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Firms are driven to ride on the digital wave in today’s open innovation ecosystem. This study aims to explore the effect of digital transformation (DT) on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms’ innovation ambidexterity, namely, radical versus incremental innovation, respectively. Meanwhile, the authors evaluated the moderating role of the complexity of R&D collaboration portfolio (i.e. organizational diversity and geographic diversity) in the above relationships.

Using a panel data set of 171 Chinese listed firms in the information and communications technology services industry from 2010 to 2018, the proposed hypotheses were empirically attested.

It is found that DT has a positive relationship with radical innovation and an inverted U-shaped relationship with incremental innovation. In terms of the R&D collaboration portfolio, organizational diversity positively moderates the relationships between DT and innovation ambidexterity, respectively. The geographic diversity weakens the inverted U-shaped effect of DT on incremental innovation; however, its moderating role in the link between DT and radical innovation is not empirically verified.

Extant scholars mainly addressed the interplay between KIBS firms and their manufacturing clients, while this study reveals the different consequences of DT on KIBS firms’ innovation ambidexterity to highlight the role of KIBS firms is an independent and essential innovator in a knowledge-driven economy. Notably, the findings contribute to knowledge management (KM) and R&D literature by confirming the diversity of the R&D collaboration portfolio is a critical KM strategy for KIBS firms to develop and promote external knowledge resources.

Business research has highlighted the importance of knowledge transfer and innovation in multinational firms for better performance outcomes. However, the existing body of literature is characterized by differentiated theories, antecedents and outcomes. This study aims to address this gap by adopting a systematic approach to analyze knowledge transfer and innovation literature from the perspective of multinational organizations.

This study follows “preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines for conducting a systematic literature review. The study adopts a systematic approach for analyzing the literature using School of thought (S), Contexts (C), Methodologies (M), Triggers (T), Barriers (B), Facilitators (F) and Outcomes (O) framework (SCM-TBFO framework) devised for holistic literature review. The study analyzes 75 articles from reputed journals from 2000 to 2022.

In general, knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals is a relatively new area and is evolving rapidly. There are many opportunities to study the various perspectives that are included in the SCM-TBFO framework. The key schools of thought included the evolutionary theory of innovation, institutional theory and internationalization theory. The studies had differing settings or contexts, including China, Europe, the USA and Taiwan. Further, key methodologies that were used included regression, case studies, structural equation modeling (SEM) and theoretical studies. Knowledge transfer and innovation triggers included competitive advantage, competitive pressure, constant requirements for better products and services, foreign direct investment (FDI) and globalization. Knowledge transfer and innovation facilitators were categorized into strategy-related facilitators, organization culture and orientation-related facilitators, and resource-related facilitators. Knowledge transfer and innovation barriers included autonomy, international knowledge dispersion, risk of knowledge leakage, search breadth, ambiguity and institutional voids. Key outcomes of knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals included financial performance, innovation performance, knowledge flow, transfer effectiveness, patents and new product development.

By synthesizing the literature, the study aims to provide an overview of the current state of research on knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals. The study develops a holistic model for fostering knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals. The proposed novel framework can also be applied to perform a holistic assessment of the current literature in various research domains. Further, the study suggests future theory development and research agendas. The study also provides implications for practitioners using the framework to achieve more desirable outcomes.

This paper explains the mechanisms underlying the generation of two-way knowledge spillovers through the interaction of subsidiaries with differentiated local responsibilities and domestic firms.

The study is based on firm-level panel data from a census of Colombian manufacturing firms for the period 2003–2012. The estimation procedure involves two stages. In the first one, total factor productivity (TFP) of foreign and domestic firms is estimated. In a second step, we estimate conventional spillovers (from foreign-owned to local firms) and reverse spillovers (from local to foreign-owned firms) separately, using a random effect approach.

This study’s findings reveal that only locally creative subsidiaries enjoy positive and significant two-way knowledge spillover effects. The connectivity of subsidiaries to local and international networks is reinforced by reciprocal relationships among actors that enhance bidirectional knowledge flows, these being favored by the dynamics of clustering effects.

The paper contributes with new empirical evidence about the mechanism explaining how the technological heterogeneity of subsidiaries plays a determinant role in the generation of both knowledge flows from foreign to domestic firms and to the reverse, all integrated into the same framework.

This research presents and evaluates a method for assessing the entrepreneurial mindset (EM) of students in higher education.

The research considers EM a multi-variable psychological construct, which can be broken down into several conceptual sub-categories. Using data from a master course in entrepreneurship, the authors show how these categories can be applied to analyze students’ written reflections to identify linguistic markers of EM.

The research reports three main findings: analyzing student reflections is an appropriate method to explore the state and development of students’ EM; the theoretically-derived EM categories can be nuanced and extended with insight from contextualized empirical insights; and student reflections reveal counter-EM categories that represent challenges in the educator’s endeavor to foster students’ EM.

The commitment of resources to researching EM requires the dedication of efforts to develop methods for assessing the state and development of students’ EM. The framework can be applied to enhance the theoretical rigor and methodological transparency of studies of EM in entrepreneurship education.

The framework can be of value to educators who currently struggle to assess if and how their educational design fosters EM attributes.

This inquiry contributes to the critical research discussion about how to operationalize EM in entrepreneurship education studies. The operationalization of a psychological concept such as EM is highly important because a research focus cannot be maintained on something that cannot be studied in a meaningful way.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

Supply chain (SC) and knowledge management (KM) have been studied; still, there is a need to understand how KM can be used for SC resilience and improving the firm’s performance. The purpose of the paper is to study and analyze SC resilience strategies based on KM processes to enhance SC performance considering six SC strategies: SC reengineering, collaboration, SC innovation, SC integration, SC agility and SC risk management.

By adopting the dynamic capability theory, the empirical research is conducted on a sample of 312 Indian micro, small to medium enterprises. To evaluate 312 samples, the structural equation modeling approach is adopted.

The study found a is a positive relationship between SC reengineering, SC collaboration, SC integration, SC agility, SC risk management and KM. Nevertheless, the relationship between SC innovation and KM is not significant. This study also found the mediating effect of KM on SC performance, and the results shows that SC reengineering, SC collaboration, SC agility and SC risk management are having complementary mediation, while SC innovation and SC integration did not show any mediation.

This is the only research that integrates resilience strategies and KM for improving SC performance. Using KM, SC reengineering will improve SC performance by enhancing readiness and recovery strategies to avoid SC disruption. KM will improve SC collaboration. It will enhance the SC process’ overall visibility, transparency and so on. Agility leads to increased speed, visibility and flexibility, which aids in dealing with uncertainty in the environment. SCRM entails investments and additional resources (such as equipment and labor) to navigate uncertainty and risks in the SC and improve SC performance.

This systematic literature review analyzes the academic literature to understand SC risk and resilience across different organizational sizes and industries. The academic literature has well discussed the causes of supply chain (SC) risk events, the impact of SC disruptions, and associated plans for SC resilience. However, the literature remains fragmented on the role of two fundamental elements in achieving SC resilience: the firm's size and the firm's industry as firms' contingent factors. Therefore, it is important to investigate and highlight SC resilience differences by size and industry type to establish more resilient firms.

Building upon the contingent resource-based view of the firm, the authors posit that organizational factors such as size and industry sector have important roles in developing organizational resilience capabilities. This systematic literature review and analysis is based on the structural and systematic analysis of high-ranked peer-reviewed journal papers from January 2000 to June 2021 collected through three global scientific databases (i.e. ProQuest, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar) using relevant keywords.

This systematic literature review of 230 high-quality articles shows that SC risk events can be categorized into demand, supply, organizational, operational, environmental, and network/control risk events. This study suggests that the SC resilience plans developed by startups, small and mdium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and large organizations are not necessarily the same as those of large enterprises. While collaboration and networking and risk management are the most crucial resilience capabilities for all firms, applying lean and quality management principles and utilizing information technology are more crucial for SMEs. For large firms, knowledge management and contingency planning are more important.

This study provides a comprehensive review of the literature on SC resilience plans across different organizational sizes and industries, offering new insights into the nature and dynamics of startups', SMEs', and large enterprises' SC resilience in different industries. The study highlights the need for further investigation of SC risk and resilience for startups, SMEs, and different industries on a more detailed level using empirical data. This study’s findings have important implications for researchers and practitioners and guide the development of effective SC resilience strategies for different types of firms.

With the recognition that generating economic growth is not the same as sustaining it, the challenge to catch-up and growth literature is discerning between these processes. Recent research suggests that the decline in the frequency of “shrinking” episodes is more important for long-term development than higher growth rates. By using a framework centred around social capabilities, this study aims to investigate the effects of income inequality and poverty on economic shrinking frequency, as opposed to previous literature that has exclusively had a growth focus. The aim is to investigate how and why some societies might be more resilient to economic shrinking.

The research is a quantitative study, and the authors build a longitudinal data set including 23 developing countries throughout 42 years to test the paper’s purpose. This study uses country and period fixed-effects specifications as well as cross-sectional graphical representations to investigate the relationship between proxies of economic inclusivity and the frequency of shrinking episodes.

The authors demonstrate that while inclusive societies are more resilient to shrinking overall, it is changes in poverty levels, but not changes in income inequality, that appear to be correlated with economic shrinking frequency. Inequality, while still an important element to explain countries’ growth potential as an initial condition, does not seem to make the sample more resilient to shrinking. The authors conclude that the mechanisms in which poverty and inequality are correlated with the catch-up process must run through different channels. Ultimately, processes that explain growth may intersect but not always overlap with the ones that explain resilience to shrinking.

The need for inclusive growth in long-term development has been championed for decades, yet inclusion has seldom been explored from the shrinking perspective. Though poverty reduction is already an important mainstream political objective, this paper differentiates itself by providing an alternate viewpoint of why this is important. Income inequality could have more of an economic growth limiting effect, while poverty reduction could be required to build resilience to economic shrinking. Developing countries will need both growth and resilience to shrinking, to catch-up with higher-income economies, which policymakers might need to balance carefully.

This study is exploratory in nature and designed to address poorly documented issues in the literature. The dimensions of regional distribution or spatial organisation of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), including the potential role of clusters, have only recently been addressed, with most available studies focusing on advanced, mainly Western European countries. Although developing fast, the literature on I4.0 in other countries, such as the Central and Eastern European or post-transition economies like Poland, needs to pay more attention to the spatial distribution or geographical and organisational aspects. In response to the identified knowledge gap, this paper aims to identify the role of clusters in the transformation towards I4.0. This explains why clusters may matter for advancing the fourth digital transformation, how advanced in implementing I4.0 solutions are the residents of Polish clusters and how they perceive the advantages of cluster membership for such implementation. Finally, it seeks to formulate policy recommendations based on the evidence gathered.

The methodology used in this study combines quantitative analysis of secondary data from a cluster benchmarking survey with a case study approach. The benchmarking survey, conducted by the polish agency for enterprise development in 2021, gathered responses from 435 cluster members and 41 cluster managers, representing an estimated 57% of the current clusters in Poland. In addition to quantitative analysis, a case study approach was used, incorporating primary sources such as interview with cluster managers and surveys of cluster members, as well as secondary sources like company documents and information from cluster organisation websites. Statistical analysis involved assessing the relationship between technology implementation and the adoption of management systems, as well as exploring potential correlations between technology use and company characteristics such as revenue, export revenue share and number of employees using Pearson correlation coefficient.

In Poland, implementing I4.0 technologies by cluster companies is still modest. The cluster has influenced the use of I4.0 technologies in 23% of surveyed companies. Every second surveyed company declared a positive impact of a cluster on technological advancement. The use of I4.0 technologies is not correlated with the revenue of clustered companies. A rather bleak picture emerges from the results, revealing a need for more interest among cluster members in advancing I4.0 technologies. This may be due to a comfortable situation in which firms still enjoy alternative competitive advantages that do not force them to seek new advanced advantages brought about by I4.0. It also reflects the sober approach and awareness of associated high costs and necessary investments, which are paramount and prevent successful I4.0 implementation.

The limitations inherent in this study reflect the scarcity of the available data. This paper draws on the elementary survey administered centrally and is confined by the type of questions asked. The empirical section focuses on an important, though only one selected sector of the economy – the automotive industry. Nevertheless, the diagnosis of the Polish cluster’s role in advancing I4.0 should complement the existing literature.

The exploratory study concludes with policy recommendations and sets the stage for more detailed studies. Amidst the research’s limitations, this study pioneers a path for future comprehensive investigations, enabling a deeper understanding of Polish clusters’ maturity in I4.0 adoption. By comparing the authors’ analysis of the Polish Automotive Group (PGM) cluster with existing literature, the authors uncover a distinct disparity between the theoretical prominence of cluster catalysis and the current Polish reality. Future detailed dedicated enquiries will address these constraints and provide a more comprehensive map of Polish clusters’ I4.0 maturity.

This study identifies patterns of I4.0 implementation and diagnoses the role of clusters in the transformation towards I4.0. It investigates how advanced is the adoption of I4.0 solutions among the residents of Polish clusters and how they perceive the advantages of cluster membership for such transformation. Special attention was paid to the analysis of the automotive sector. Comparing the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the Polish PGM cluster in this case study to those from the literature on the subject, it becomes clear that the catalytic role of clusters in the implementation of I4.0 technologies by enterprises, as emphasised in the literature, is not yet fully reflected in the Polish reality.

Knowledge of how entrepreneurial alertness (EA) and effectuation impact small firms' performance in uncertain markets is limited. Suggesting effectuation as a mediation mechanism between EA and small firms' performance, the authors explore how entrepreneurs of small firms apply effectual logic to translate their individual alertness to market opportunities into firms' performance.

A set of hypotheses is tested by partial least squares analysis of survey data collected from small firms in New Zealand.

The results show that effectuation works as a mechanism that mediates a positive association between founders'/managers' alertness to market opportunities and small firms' performance.

Integrating EA with the effectuation theory, the authors contribute to the literature on new market opportunity development and firm performance. The authors argue that entrepreneurs concentrate on action and resources to further develop their marketing intelligence in developing new market opportunities. The authors also enhance the understanding of entrepreneurial marketing decision-making by small firms in a relatively small economy in the Asia–Pacific region.