Shared digital identity and rich knowledge ties in global 3D printing—A drizzle in the clouds?

E-commerce Policy and the Global Economy: A Path to More Inclusive Development?

The advancement of digitalization is gradually transforming the existing structure of the global economy. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, almost all cross-border transactions had a digital component in 2016. This is also reflected by the growing literature on digitalization and E-commerce. Yet, studies specifically focusing on E-commerce policy are scarce compared with other areas in this domain. By going beyond academic articles and including policy documents in our analysis, this study takes stock of the issues as well as the policy recommendations identified in these publications. Our analysis reveals that to promote an inclusive E-commerce participation, it is imperative to design policies that improve countries' formal institutions, facilitate the inclusion of less-developed countries in the E-commerce space, and enhance E-commerce adoption by small- and medium-sized enterprises. We highlight the significance of collaboration between and solidarity among governments and other stakeholders.

Resilience building during the management of the COVID‐19 crisis in Lithuania: Major breakthroughs and incremental change

Modern societies are facing an increasing number of transboundary systemic threats. The sudden spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has once again highlighted concerns about governments' capacity to deal with disruptions and stressed the need for more resilient governance arrangements. Besides the usual policymaking, the latter might emerge from decisions, made during the crisis management as well. Building on ideas of the new institutionalism, more specifically, the normative logic of appropriateness and the rational logic of consequentiality, we examine how different mechanisms in varying contexts lead to different types of resilience building. Based on the results of pattern matching applied to the Lithuanian case of COVID‐19 crisis management in 2020, we argue that in environments where the logic of consequentiality was dominant, resilience was mostly strengthened because of major breakthroughs, stemming from coercive pressures as well as top‐down policy action from the centre of government. In contrast, more incremental developments contributed to resilience building through normative or mimetic pressures, professionalization, network‐based and bottom‐up practices in environments, where the logic of appropriateness prevailed. We claim that, while the logic of consequentiality helps to strengthen resilience in the context of turbulence, the logic of appropriateness is especially important for ensuring its sustainability.

Digital transformation during a pandemic: Stretching the organizational elasticity

How can firms turn their COVID-19 pandemic-driven digitalization efforts into sustainable digital transformation? Firms accelerated their digitalization efforts during the global pandemic to an emergency speed. This speed of implementation of digital technologies left organizations with little time to adapt their structures, processes, and culture to the new environment. We argue that firms currently remain in a stretched operations mode that will either bounce back to normal after the pandemic or ultimately lead to organizational failure. Seven in-depth case studies based on 11 interviews of top management support our argument and show that, during this crisis, firms have been operating in a state of exception. We take an organizational elasticity perspective to investigate this status and develop an agenda for firms to facilitate sustainable digital transformation. Our study provides important insights into organizational elasticity as a framework to manage the long-term organizational impact of the current pandemic.

Exploring the journey of Responsible Business Model Innovation in Asian companies: A review and future research agenda

Responsible Business Model Innovation is increasingly becoming a relevant challenge in academic research and business practice, mainly in the Asian context. Changes in business models are widely acknowledged as a key strategy for achieving long-term innovation. However, little is known about the design journey of Responsible Business Model Innovation. By applying the knowledge-based view and stakeholder theory, this paper introduces the founding pillars of Responsible Business Model Innovation, namely: Corporate Social Responsiveness, Inclusiveness, and Reflective Knowledge Exchange. Based on the analysis of extended bodies of literature published between 2011 and 2021 on business model innovation, sustainability innovation, stakeholder theory and responsible innovation, the article explores the state of the art of business ethics and dynamic capabilities in Asian organizations. Findings show that recent research in the field of sustainability and ethical values are improving the impact on business models, thus encouraging the advent of Responsible Business Model Innovation. This article contributes to the emerging field of responsible innovation and offers novel theoretical and practical implications for academy and practitioners, including a first attempt to develop a road map to be followed to achieve of sustainable and ethical values for business and society at large.

Research on Successful Factors and Influencing Mechanism of the Digital Transformation in SMEs

In the era of the digital economy, digital transformation (DT) has become a new approach for firms to gain competitive advantages in a context of intense and dynamic market competition. Companies in almost all industries have undergone or are currently undergoing DT. Due to limited resources and capabilities, the digitalization process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is relatively slow, so it is critical to ascertain the key factors and paths that affect the success of DT for SMEs to optimize the allocation of resources. However, there is very little research on the DT of SMEs. In response to this literature gap, the purpose of this study is to discover the key factors of the DT in SMEs and explore their interaction mechanisms. From a holistic perspective, this study has identified six key factors from three dimensions of technology, organization, and environment, and based on the resource-based view and resource-dependence theory, constructed an action mechanism model. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data collected from 180 SMEs in China. The results show that technological and environmental factors have a positive impact on organizational capabilities, and then promote the success of DT of SMEs. Organizational capabilities play an intermediary role in the influence of technological and environmental factors on DT. In addition, employee skills positively moderate the relationship between organizational capabilities and the success of DT. This study contributes to the conceptual framework and management implications in the DT field. Our study provides practitioners with profound insights into the enterprise’s DT and suggests that enterprises attach importance to the improvement of organizational capabilities, and use strategy and talents as important resources to promote the success of enterprise DT.

Interorganizational coworking: attenuating complexity, enhancing resilience and fostering open innovation and knowledge cocreation

Purpose

This study aims to explore how interorganizational coworking spaces (CWS) affect complexity, resilience, open innovation and knowledge cocreation.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a qualitative study using the exploratory design. Data are gathered through semistructured interviews and naturalistic observation in six different CWS.

Findings

In line with previous studies, the findings show that being in a CWS with professionals of various backgrounds and contained levels of diversity make people prone to communication and knowledge sharing. Differently from previous research about knowledge creation in CWS, this study discovered that knowledge cocreation was only averagely affected. Complexity and resilience were the most influenced dimensions with scores higher than average, followed by open innovation and knowledge cocreation.

Research limitations/implications

Main limitations are related to the qualitative method itself which may not reach the data saturation and with the nonsynergistic analysis of all dimensions together. A further limitation arose because of the COVID-19 pandemic which contributed to downsizing the number of participants while restricting the options of the involved research instruments. The implications for research are related to a need for further studies using large-scale surveys to strengthen the reliability of research. Additionally, more research is needed to explore the multiple dimensions of open innovation, complexity and resilience in CWS.

Practical implications

For CWS providers, it is recommended to create thematic/clustered areas of collaboration based on specific professions. For early-stage businesses, freelancers and micro/entrepreneurial firms that do not wish to lease their own office, CWS provide an opportunity for value cocreation and open innovation.

Social implications

CWS, either physical or virtual, can be used as a retreat approach and a socialization platform, especially for those in need to recover from post-traumatic stress due to the imposed isolation caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

Originality/value

Given the unexplored phenomena of complexity and resilience in CWS, the major contribution of this research is related to the impact of interorganizational coworking upon complexity and resilience.

Research on innovation management of science and technology innovation team members based on constructive conflict evolution game

How to give full play to the positive function of constructive conflicts (task conflicts and process conflicts) in the science and technology innovation team, give appropriate stimulation, mobilize the enthusiasm of employees and improve the team's innovative ability to improve team performance and organizational effectiveness are issues that deserve both team leaders' and scholars' attention. Through selecting multiple medical technology R&D personnel from a specific science and technology innovation team of health organization, the research studies the constructive conflicts among the members of the science and technology innovation team, constructs and analyzes the conflict evolution game model, proposes countermeasures and suggestions for improving the innovation ability of the science and technology innovation team and discusses the innovation management mechanism of the science and technology innovation team. The study shows that task conflicts, process conflicts and innovation game decisions cannot be avoided. The unstable choice of members does not promote innovation. However, on the one hand, constructive conflicts can be controlled to maintain a moderate state of control. On the other hand, it is also necessary to establish a mutually trusting communication environment and convenient communication channels in the science and technology innovation team, combined with modern information management technology, to handle the problems that were difficult to be found or accumulated for a long time under the previous management mechanism and cooperate with the science and technology innovation team to improve the technology innovation team's innovation capability.

Qualitative research: extending the range with flexible pattern matching

The flexible pattern matching approach has witnessed increasing popularity. By combining deduction with induction in logic, flexible pattern matching is well suited for exploration and theory development. The paper discusses its logic, advantages and process of this approach while offering a review of research adopting this approach. We also compare and contrast it with another popular qualitative data analysis technique, the grounded theory approach, to further ground the method on the established knowledge and elaborate its strength and fitting context. This paper advances the flexible pattern matching approach by suggesting a five-step roadmap to conduct qualitative research with the approach.

Digital innovation management for entrepreneurial ecosystems: services and functionalities as drivers of innovation management software adoption

Innovation Management Software can promote Entrepreneurial Ecosystems by consolidating an organization’s innovation programs, stakeholders, and resources in one place. In this study, we highlighted the digitalization of innovation processes. We focus particularly on the factors influencing the adoption of a specific class of software tools called Innovation Management Software (IMS) or Digital Innovation Management System to support innovation management methods and activities. Specifically, we address the two questions (a) which specific functionality drives the adoption of IMS tools, and (b) which services of IMS providers are valuable in supporting the adoption of IMS by organizations aiming to digitalize their innovation processes. By using an online questionnaire, we gathered survey data from 199 innovation managers of German firms. We used regression analysis to test our hypotheses. While the overall IMS adoption is considered to positively affect the new product development (NPD) efficiency, our results indicate that especially idea management functionalities and services for updates and upgrades improve the IMS adoption. Surprisingly, offering complementary consulting services together with IMS offerings to support the digitalization of innovation processes reduces the likelihood of IMS adoption. These findings are important for managers, consultants, and developers in order to choose and leverage the right options for improving the adoption of IT tools in the NPD process and therefore increase NPD performance and thus also promote Entrepreneurial Ecosystems.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems in an interconnected world: emergence, governance and digitalization

Achieving and sustaining growth depends on the effective work of multiple and interconnected actors—such as e.g. governments, the private sector, society, universities, entrepreneurs and many others—who build an ecosystem, i.e. a social and economic environment for innovative and entrepreneurial endeavors. The underlying idea is that firms do not just compete with each other through well-developed stand-alone strategies to achieve advantages over their rivals, uniquely relying on their own resources, knowledge, and capabilities, but rather base their business models on shared resources, network externalities, knowledge spill-overs, local endowments, and governmental support. This introductory article offers a wide array of topics, methods and fields of application within the field of entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as a theorizing about potential fruitful future areas of research within the field, concentrating on legitimation and identification processes in ecosystems, possibly culminating towards a meta-identity of the ecosystem.