and learning and growth in that order.

The current study affirms that SMEs managed by entrepreneurs and managers who possess high levels of SC, may have a better performance compared to those operated by entrepreneurs with low levels of SC. This justifies a need for SME entrepreneurs and managers to work hard to improve their SC capabilities.

This study is pertinent and unique because, it extensively examines each of the five dimensions of SC in relation to nonfinancial indicators of SME performance. Besides, the study also provides additional evidence of the impact of SC on SME performance by suggesting that entrepreneurs who are socially competent are more likely to own highly successful ventures.