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This paper aims to investigate the influence of the regional business environment on local firm innovation, considering various dimensions such as administrative, financial and legal environments.

Multiple regression analysis is employed to analyze archival data for firms listed on Chinese stock markets.

We find that the optimizations of the administrative and financial environments positively affect firm innovation, whereas the legal environment does not exert a similar impact. Our analysis also reveals that the business environment’s optimization significantly influences innovation in firms that are small, non-state-owned and operating in high-tech industries. Furthermore, the business environment acts as a moderating variable in the relationship between firm innovation and firm value.

This study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of institutional-level determinants of firm innovation, highlighting the nuances of the legal environment and the importance of context-specific analysis, especially in emerging markets like China.

Developing countries can significantly enhance firm innovation by improving the business environment, including the optimization of administrative and financial systems, reducing transaction costs and ensuring capital supply. Tailored legal frameworks and alternative institutional strategies may also be explored.

This study explicitly emphasizes the governmental role in promoting firm innovation, shedding light on policy formulation and strategic alignment with local administrative policies.

To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to explore the relationship between the business environment and firm innovation using World Bank indicators in an emerging market context, providing novel insights into the unique dynamics of legal, financial and administrative sub-environments.

Africa's business environment (BE) is characteristically unfriendly and poses severe development challenges. This study evaluates the impact of business climate on productivity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Macroeconomic data for 51 sub-Saharan African economies from 1990 to 2018 are employed for the analysis. The seemingly unrelated regression model is used to address inter-sectorial linkages.

The study uncovers several findings. First, a high start-up cost substantially leads to productivity losses by limiting the funds available for investment in productivity-enhancing labour and technology and limiting the number of businesses that see the light of day. The productivity impacts of start-up costs are most enormous for industry, followed by services and agriculture. Second, economies with favourable financing environments tend to be more productive economy wide and sector wise. Third, high taxes and tax inefficiency lower productivity by reducing the resource envelope of firms, thus lowering investment amounts. Fourth, poor business infrastructure inflicts the most damage on productivity. Lastly, business administration and macroeconomic environments impact sectoral and economy-wide productivity.

SSA economies must strive to lower the cost of starting a business as high start-up costs injure productivity. One way of reducing start-up costs is to create a one-stop shop for registering and formalising a business. Another way is to automate business registration and administrative processes to reduce red tape and corruption.

The authors extend the body of knowledge by analysing sectoral and economy-wide productivity effects of various business climate indicators while accounting for inter-sectoral linkages, cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity.

Governments in developing countries seeking to meet their infrastructure backlog are increasingly turning to public–private partnerships (PPP) due to a lack of public funds. However, while there are factors which drive the current uptake of projects, there are challenges with attracting private finance, and it is not clear what incentives can be used to attract more private participation, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Therefore, this study aims to examine challenges, drivers and incentives that affect private participation in PPP projects in Zambia.

The study used a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews with participants who had first-hand experience working on the administration of PPP projects. The participants were predominantly from the public sector, and so the results are largely a public sector perspective on the matter.

The findings show that bureaucracy and a poor business environment emanating from poor policies, long procedures and a poor economic environment are the main challenges affecting PPP projects. The current demand for the projects is being driven by a stable business and economic environment while incentives include enhancing the business environment by improving procedures and policies.

The study contributes to extant literature by proposing an overarching theory about the challenges affecting the implementation of PPP projects in Zambia, in particular, and in SSA, in general. The results show areas where governments and government agencies responsible for PPP projects can focus attention to promote private participation.

For start-ups or growing firms, to effectively navigate the unpredictable nature of digital development and achieve superior innovative performance, it is crucial to have a workforce comprised of creative and innovative employees. Drawing upon the principles of social information processing theory, this study aims to investigate whether specific combinations of organizational internal and external environments, as well as work characteristics in the digital age, can foster a high level of employee innovative behavior.

By collecting a multilevel and multisource data set comprising 693 employees and 88 CEOs from 88 start-ups or growing firms, this study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the distinctive configurations associated with achieving a high level of employee innovative behavior.

The study found that six solutions enabled employees to innovate more effectively, but six solutions led to the absence of employee innovative behavior.

The findings of this study offer important theoretical and practical implications to motivate employee innovative behavior in Chinese enterprises.

First, this study contributes to the literature on employee innovative behavior by addressing the need to explore the impact of the digital context on promoting innovation among employees. Second, this study adds to the existing literature on employee innovation and entrepreneurship by examining multiple organizational contexts and their influence on innovative behavior. Third, this study makes a significant contribution to the field of employee innovative behavior by examining the macroenvironment surrounding digital transformation within enterprises and integrating both internal and external organizational factors.

I aimed to develop a conceptual model of power dynamics focused on an anticipated power consequences in business relationships in a context of high environmental turbulence. I also intended to discuss the theoretical significance of my findings and indicate future research directions.

Conceptual article indicating future research directions.

The proposal of the conceptual model of power dynamics focusing on anticipated power consequences in business relationships.

The limitations of the presented model stem from the critique of the holistic view. My contribution lies in advancing our understanding of power dynamics in business relationships amid significant environmental change. I elucidate how transformative practices relate to power outcomes and value creation in these relationships.

The model highlights the importance of a mindful approach to managing business relationships in a turbulent environment. It emphasizes considering expected power outcomes from activities and their impact on creating value in these relationships.

The proposed concept resonates with systems theory, which emphasizes how different levels of business relationships are interconnected. It enables the analysis of power dynamics at the individual level, such as employees, consumers and local communities. These groups often include the most vulnerable individuals impacted by relational business structures.

The focus on anticipated power consequences of transformative practices triggered by high environmental turbulences, while considering the impact of power distribution of relationship actors on the sharing of benefits and costs.

Flexibility and efficiency are dual attributes of the organizational structure that are crucial for project-driven enterprises to achieve sustainable development in a dynamic environment. However, there is a lack of research on the patterns by which the dual attributes of a project-driven enterprise’s organizational structure affect business model innovation. Employing organizational theory, this study aims to assess the mediating mechanisms and dynamic capabilities through which the dual attributes of the organizational structure influence business model innovation in project-driven enterprises.

Data were collected from 242 employees from four project-driven companies across 26 cities (e.g. Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) in China. Structural equation modeling revealed the relationship between organizational structure’s dual attributes and business model innovation.

The findings show that the dual attributes (flexibility and efficiency) of the organizational structure have positive impacts on business model innovation. Moreover, dynamic capabilities mediate the relationship between the dual attributes and business model innovation in project-driven enterprises.

This study provides contributions to innovation research in the context of project-driven enterprises by revealing the influence of organizational structure on business model innovation through the firms’ dynamic capabilities. Such knowledge can enable managers of project-driven enterprises to develop effective interventions to promote business model innovation.

The aim of this paper is to examine a model that combines barriers, drivers, government responses, recovery expectations, expected future changes in performance and the extent of digitalisation as a moderator in SMEs.

This study uses exploratory causal methodologies. The study employs a quantitative methodology based on utilising an electronic questionnaire to gather the opinions of home workers and entrepreneurs in Jordan. The cross-sectional data collection approach was conducted in a single time frame, and a total of 1,179 valid questionnaires were analysed using Smart PLS along with SPSS.

The findings demonstrate that the barriers lower the expectations of recovering performance, whilst the drivers and government responses raise the expectations of both performance recovery and change in performance. Concerning digitalisation, this study discovered that firms going digital had a significant positive direct impact on expectations of performance change. This paper also found that expectations of performance change are significantly positively impacted by the interaction between drivers and digitalisation. However, the moderating influence of digitalisation on the positive impact of government responses on expectations of performance change was not verified.

The study's conclusions led to the formulation of several policy recommendations aimed at easing the burden on SMEs.

This study adds something new to the body of knowledge on SMEs by investigating the effects of barriers, drivers and government responses on expectations of performance recovery and the expected future change in performance moderated by digitalisation.

This study investigates how perceived political corruption, a generally overlooked corruption type, relates to firms' new product development (NPD) through perceived regulatory obstacles. It also examines firms' perceptions of business association support in this relationship, considering these associations' potential support for NPD.

This study conducted an empirical analysis of 1,663 firms in Turkey, a country noted for a history of legislative corruption, and in which there are strong business associations. Drawing the data from the World Bank's 2019 Enterprise Surveys Dataset, this study tested the hypotheses via the two-stage factor score regression method.

This study finds that perceived political corruption significantly relates to NPD negatively through perceived regulatory obstacles. It also finds that the perceived support of business associations to NPD is significantly greater when firms perceive regulatory obstacles but only slight political corruption.

As far as political corruption is concerned, this study reveals that corruption can also be the cause of regulatory obstacles, expanding the common view of corruption as a means of overcoming regulatory obstacles to NPD. In addition, it introduces the role of business associations in this relationship by revealing their support to NPD for different levels of perceived political corruption and regulatory obstacles.

This study aims to develop a model for coordination and communication overhead in distributed software development through case study analysis in the Indian outsourcing software industry. The model is based on business knowledge, which can be classified as domain, regulatory, strategic, business process and operation process knowledge as per existing literature.

Double case study method was used to verify an existing knowledge–management framework of software development from the literature. The stakeholders of both the cases were interviewed, and project documents were verified to reach conclusions.

The findings supported the business knowledge classification from the literature. The concept can be used to analyze the software project in a distributed environment.

The research work findings are based only on two case studies. The study findings cannot be generalized and should be used as a learning tool. There can be large variations of project characteristics with differences in business knowledge requirements. The research shows the importance of business knowledge transfer in global software development.

Projects managers in the distributed software development environment can use the findings in project planning and work allocation for better control over cost and schedule, etc.

There is little research works attempted to study the business knowledge classification in the global software industry making the research novel.

In the wake of severe socio-economic damage, many firms have made creative and technological progress in their responses to the COVID-19 crisis. This paper examines internal and external environmental complexity elements as antecedents of business responses and builds a framework for tourism firms to respond to the pandemic crisis.

This study obtained survey data from 395 respondents in the Vietnamese tourism and hospitality industry. A partial least squares structural equation modeling–artificial neural network approach was used to examine various combinations of internal and external environmental complexity elements that have different impacts on business responses and firms' performance.

The knowledge and practice created by the firm's employees (individual creativity), obtained from traditional contexts (traditionality) were identified as internal environmental complexity factors while practice learned from other firms (mimetic pressure), information processing (status certainty) and digital transformation (digital technology speed) were treated as external environmental complexity factors. Internal and external environmental complexity factors influence business responses and firms' performance positively but differently.

This study demonstrates that firms should integrate their internal environment of creativity and traditionality with external environmental factors of mimetic pressure, status certainty and digital technology speed to create better business responses, and thus firm performance in the COVID-19 era.

This investigation contributes to environmental research and narrows the existing research gap relating to the association between types of environmental complexity and firms' responsive action, which then influence firms' performance in terms of sustainable competitiveness.