Purpose This study examines efficiency and governance characteristics in Italian Benefit Corporations, the first European adoption of the American Benefit Corporation model. These hybrid enterprises combine the pursuit of profit with legally protected common-benefit objectives embedded in their bylaws. The analysis explores how board composition influences firms' capacity to transform resources into value added with a dual purpose, contributing to profitability while generating resources for common-benefit objectives. Design/methodology/approach Using data envelopment analysis and truncated regression on a sample of 230 firms, the study measures efficiency and assesses whether board gender, age, and nationality affect performance outcomes. Findings The results indicate moderate to high economic-financial efficiency. Gender diversity is positively associated with efficiency, board age heterogeneity is negatively associated with efficiency, and nationality diversity shows no significant influence. Originality/value By integrating efficiency assessment with governance determinants, the study extends data envelopment analysis research to Benefit Corporations and connects the efficiency and corporate governance literature. The findings highlight that different dimensions of board diversity are associated with organisational efficiency in different ways, offering implications for the governance of hybrid organisations.
Purpose In emerging economies such as Pakistan, SMEs have a high failure rate, underscoring the need to understand what drives SME performance. This paper fills a knowledge gap by considering the impact of digital transformation, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial competencies and entrepreneurial resilience on SMEs' performance. Entrepreneurial resilience serves as a mediator between digital transformation, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial competencies and SME performance. Finally, environmental dynamism (ED) is used as a moderator between entrepreneurial resilience and SMEs' performance. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 453 managers of manufacturing SMEs in Punjab, Pakistan. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling is used for hypothesis testing. Findings Digital transformation, entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial competencies have a significant and positive influence on entrepreneurial resilience and SME performance. Entrepreneurial resilience significantly enhances SMEs' performance. Additionally, entrepreneurial resilience significantly mediates the relationships among digital transformation, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial competencies and SME performance. Finally, ED significantly moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and SMEs' performance. Practical implications SME managers should prioritize digital transformation, entrepreneurial orientation, competence, resilience and ED to measure SMEs' performance. Policymakers can support these efforts by developing adaptive frameworks that enable SMEs to remain competitive in dynamic environments. Originality/value This is initial research that integrates digital transformation, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial competence, entrepreneurial resilience and ED to examine SME performance within the resource orchestration theory (ROT).
Consumer goods firms often face severe shortages caused by forecast inaccuracy, where a few variants become unexpected bestsellers and trigger costly stockouts. This article positions the choice of lead-time reduction initiatives as a crucial decision for enhancing responsiveness and mitigating shortages and frames this decision as a performance-management prioritization problem under uncertainty. This work developed a pragmatic direction-selection framework grounded in a design science approach and applied in a case to guide managers in evaluating and prioritizing lead-time reduction initiatives. The framework integrates insights from the literature with feasibility-oriented evaluation criteria, applying the principles of multi-criteria decision analysis to assess initiatives in terms of expected return on investment (impact relative to effort) and implementation horizon. The study offers a theory-based, empirically validated framework for identifying and planning lead time reduction initiatives in a context of hard-to-predict demand, making explicit a performance-management logic for prioritizing responsiveness initiatives. The case shows that initiatives with attractive expected impact–effort profiles are not necessarily robust priorities once implementation risk and sensitivity to assumptions are considered. The study advances performance-management research by reframing lead-time reduction as a decision problem under uncertainty and extending the focus from performance evaluation to intervention selection, translating dispersed responsiveness insights into a replicable prioritization logic, validated in a real case and supported by sensitivity checks. The study provides a stepwise decision-support tool that helps cross-functional teams prioritize feasible lead-time reduction initiatives and translate them into an implementation plan, with risk and sensitivity checks to avoid assumption-driven choices. The paper offers a validated innovative decision-support framework that operationalizes lead-time reduction as a performance-management choice under demand uncertainty, using an explicit prioritization logic to select responsiveness initiatives end-to-end.
Global supply chain dynamics have undergone significant changes due to economic uncertainty, logistical disruptions and large-scale crises. Drawing on Dynamic Capabilities Theory, this study examines the relationships among artificial intelligence, knowledge sharing, radical innovation capabilities, blockchain adoption and supply chain resilience. Survey data were collected from 208 firms operating in Türkiye's foreign trade sector and analyzed using structural equation modeling and moderation analysis. The results indicate that artificial intelligence facilitates knowledge sharing, which is positively associated with supply chain resilience. While knowledge sharing is significantly related to radical innovation capabilities, radical innovation capabilities do not exhibit a direct association with supply chain resilience. In addition, blockchain adoption strengthens the relationship between knowledge sharing and supply chain resilience, suggesting that blockchain enhances the effectiveness of knowledge-sharing mechanisms in fostering resilience. This study contributes to the productivity and performance management literature by integrating digital technologies and knowledge-based capabilities within a unified framework to explain supply chain resilience from a dynamic capabilities perspective. The findings also provide practical insights for managers and policymakers by demonstrating that digital technologies alone may not generate resilience unless they are aligned with complementary organizational capabilities, such as knowledge sharing and innovation-oriented structures.
Purpose This study develops and validates a multidimensional, theory-driven scale for assessing innovative culture in China's water engineering sector, differentiating motivational, capability-related, environmental and behavioral conditions surrounding innovative work. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the componential theory of creativity, self-determination theory and organizational support for innovation theory, a 20-item scale was developed and tested with 222 mid- and senior-level managers in Chinese water engineering organizations. Content validation and pilot testing were followed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and measurement-invariance testing across experience groups. The benefit dependency network (BDN) was used only as a conceptual framework for positioning the validated dimensions within broader benefit-realization logic; its relationships were not statistically tested. Findings Results support four dimensions: intrinsic motivation, domain-relevant skills, work environment and creativity-relevant processes. The dimensions demonstrated satisfactory reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and model fit, supporting a multidimensional rather than undifferentiated representation of innovative culture in the sampled organizations. Practical implications The validated scale provides organizations with a diagnostic tool for evaluating innovation-related cultural attributes. It enables the identification of strengths and gaps in innovation capacity, guiding the design of targeted development programs, leadership practices and cultural transformation strategies. Originality/value The study provides a theoretically integrated and psychometrically supported measure of innovative culture in the comparatively underexamined context of Chinese water engineering. It extends performance-management research beyond innovation outcomes toward differentiated cultural conditions and provides a foundation for future research linking these dimensions to performance outcomes. The BDN is retained as a conceptual, not empirically validated, benefit-realization lens.
