Gordon Liu

Drawing on the theory of the growth of the firm, this study examines the relationship between radical product innovation and export behaviour in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Utilising data from the UK Longitudinal Small Business Surveys (LSBS) for the period 2015–2017, this study shows that SMEs that engage in radical product innovation develop heightened growth expectations, which in turn drive export behaviour. The findings reveal a nonlinear moderation effect of customer portfolio breadth on the relationship between radical product innovation and growth expectation. This effect is strongest when SMEs target either a single customer group or a highly diversified customer base. The study contributes to the literature by elucidating the mechanisms through which innovation influences SMEs' internationalisation and highlighting customer portfolio composition's vital role. These insights offer valuable theoretical contributions and practical implications for SME managers seeking to leverage innovation for international expansion. This research also emphasises the importance of strategic customer targeting for innovation outcome optimisation.

Digital transformation presents a crucial strategic imperative for family businesses seeking to maintain competitiveness and long-term viability. The academic literature reveals divergent perspectives on how family businesses approach digital transformation initiatives. This study adopts a socioemotional wealth perspective to examine the relationship between family ownership and digital transformation. The research specifically investigates how family formal business networks and next-generation dispersion moderate this relationship. Analysis of panel data from Chinese listed family firms between 2016 and 2020 reveals that family ownership negatively influences digital transformation efforts. However, this negative effect diminishes when family firms participate in formal business networks or involve multiple next-generation members in leadership positions. These findings yield important theoretical contributions regarding the intricate relationships between family dynamics and technological advancement. The research also provides practical insights for family business leaders navigating digital transformation challenges. This study advances understanding of how different dimensions of socioemotional wealth shape family firms’ strategic responses to technological change.

This study explores how inter‐organizational justice, and formal contracts influence new product development (NPD) collaboration in supply chain networks. Challenging traditional transaction cost economics (TCE), the research focuses on collaborative NPD in hub‐and‐spoke supply chain structures. Data from 183 Chinese suppliers and 22 executive interviews reveal unexpected patterns in NPD collaboration. Procedural justice exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relationship with NPD collaboration, linking higher fairness to improved collaboration up to a point, beyond which further increases may associate with diminishing returns. In contrast, distributive justice shows a U‐shaped relationship with NPD collaboration, where higher equity initially relates to reduced collaboration but later correlates with renewed engagement. Notably, formal contracts amplify the negative interactions between these justice dimensions. This contradicts the conventional view of their complementary roles. These findings contribute to theoretical advancements by illustrating how inter‐organizational justice mechanisms function differently in complex network structures compared to simple dyadic relationships. Careful calibration of inter‐organizational justice dimensions and formal contracts proves essential for fostering productive NPD collaboration. These governance insights offer directions for enhancing supply chain relationship management.

Purpose: The rapid growth of professional esports has highlighted the lack of a universally recognised governing body to standardise operations and competition rules. This absence presents many challenges. A key concern is the well-being of professional esports players (e-pro-players), who often suffer from exhaustion. This study aims to examine the factors contributing to exhaustion among e-pro-players. Design/methodology/approach: Using the conservation of resources theory, we developed a framework to explain the factors leading to e-pro-players’ exhaustion and the conditions under which it occurs. We tested this framework with 126 responses in a dyadic survey from e-pro-players and their coaches in China. Additionally, we gathered qualitative insights from 50 interviews with esports stakeholders to provide more context for our quantitative findings. Findings: Our study found that e-pro-players’ intrinsic motivation to engage in training reduces their exhaustion, while their struggle to cope with uncertainty in esports environments (intolerance of uncertainty) increases it. The effect of intrinsic motivation is weaker for those who believe their talent for playing esports is fixed (entity belief) but stronger for those with high relational identification with their coaches. Additionally, the link between uncertainty intolerance and exhaustion is stronger in players with strong entity beliefs. Originality/value: Our study sheds light on the factors contributing to e-pro-players’ exhaustion within the partially regulated professional esports environment, a phenomenon that significantly influences their overall well-being. Through the identification and examination of these factors and the conditions under which they affect exhaustion, we deepen the understanding of the drivers of exhaustion for e-pro-players who operate in an industry lacking standardised regulations.

Social enterprises (SEs), hybrid entities balancing revenue generation and social or environmental goals, often employ bricolage due to resource constraints. Interviews with 37 SE managers unveiled two pivotal bricolage strategies—utilizing SE status–related marketing resources and leveraging available technological resources—as well as how their interplay influences geographical expansion and the contingent roles of stakeholder participation in facilitating their impact. Quantitative studies of 778 U.K. SEs confirm that the predominant facilitator of geographic expansion is the utilization of status-related marketing resources, surpassing the impact of leveraging available technological resources. SEs’ efforts to utilize SE status–related marketing resources should be harmonized with community participation, whereas SEs aiming to leverage available technological resources should align their efforts with employee participation. We also underscore the substitution dynamic between these two bricolage strategies. However, SEs prioritizing employee participation are better positioned to mitigate the challenges arising from this substitution than those emphasizing community participation.

Internal branding, a major marketing research topic, focuses on persuading internal members (e.g., employees) to internalize the organization’s brand promise and become brand ambassadors. This chapter reviews the development of internal branding research in the context of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The author develops a conceptual map that identifies the key internal branding elements that emerged through this research stream: organizational brand-building behaviours, internalization, employee brand-building behaviours, internalization facilitators, environmental/contextual conditions, and consequences. Among them, the former four elements reflect the NPO’s internal branding processes. Environmental/contextual conditions represent the contingent factors of the internal branding processes. The consequences explain the aftereffects of internal branding processes. The synthesis of this diverse research provides a deeper insight into our understanding of internal branding in the nonprofit sector.

Purpose: The authors examine the influence of planning and execution capability (PEC) and operational improvement capability (OIC) on small-and-medium-sized firms’ (SMEs) attainment of different innovation outcomes under the conditions of exports and formal business networks, based on the capability-based perspective and organisational learning literature.Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyse time-series data about UK SMEs, extracted from the 2015 and 2016 UK Longitudinal Small Business Surveys (LSBS).Findings: The authors failed to find any direct effects of PEC and OIC on product innovation outcomes. However, the authors discovered that OIC supports the generation of process innovation outputs more strongly than PEC. Additionally, exports and formal business networks provide SMEs with different learning opportunities. The authors find limited support that exports amplify the beneficial effect of PEC on product innovation outcomes more than formal business networks. On the other hand, formal business networks strengthen the effect of PEC on process innovation outcomes more than exports. As a result, exports reduce the beneficial effect of OIC on product innovation outcomes more than formal business networks. However, formal business networks weaken the beneficial effect of OIC more than exports.Originality/value: The authors distinguish between two types of organisational capabilities – PEC and OIC – and examine their impact on SMEs in achieving innovation outcomes. The authors also identify SMEs’ involvement in exports and formal business networks as the important boundary conditions for such effects. xD; xA; xD; xA;

Purpose: Drawing on information processing theory, this paper aims to study how consumers’ liking of background music in advertising affects their purchase intention and explore the roles of positive brand attitudes, music mode and music tempo within such a relationship. Design/methodology/approach: We created several radio advertisements that promote two fictitious products: an electric car (EcoCar) and a reusable coffee mug (EcoMug). We study the role of music in these advertisements and examine how it affects purchase intention across multiple experiments. Findings: We confirm the prediction that positive brand attitudes mediate the relationship between music liking and purchase intention. We also show that music moderates such an indirect relationship because major mode music strengthens the effect of positive brand attitudes on purchase intention. Additionally, we find that major mode music with a fast tempo can further strengthen the effect of positive brand attitudes on purchase intention. As a result, the indirect effect of music liking upon purchase intention via positive brand attitudes will be moderated jointly by the music mode and the music tempo. Originality/value: Limited scholarship explores how the subjective characteristics of music affect consumer buying behaviour in conjunction with the objective characteristics of music. The current research addresses this gap by investigating how music liking (a subjective characteristic of music) and music mode and tempo (objective characteristics of music) affect consumer buying behaviour.