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The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the impact of cosmopolitan consumer orientation (CCO) on sustainable apparel consumer behavior.

A total of 469 US responses collected using MTurk were retained for the analysis after screening for unengaged responses. Structural equation modeling was used to confirm the factor structure of the measurement model and to analyze the structural model. A two-step cluster analysis using log-likelihood distance measure and Akaike's Information Criterion was conducted to explore consumer profiles and past behavior.

Based on the model results, CCO positively impacts apparel sustainability knowledge, attitude toward purchasing sustainable apparel, perceived norm and sustainable apparel purchase intention. Attitude and perceived norm also impact sustainable purchase intention. The two-step cluster analysis, based mainly on sustainable past behavior, reveals that the group of sustainability engaged consumers knows more about apparel sustainability, has a stronger intention to purchase sustainable apparel, is more cosmopolitan and shows a higher tendency to follow social norms. Consumers in this group also tend to live in metropolitan areas and are slightly younger than unengaged consumers.

This study expands CCO research linking two major trends in society and industry: cosmopolitanism and sustainable apparel consumer behavior. The study reveals that CCO uplifts consumers' sustainable behavior and provides evidence in support of CCO as a driver of sustainable consumer behavior. Moreover, results imply a positive future outlook for the diffusion of sustainable apparel, as well as a much-needed mainstream consumer adhesion to more sustainable lifestyles. Given the repercussions of the findings, this research has numerous theoretical as well practical implications.

Recent technological turbulence stemming from Industry 4.0 provides managerial opportunities and challenges simultaneously. In this context, the purpose of this study is to explore the role of technological opportunism on innovativeness and discover the impact of innovativeness on new products performance in international markets.

To empirically test the hypotheses, the authors have collected survey data from 237 Korean exporting firms and applied structural equation modeling.

Empirical results indicate that technological opportunism, which represents technology sensing and responding capability, has a positive and significant influence on both exploratory and exploitative innovativeness. Also, explorative and exploitative innovativeness have positive and significant effects on new product performance in international markets.

This study highlighted the importance of technology sensing and responding capabilities to capture emerging opportunities, which may arise from Industry 4.0 technologies. In addition, sensing and responding capabilities will help a firm create a culture that values innovative proclivity, and in turn, will lead to superior new product performance in international markets.

Despite extensive scholarly interest in Industry 4.0, previous studies have neglected to address the potential impact of Industry 4.0 within the domain of new product development and its performance. Also, there have been several calls from the literature to address the managerial and strategic issues surrounding the Industry 4.0 phenomenon. In this study, the authors attempted to fill the research gaps in Industry 4.0 research studies through empirical examination.

Open innovation (OI), by now one of the major concepts for the analysis of innovation, is seen as a methodology for collaboratively designing and implementing solutions by engaging stakeholders in an iterative and inclusive service design process. This paper aims to empirically investigate OI capacities, defined as a cooperative, knowledge-sharing innovation ecosystem, and to explore how it can lead to improved performance of firms in Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Southeastern European (SEE) countries.

The study builds on the World Bank/European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD’s) Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) dataset for 2009, 2013 and 2019. Primarily, the research model was estimated using log-transformed ordinary least squares (OLS). Taking into consideration that this method might produce substantial bias, yielding misleading inferences, this study is fitting Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimators with robust standard errors and instrumental variable/generalized method of moments estimation (IV/GMM) approach for comparative results. Secondarily, the research model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the relationship between five OI capacities and firm performance.

The findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between most OI capacities and firm performance, except for innovation, which did not show a statistically significant relationship with firm performance. Specifically, research and development (R&D), knowledge and coopetition are statistically significant and positively associated with firm performance, whereas transformation is statistically significant but negatively associated with firm performance. The IV/GMM estimations’ findings support the view that the firm performance is significantly affected by OI capacities, together with some control variables such as size, age, foreign ownership and year dummy to have a significant impact on firm performance.

This paper fills an identified gap in the literature by investigating the impact of OI on firm performance executed in the specific CEE and SEE country context.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between geographic diversification (GD) and export performance (EP) by analysing a sample of small exporters in an emerging market.

The study sample comprised 96 small and medium-sized exporting enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. The data is analysed using multiple regression analysis (MRA), Hayes' process model and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results indicate that GD significantly negatively affects EP. In this dilemma, the export market orientation (EMO) and digital transformation positively moderated the relationship between GD and EP, such that the negative effect of GD on EP was weaker when EMO and digital were stronger.

This initial study contributes significantly to international business theories and practices, which reveal the role of GD via firm digital capacity and EMO in thriving SMEs’ EP. This study might grant new insight into international business and a critical approach to addressing the new insights small firms may face in a fragile but technologically advanced world.

This study aims to explore how managers exercise agency in strategic investment decisions (SIDs) by drawing on their knowledgeability of the strategic context. Specifically, the authors address the role of position–practice relations and irresistible causal forces in this conduct.

The authors examine SID-making (SIDM) practices in four case organisations operating in highly competitive markets, conducting interviews with managers at various levels and analysing company documents. Drawing on strong structuration theory, the authors show how managerial decision makers draw upon their knowledge of organisational context when exercising agency in SIDs.

The authors provide insights into how SIDM behaviour, specifically agents’ conduct, is shaped by a combination of position–practice relations and the agents’ comprehension of their organisation’s context.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice. Particularly, the authors contribute to this literature by identifying irresistible causal forces and illuminating why actors might not resist in SIDM processes, despite having the potential to do so.

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between collaborative innovation and the financial performance of information technology (IT) firms through the mediating role of strategic agility and absorptive capacity. Customer knowledge management capability (CKMC) is also explored as a potential moderator.

Data were collected from 300 respondents working in different small to medium IT enterprises operating in different cities around Portugal. The simple random sampling method was used for data collection, and Smart partial least squares-structural equation modeling (Smart PLS-SEM version 3.2.8) was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings demonstrate that collaborative innovation contributes significantly to the financial performance of IT firms in Portugal. The results also indicate that absorptive capacity and strategic agility both positively and significantly affect the relationship between collaborative innovation and firms’ financial performance. However, while the moderating role of CKMC has a positive and significant effect on the relation between collaborative innovation and strategic agility, CKMC insignificantly moderates the relation between collaborative innovation and absorptive capacity.

Few studies have explicitly connected collaborative innovation with firms’ financial performance; this study attempts to fill that gap. Moreover, this research investigates the mediating role of strategic agility and absorptive capacity in the relationship between collaborative innovation and financial performance. Finally, by discussing the moderating effect of CKMC, which leads to enhanced financial performance, this study proposes that when complex and unpredictable situations occur, managers should focus on customer-oriented strategies and innovation at the same time to outpace their competitors.

This paper aims to examine the factors associated with a household business entrepreneur’s decisions to formalise the firm at a multidimensions level.

The data set is a panel of 2,336 SMEs and household businesses from Vietnamese SME surveys during the 2005–2015 period.

This study elucidates how firm-level resources, entrepreneur characteristics and costs of doing business influence an entrepreneur’s decision to enter, the speed and the degree of formality.

This study provides insight into the origins of an entrepreneur’s decisions to the multidimensions of business formality through the lenses of the resource-based view, entrepreneurship and institution theories.

As a consequence of the proposal of the Carbon Neutral and Carbon Peak policy in 2020, the Chinese Government is paying more attention to developing sustainability performance. This study aims to assess the direct influence of country-level and corporate anti-corruption measures on environmental, social and governance (ESG) and its three dimensions, besides ascertaining the moderating role of firm size.

This study used the system generalized method of moments on a sample of 820 Chinese listed firms from 2012 to 2021.

The findings show that country-level and corporate corruption negatively affect ESG performance. Corporate anti-corruption measures have a more pronounced positive influence on the sustainability performance of small firms than large firms due to the limited resources, lower political position and weaker refusal power of small firms.

The study has great implications for governments, corporate boards and ESG rating agencies. Government and corporate boards should mitigate the risks of country-level and corporate corruption to attain sustainable development goals. Rating agencies should add country-level and corporate corruption into the ESG evaluation system.

Some empirical results have proven that anti-corruption measures help reduce the emission of carbon dioxide, but few evidence shows how country-level and corporate corruption affect ESG and its three dimensions.

This study aims to investigate the effects of board cultural diversity (BCD) and board gender diversity (BGD) of the board of directors on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector using resource-based view (RBV) theory. In addition, this study analyses the linkages between BCD and BGD and knowledge sharing on the board of directors to improve ESG performance.

This study selected a sample of European-listed banks covering the period 2021. ESG and diversity variables were collected from Refinitiv Eikon and analysed using the ordinary least squares model. This study was conducted in the European context regulated by Directive 95/2014/EU, which requires sustainability disclosure. The original population was represented by 250 banks; after missing data were excluded, the final sample comprised 96 European-listed banks.

The findings highlight the positive linkages between BGD, BCD and ESG scores in the European banking sector. In addition, the findings highlight that diversity contributes to knowledge sharing by improving ESG performance in a regulated sector. Nonetheless, the combined effect of BGD and BCD negatively impacts ESG performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to measure and analyse a regulated sector, such as banking, and the relationship between cultural and gender diversity for sharing knowledge under the RBV theory lens in the ESG framework.

This paper aims to focus on analyzing the level of corruption of small- and medium-sized enterprises and their economic performance impact in Western Balkan countries. This study uses survey data from Enterprise Surveys (ES) from 2019, a shared project of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank Group. The selected countries are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. The questions included in the data set contribute to understanding what firms experience in the private sector. Collected data are based on firms’ experiences and enterprises’ perceptions of the environment in which they operate.

This paper measures enterprise performance in terms of sales, employees and fixed assets growth. The vector of independent variables comprises enterprise characteristics such as enterprise age, size, ownership structure, legal status, access to formal banking services, gender ownership and other composed variables. Moreover, to capture the level of perceived corruption by firms, we will focus on the following ES questions: “Is it common to have to pay some irregular additional payment or gifts to get things done with regard to customs, taxes, licenses, regulations, services,” and the “corruption payment” is defined in the form of a dummy equal to one if the enterprise replies “frequently,” “usually” or “always.”

Preliminary empirical research results shed light on the level and effects of corruption on enterprises’ performance. However, the magnitude and statistical significance are different among the countries included in the sample.

Instead of firm-level characteristics, research on corruption frequently focuses on effects dependent on national and institutional characteristics. To better identify the kinds of businesses that are most at risk of corruption, we have selected to focus on differences among firm characteristics in this research. Understanding factors at the firm level is preferred from a policy perspective because these findings assist policymakers to make recommendations.