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Climate change poses risks to society and the demand for carbon literacy within small and medium-sized enterprises is increasing. Skills and knowledge are required for organizational greenhouse gas accounting and science-based decisions to help businesses reduce transitional risks. At the University of Copenhagen and the University of Northern British Columbia, two carbon management courses have been developed to respond to this growing need. Using an action-based co-learning model, students and business are paired to quantify and report emissions and develop climate plans and communication strategies.

This paper draws on surveys of businesses that have partnered with the co-learning model, designed to provide insight on carbon reductions and the impacts of co-learning. Data collected from 12 respondents in Denmark and 19 respondents in Canada allow for cross-institutional and international comparison in a Global North context.

Results show that while co-learning for carbon literacy is welcomed, companies identify limitations: time and resources; solution feasibility; governance and reporting structures; and communication methods. Findings reveal a need for extension, both forwards and backwards in time, indicating that the collaborations need to be lengthened and/or intensified. Balancing academic requirements detracts from usability for businesses, and while municipal and national policy and emission targets help generate a general societal understanding of the issue, there is no concrete guidance on how businesses can implement operational changes based on inventory results.

The research brings new knowledge to the field of transitional climate risks and does so with a focus on both small businesses and universities as important co-learning actors in low-carbon transitions. The comparison across geographies and institutions contributes an international solution perspective to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The study aims to highlight the barriers faced by the entrepreneurs toward achieving sustainability in business and innovation cultivation by offering solutions for academicians, practitioners and policymakers. The study uses the resource-based view (RBV) theory to discuss how an organization’s resources and capabilities influence the competitive ambience and barriers faced by entrepreneurs.

The present research uses grey-causal modelling (GSC) to analyse the barriers against successful entrepreneurship.

The research focuses on the usefulness of dynamic capabilities, managing and cooperating resources in the entrepreneurship setting. The paper highlights the importance of resource gathering and nurturing as a method to combat scarcity. This research further identifies that financial limitations, regulatory obstacles, challenges to sourcing qualified labour, poor infrastructure and technology, limited mentorship opportunities, lack of scalability, low initial cost barriers in product development and risk-averse attitudes are the major factors hindering entrepreneurs from obtaining sustainable business and innovation.

The contribution of this research to the literature is that it assesses RBV theory within the realm of entrepreneurship, providing a different perspective on resources and capabilities as well as the challenges faced by entrepreneurs. The systematic approach to the analysis and prioritization of various barriers is innovative, and it adds knowledge in this area.

Drawing upon insights from knowledge-based theory and the learning perspective, this study aims to explore safeguarding strategies in open innovation. Geographic diversity and collaborative breadth can effectively protect proprietary innovations that limit knowledge leakage concerns.

Using a cross-industry sample from the Taiwanese Technological Innovation Survey III, which covered 1,519 firms, the authors investigate the conditions under which partnership portfolios affect radical innovation.

The findings suggest that the partnership portfolio has an inverted U-shaped influence on radical innovation and that this relationship is moderated by geographic diversity and collaborative breadth. This work identifies a balance in the tension between diverse partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage with regard to open innovation activities.

This study provides senior managers with an indication of the relationships between partnership portfolios and innovative knowledge protection, identifying the geographic diversity and collaborative breadth that serve as safeguards to prevent leakages of a firm’s innovative knowledge.

This study makes an original contribution to the empirical exploration of innovation knowledge protection and provides new insights into the field of open innovation. The authors, thus, balance the tension between partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage.

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of resource orchestration in inter-firm partnerships that appropriately configure and align strategic cross-firm supply chain resources and capabilities generating synergies to deliver superior performance.

Applying the resource orchestration logic, supported by the relational view of competitive advantage, the study draws from an empirical analysis of survey data from 152 top-level executives of US manufacturing firms to investigate the effect of leveraging and coherently combining cross-firm supply chain resources with capabilities on operational performance.

The study underscores the view that appropriately orchestrated combinations of key partnership resources and capabilities as mechanisms for marketing strategy implementation, enhance performance. Specifically, research results suggest that complementary inter-firm resources and lean align, and similarly idiosyncratic resources and agility align synergistically to deliver superior operational performance outcomes. The results also accent partnership responses to intense competition, enabling enhanced operational performance. The findings thus enrich the understanding of the resource orchestration logic and strategy, making important theoretical contributions.

As is typical in marketing and strategy research, the study research design has a cross-sectional framework, thus limiting insights on the resource orchestration dynamics that can otherwise be generated using a longitudinal design. Also, the resource orchestration stream is still nascent. Further research is needed to delineate the orchestration mechanisms that deliver on performance outcomes, especially in supply chains.

A key insight for supply chain and marketing managers is that close-knit inter-firm partnerships are critical for accessing idiosyncratic and complementary resources that can be configured and symbiotically aligned with market-facing agility and lean capabilities, respectively, to deliver market value. Proactive partnerships, especially in highly competitive and disruptive environments, enable mobilizing cross-firm resources and building appropriate matching combinations with capabilities to deliver on operational performance.

The study, guided by theory, advances the understanding of how key cross-firm resources and capabilities deliver performance gains. The key to competitive advantage and enhanced performance outcomes may lie in acquiring, leveraging and deploying appropriately matched resource-capability combinations. The present study investigates this proposition within the context of supply chain partnerships, focusing on cross-firm resources and capabilities.

The present article aims to investigate the quality of the relationships in a business partnership for a project in Medtech field and the components that most influence them, with special attention to relational capabilities (RCs). Dyadic relationships and mainly RCs are considered critical factors for the success of a partnership.

A case study was used to evaluate the influence of RC on the progress of an alliance between a start-up and a small and medium scale enterprise (SME). The evaluation is performed using a questionnaire. To highlight such progress, the same questions were asked at the start of the partnership and one year later. The results were compared to analyse the improvement of RC and draw conclusions on the correlation between RC and alliance performance.

The method adopted allowed for a clear identification of the criticalities of the partnership. The authors found evidence that poor RCs lead to confusion, a sense of exclusion and a lack of collaboration amongst members. Results confirmed that increased RC and aligning the allies' capabilities positively affect the alliance's performance.

Exogenous variables influencing the partnership's progress were not included in the present study. Future research may consider them.

Limited prior research is available on collaboration between SME and start-ups. The present authors aim to investigate the topic further, investigating RCs between firms. The article is also a starting point for future case study comparisons.

This study aims to investigate whether higher value creation leads to higher value appropriation and to identify the boundary conditions in a buyer–supplier relationship that can explain why a particular supplier can appropriate higher value than others.

The study uses questionnaire surveys. The sample of the survey has 150 publicly-listed supplier firms in Taiwan. The unit of analysis is the buyer–supplier relationship.

In the buyer–supplier relationship, suppliers’ bargaining power, partnership and a supplier’s original brand manufacturing (OBM) business can strengthen the positive relationship between value creation and value appropriation.

This study adopts the unilateral viewpoint of suppliers; however, some constructs might require dyadic evaluation. This study only explores the spillover effect of OBM business on the relationship between value creation and appropriation.

The spillover effect of a supplier’s OBM business in a buyer–supplier relationship allows the buyer to share more common benefits and the supplier to capture more private benefits as compensation. By broadening its customer base, a supplier can increase its bargaining power. A supplier can also maintain a strategic partnership with each essential buyer.

To avoid the dark-side effect of partnership, the model provides the contingency that a supplier can capture more value from a buyer–supplier relationship.

This paper aims to examine the specific role that partnerships play in the relationship between adaptation strategy, international experience, and export performance of handicraft firms in an emerging country setting. The authors' purpose is to identify the key factors that may contribute to the success of export activities of small handicraft companies in international markets.

Drawing on a non-probability sampling technique, the authors collected survey data from 410 handicraft companies located in Morocco. The authors' conceptual model, which draws on the network theory, was tested using covariance-based Structural Equation Modeling by means of AMOS 24 Software.

The results indicate that adaptation marketing strategy and partnerships impact positively the export performance of handicraft firms. Partnerships also play an intermediary role by partially (fully) mediating the relationship between adaptation strategy (international experience) and export performance.

This study may assist marketers and entrepreneurs in handicraft companies to better understand the causal relationship between adaptation strategy, marketing experience and export performance of entrepreneurs' firms. Managers in these companies should be aware of the importance that partnerships play in boosting the export performance through marketing practices and experience.

The authors' paper contributes to the scant literature on the adaptation marketing strategy and export performance and the intermediary role of partnerships in the specific context of handicraft businesses operating in North African emerging markets, namely Morocco.

Managing resources is crucial for firms to gain competitive advantages and succeed, particularly for startups with limited resources. It is important to understand how digital startups in general and digital academic spin-offs (ASOs) in particular may orchestrate their resources to optimize value. This paper integrates the resource-based perspective with digital entrepreneurship to analyze the resource configurations leading to success of digital ASOs.

The paper adopts an inductive approach and applies qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) on a longitudinal dataset of digital ASOs to identify the resource configurations for a successful outcome.

The authors' paper identifies two main paths to success among digital ASOs, consisting of five distinct resource configurations. The first path is termed “market exploiters” that operate in favorable market conditions where specific technological resources and research collaboration resources are lacking. The second path involves “technology explorers” that combines both technological and commercial resources to achieve success.

By outlining distinct pathways to the success of digital ASOs, this paper contributes to the digital academic entrepreneurship literature and the resource-based view of entrepreneurial firms. The paper also suggests implications for policymakers and managers in managing resources for the success of digital ventures.

By exploring the resource configurations leading to the success of ASOs commercializing digital technologies, the paper shows that favorable market conditions and complementary resource configurations can be alternative pathways to success.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of strategic supplier partnership and moderating role of information sharing (IS), in the relationship between lean manufacturing and firms’ financial performance (FP).

Utilizing the contingency approach, this study develops a research model to validate the proposition that a proper integration of supply chain (SC) practices enhances the financial performance of the firm. The study uses data from one hundred and fifty-seven manufacturing firms. The results are generated on structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS software.

The study finds that strategic supplier partnership partially mediates the relationship between lean manufacturing and FP, whereas, empirically, it could not demonstrate that IS significantly moderates the relationship between lean manufacturing and FP.

The paper theoretically develops logic for and empirically shows that strategic supplier partnership is an appropriate practice for mediating the impact of lean manufacturing on FP.

This strategic supply chain integration contributes to theory and demonstrates that SC practices’ correct synchronization and orchestration may realize superior FP. In addition, this research provides a sustainable strategic SC model that creates value and provides a competitive advantage for firms in the long term.

The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of supply chain (SC) partnerships on sustainable performance (SP) and investigate the potential mediating role of total quality management (TQM).

A total of 185 responses were collected from pharmaceutical industry employees. The research data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach.

The results reveal that relationships with suppliers (RS), distributors (RD) and intermediaries (RI) have a direct impact on SP. In addition, this study found that TQM serves as a mediator between RS, RD, RI and SP. This study enhances the understanding of the significance of TQM, SC and SP in business environment development. The findings suggest that organizations in the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry should prioritize the enhancement of their RS, intermediaries and distributors to improve their SP.

By providing decision-makers with valuable information, this study enables them to identify and implement TQM and SC practices to enhance the SP of pharmaceutical companies in Jordan.