Högskolan i Skövde

Purpose – This essay aims to draw attention to the idea of a new research approach to knowledge management (KM) labelled responsible KM (rKM) as a possible answer to not only address the consequences of the pandemic but also other present and upcoming societal challenges.

Design/methodology/approach – This essay has been prepared by a KM researcher who shares their own personal views and opinion regarding past and current societal developments and based on that offers a potentially new KM direction.

Findings – Switching the focus to rKM may help address current and upcoming social challenges that can only be addressed jointly by the global community and which would also involve a new consideration of the“knowledge” resource.

Originality/value – The essay proposes a new alternative approach to KM called rKM that is based on ideas that to the author’s knowledge have not been discussed in this way in the contemporary literature on KM.

Why should models and theories that have set images and boundaries of the internationalization process in the past remain constant over time within International Business research? Despite a recent emphasis on its nonlinear nature, many still view internationalization as a forward-moving process, overlooking its dynamic nature involving enter, re-enter, and exit decisions during the process. To discuss this issue, this paper rethinks the existing International Business literature to retain its explanatory power as an essential discipline by developing a circular framework to capture firms' non-linear internationalization process. The authors propose a circular framework with the decision-making process as the unit of analysis and four statuses: Enter, De-Internationalization, Re-Internationalization, and Operation Internationalized. The decision-making process guides firms through the statuses simultaneously or individually, in the same or a diverse temporal dimension. With this circular framework, the authors wish to contribute to future International Business research; research that can keep up with the “real” world.

Even though there is a plethora of research on the role of environmental turbulence in organizational performance in general, little attention has been paid to the effect of environmental turbulence on cyber security risk management and further - organizational resilience. Drawing on the resource-based view and contingency theory, this study investigates how technological and market turbulence influence organizational cyber security risk management (CSRM) and then organizational resilience. Using a data set from 150 European companies, the study findings show how the two types of turbulence have different effects on CSRM in the companies studied. Technological turbulence directly impacts the firms’ cyber security risk maturity while market turbulence has a direct positive affect on firms’ cyber security risk perception. The study also determines the interplay between risk perception and risk maturity and subsequent resilience.

Purpose Acknowledging, on the one hand, the increasing fragility of supply chains and the number of risks involved in supply chain operations and, on the other hand, the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in supply chains and the high exposure of these firms to risks of different types, this study aims to examine the relationship between supply chain risk management (SCRM) and innovation performance in SMEs. Furthermore, the impact of technological turbulence on this relationship was studied to take into account recent technological changes.

Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modelling was carried out on a sample of Turkish SMEs to test the hypotheses developed.

Findings The findings presented allow the authors to better understand the link between SCRM and innovation performance in SMEs. More precisely, empirical evidence is provided about the impact of SCRM components such as maturity and ability on innovation performance. Furthermore, the findings show the impact of technological turbulence on both SCRM and innovation performance.

Originality/value By focusing on SCRM in SMEs, this paper contributes to the body of knowledge with regard to SCRM in general and with regard to SMEs in particular; research on the latter has only started recently. Moreover, by having studied SMEs from a developing country (other than China), this paper helps to develop a broader and more diverse perspective of SCRM.

Most of the entrepreneurship education (EE) efforts have been directed to business creation as the preferredoption for entrepreneurial activity. Considering the ever-increasing number of businesses to be transferredand thus the need for people who are willing and interested in seeing a business transfer as a careeroption, this one-sided view is unsatisfactory. Inspired by the "attention-interest-desire-action"" model frommarketing, this paper brings together the existing literature and the authors'own research and teachingexperience to propose research directions that can lay the theoretical foundation to incorporate businesstransfers more clearly in EE. This underlines that value creation through entrepreneurship can take differentforms and adds a missing but relevant part to EE and its development

This article uses a global multilevel sample to advance our understanding of the gender gap in youth entrepreneurship by investigating the joint moderating influence of in-group support and national embeddedness values on young women’s entrepreneurial activity relative to that of young men. Based on a mixed embeddedness theoretical lens, our moderation analysis demonstrates the importance of in-group support in narrowing the gender gap in youth entrepreneurship. Moreover, in-group support enhances young women’s entrepreneurship vis-à-vis that of young men primarily in countries with strong embeddedness values. Our findings contribute to the entrepreneurial gender gap literature as well as to the comparative entrepreneurship literature, by providing evidence of the joint role of micro-level and macro-level cultural layers in reducing the entrepreneurial gender gap. Implications for theory, practice and policy are provided.

Purpose – Considering the increasing interest devoted to knowledge hiding in the workplace and academicresearch, the aim of this study is to analyze the existing literature on knowledge hiding to understand andtrace how it has evolved over time and to uncover emerging areas for future research.

Design/methodology/approach – The study used performance analysis and science mapping toanalyze a sample of 243 studies published between 2005 and 2022. The study focused on analyzing thescientific productivity of articles, themes and authors.

Findings – The results of performance and science mapping analysis indicate that the concept ofknowledge hiding behavior evolved recently and a majority of the studies have been conducted in the pastdecade. The study found that knowledge hiding is still in its infancy and has been studied in relation to otherthemes such as knowledge sharing, knowledge management, knowledge withholding and knowledgetransfer. The study identified emerging themes, productive authors and countries, affiliations, collaborationnetwork of authors, countries and institutions and co-occurrence of keywords.

Originality/value – Compared to the recent developments in the knowledge hiding behavior, the presentstudy is more comprehensive in terms of the methods and databases used. The results of the study contributeto the existing literature on knowledge hiding and knowledge withholding.

COVID-19 has shown how fragile our societies and economies are. Supply chains have particularly been affected. We all had to learn again that the basic supply of some goods is not as crisis-proof as we thought. Moreover, the strong division of labour and the concentration on a few companies in certain areas present considerable weaknesses in the case of a new external crisis such as the pandemic. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been affected by the current pandemic, particularly as they are highly sensitive to external threats. Using data collected between December 2020 and January 2021 through semi-structured interviews conducted with owners and/or managers of SMEs located in six different European countries (i.e., Austria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Portugal), the chapter aims to provide fresh perspectives on how SMEs address supply chain risk management in times of an external and dynamic crisis. 

In this article, we examine how external factors such as demand, security regulation, cyber risks, and relative performance influence supply chain risk management (SCRM) in young and mature small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. For this, we utilised fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) using data from 137 Turkish SMEs. Our results suggest a single significant path for explaining SCRM in young SMEs, while we found three significant paths for explaining SCRM in mature SMEs. Furthermore, the results indicate that demand risk is the only external factor for young SMEs to realise SCRM success. For mature SMEs, demand risk and/or relative performance are essential to explain SCRM performance. Based on our findings, we theoretically contribute by unravelling the pathways through which external factors influence SCRM performance. Moreover, practitioners could align their strategies towards these pathways when constructing a strategy for achieving SCRM performance.

Purpose - Our understanding of the influence of institutional conditions on process innovation is still limited, despite managers’ need to know which factors should be considered in decision-making and governments should be aware of how to foster process innovation through the provision of attractive institutions. Therefore, this paper aims to examine how institutional dimensions such as workforce, political instability, labor regulation, corruption, tax administration and transportation influence process innovation in smaller firms located in emerging countries other than the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

Design/methodology/approach - A data set from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys questioning over 20,000 companies from 41 emerging countries supplemented by the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for each country was used and analyzed by the means of general linear mixed models. The analysis emphasized small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and excluded BRICS countries.

Findings - The findings demonstrate which institutional factors matter for process innovation depending on company size and GDP.

Research limitations/implications - This paper advances research on the influence of institutions on firm innovation – the institution–process innovation relationship in emerging countries other than the BRICS in particular. By considering the role of company size and GDP per capita on the institution–process innovation relationship, the paper offers more nuanced insights compared with prior studies and thus makes a strong contribution to the innovation theory. The data used are not suitable for a longitudinal study the same refers to capturing the variety found in the countries even those coming from the same geographic area.

Practical implications - The results provide practitioners, e.g. managers of SMEs, with concrete ideas on how to improve process innovation in their companies. Other actors such as policymakers too can benefit from the results as they will allow the design of more target group-oriented measures, aspects that can ultimately lead to more sustainable businesses.

Originality/value - By focusing on process innovation and emerging countries, the paper contributes to growing research efforts in emerging countries beyond the BRICS. Thus, the results add more diversity to the study of process innovation and its influencing external (institutional) factors. The emphasis on SMEs also allows us to highlight differences between different categories of SMEs.