Untapped Aspects of Innovation and Competition within a European Resilient Circular Economy. A Dual Comparative Study

Analyzing the mechanism of strategic orientation towards digitization and organizational performance settings enduring employee resistance to innovation and performance capabilities

Resistance to innovation is a behavioral barrier to implementing innovation in any organization. It is associated with employees’ demotivation to adopt new technologies. Strategic orientation toward digitalization is a new dimension in shaping innovative organizational performance. It is also evident from past studies that certain employees’ capabilities are associated with organizations’ strategic orientation when undergoing digitalization. This study examines the relationship between these factors and achieving innovative organizational performance. First, it looks at how strategic orientation toward digitalization relates to digital capabilities, which include digital knowledge and innovation. This study also examines how capabilities affect strategic orientation toward digitalization and innovative organizational performance. Moreover, the negatively regulating role of resistance to innovation as a moderator is also tested between capabilities and innovative organizational performance in this research. The authors discovered a connection between strategic orientation towards digitalization and innovative organizational performance in their research. A Likert scale with five points was used to quantify the responses, and the points ranged from 1 to 5 on the scale, with one being strongly disagreed and five strongly agreed. The findings of the study also show that digital knowledge capability and innovation capability have a substantial impact on innovative organizational performance. The research also discovered that employees’ resistance to innovation exerts a sizeable moderating influence on the connection between digital knowledge competence and innovation capability within the innovative organizational performance. The study’s results show that businesses must have a strategic focus on digitalization if they want to improve their ability to come up with new ideas and their digital knowledge skills, which are both critical for the growth of the entrepreneurial system. The model that has been proposed is available to entrepreneurs so that they can apply it in their businesses to advance the entrepreneurial system appropriately. The authors present a theoretical model for entrepreneurial systems based on the strategic orientation towards the digitalization approach. This model is something that entrepreneurs could utilize to improve the performance of their organizations as a whole. In addition, the employee’s resistance to innovation is used as a moderator in the model, which is another innovative method. The research contributes new and essential information to the existing literature on innovative organizational performance.

Barriers to Blockchain Adoption in the Circular Economy: A Fuzzy Delphi and Best-Worst Approach

Blockchain can help to fundamentally alter aspects of circular economy (CE) activities and overcome pressing sustainability issues. Nevertheless, limited studies have investigated the barriers to blockchain adoption in the CE. This study aims to close the knowledge gap by providing a comprehensive review of the barriers hampering the adoption and integration of blockchain technology in the CE. An integrated approach based on fuzzy Delphi and best-worst methods has been applied to analyze and rank the barriers. Sixteen barriers to blockchain adoption in the CE were identified from the academic literature and validated by a panel of experts. The findings from the fuzzy Delphi technique identified ten significant barriers for further analysis. Then, using the best-worst method, the optimal weights were determined based on the experts’ judgment to recognize the importance of each barrier. The findings from this method showed that a lack of knowledge and management support, reluctance to change and technological immaturity are the most significant barriers. In contrast, the least significant barriers are investment costs, security risks, and scalability issues. Theoretically, this study is the first to apply an integrated approach combining fuzzy Delphi and best-worst techniques to prioritze the barriers to blockchain adoption in the CE. It also provides valuable insights for managers and decision-makers that can be used to optimize blockchain implementations in the CE.

Cohesion Forces Determinants in Cluster Development: A Study Case for Romania

This paper investigates to what extent bilateral relationships between business partners can positively impact multiple business alliances, such as clusters based on community of practice (CoP). Given empirical facts developed in the clustering process of Romanian companies, this paper investigates the way clusters may contribute to the alleviation of the dark side phenomenon and what ingredients, such as trust building, cluster management dedication, social interaction, pre-existing bilateral business relations, and others, may contribute to this role. Based on questionnaires and interviews, we found the significant importance of these ingredients as cohesion determinants in cluster development. The most influent factors of CF were an immediate and short-term business interest (0.62), pre-existing personal relationships (without business interest) with one or more members of the cluster (0.57), pre-existing business relationships with one or more members of the cluster (0.58), and participation in joint funding (0.48). We collected the information using the questionnaire administered online as a measuring instrument whose role was to collect and systematize data. The collected data were processed, and we obtained tables of frequency and correlation, graphs associated with them, and a regression model designed in SmartPLS software (SmartPLS GmbH, Oststeinbek, Germany). The variables that form the main constructs were introduced in SmartPls Software, where we designed a model and evaluated the Composite Reliability, Cronbach’s alpha, AVE, R-square, and Bootstrapping of the model.

Challenging Novelties within the Circular Economy Concept under the Digital Transformation of Society

The study makes, under a new configuration of the circular economy, a cross-country analysis based on the Competitiveness and Innovation Indicators in the E.U., i.e., two sub-criteria: private investments, jobs, and gross value added; and patents related to recycling and secondary raw materials as a proxy for innovation. The analysis proved that investments influence the number of patents, and participate in societal transformation. A further cluster analysis classified countries on the level of innovation. The cluster analysis in SPSS centres on significant potential, weaknesses, impact, and waste management control through blockchain technology. It is found that the factors that influence innovation, according to the Global Competitiveness Report, link the business dynamism and innovation capability with the capacity to sustain resilient ideas, such as competitive intelligence and social entrepreneurship. The discussions aim to prove that the efforts to rethink the circular economy principles contribute to its conceptual and societal transformation role through the implementation of innovative processes, inventive solutions, and blockchain technologies, and their social consequences to solve environmental problems. Once understood and accepted, CE will drive sustainable behaviour.