Purpose This study examines how individual sensemaking relates to business model innovation (BMI) in internationalizing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and whether network capability mediates that relationship. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses are tested with survey data from 187 internationally operating Finnish SMEs. Ordinary least squares regressions with bootstrapped mediation analyses are used to assess the relationships between communication-oriented sensemaking, cultural sensemaking, network capability and BMI. Findings Communication-oriented sensemaking is positively associated with BMI, whereas cultural sensemaking is not. Network capability is positively associated with BMI and mediates the relationship between communication-oriented sensemaking and BMI, but not the relationship between cultural sensemaking and BMI. Robustness checks support this pattern. Research limitations/implications The study is based on cross-sectional data from SMEs in Finland, which may limit causal inference and generalizability. Future research should test the model longitudinally and across cultural and institutional settings, especially in emerging markets contexts. The findings extend the dynamic capabilities perspective of SMEs by identifying sensemaking as a cognitive micro-foundation of BMI, thus integrating individual-level cognition with organizational-level relational capabilities. Practical implications SME managers seeking sustainable international growth should encourage open dialog and communication within and outside the firm, as that will help them align internal interpretations and strengthen relational learning with partners, subsequently facilitating business model development. Developing network capability is important for translating interpretive sensemaking into organizational growth. Managers should seek to complement cultural awareness with active sensegiving and collaborative sharing practices to maintain the viability of their business models across international contexts. Originality/value The study links sensemaking, network capability and BMI in SME internationalization literature, showing that the cognitive microfoundations of BMI depend less on cultural interpretation alone than on communicative sensemaking translated through network capability.

Social enterprises address societal challenges in entrepreneurial ways. This duality of combining social purpose and business is said to cause tension. There is limited understanding of how this reflects dynamic capabilities in social enterprises. Another underexplored area is how individuals make sense of still-maturing organizational dynamic capabilities. This study examines how social enterprises manage tensions between social mission and financial sustainability. The study focuses on social entrepreneurs sensemaking of their organizational dynamic capabilities that enable social value creation. Using a qualitative approach and content analysis, this study contributes to the literature on dynamic capabilities in social entrepreneurship. It illustrates how sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring capabilities are described to manage tensions while developing a social business. The data consists of interviews of six social entrepreneurs. The analysis reveals how social entrepreneurs identify societal needs and develop business and mobilize resources with a value-driven approach. Furthermore, the dual mission does not cause only tensions, but also enables business, and this requires building dynamic capabilities for the organization. The findings illustrate how social entrepreneurs enhance organizational and network capabilities crucial for business development, without losing sight of their social mission.

Purpose This study aims to critically evaluate the applicability of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools for academic research in international business (IB), specifically focusing on the topic of firms’ nonlinear internationalization. It assesses these tools’ key performance dimensions: correctness, hallucinations and thoroughness. Design/methodology/approach This research adopts an exploratory approach, examining a comprehensive set of GenAI tools: eight chatbots and four AI-driven applications designed for academic purposes. The evaluation focuses on the capabilities and limitations of these tools in generating accurate research-related content for IB scholars. Findings This study finds that while GenAI tools capture some aspects of nonlinear internationalization, they often produce partially accurate and/or biased results. Common issues include providing fictitious sources, incorrect publication data and vague or incorrect answers. Thus, substantial development is still needed for GenAI tools to become reliable for scientific research. Practical implications Researchers should use GenAI tools with caution, verifying the accuracy of generated content and citations independently. A cautious approach is crucial to maintain the integrity and quality of academic research. Social implications This study raises awareness about ethical and practical challenges of using AI in academia, including issues related to plagiarism and misinformation. It underscores the importance of critical evaluation when using GenAI tools for research. Originality/value This paper contributes to the emerging literature on the role of GenAI in academic research by providing a critical assessment of the usability and limitations of current tools in studying complex IB phenomena. By using nonlinear internationalization as an example, it demonstrates how GenAI may support or hinder IB scholarship.

The purpose of this study is to examine what drives entrepreneurial behaviour and sensemaking in international entrepreneurship, a topic noted for its importance but that has hitherto been mostly ignored in the international entrepreneurship literature. The study focuses on explaining the antecedents of bricolage behaviour in internationalising Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and applies structural equation modelling on a sample of internationally operating SMEs originating from Finland. The findings indicate that both institutions and sensemaking predict bricolage behaviour amongst international enterprises. More specifically, communication of sensemaking enhances both bricolage ability and confidence. The regulatory dimension of the institutional environment has a positive effect on bricolage ability, while the cognitive environment enhances communication of sensemaking. The study adds a novel contribution to international entrepreneurship literature by applying a behavioural lens and being the first to establish the antecedents of bricolage behaviour in internationalising SMEs.

This study explores the role of culture in shaping social entrepreneurship ecosystems with a lens of context dependent framework on culture. While ecosystems have been studied in terms of actors, networks, and resources, the cultural layer remains understudied. Responding to the lack of in-depth, culturally informed analysis beyond broad syntheses in literature on the topic, this study sheds light on national social-enterprise ecosystems through Abramson’s context-dependent model to show how locally embedded values, meanings, resources and motivations shape, and are in turn shaped by entrepreneurial ecosystem dynamics, thus extending existing theory. A qualitative content analysis is used to analyze four EU social enterprise ecosystem country reports in terms of how they describe cultural meanings, resources and motivations in the country’s social enterprise ecosystem. The findings shed light on which cultural elements are emphasized within social entrepreneurship ecosystems across different country contexts. Through cross-analysis, four thematic categories are identified, describing cultural elements emphasized in the country’s social enterprise ecosystems, welfare and institutional models, history of cooperatives, associations, perceptions of entrepreneurship, the role of institutions and the overlapping category of values and norms. This study argues culture in social entrepreneurial ecosystems should be studied viewing culture as an overarching and inseparable dimension, from a more heuristic point of view. The key themes that emerge from the study are the role of welfare systems, perceptions of entrepreneurship, institutions and values. These themes function as symbolic carriers of cultural meanings in social entrepreneurial ecosystems.

It is acknowledged that dynamic capabilities can underlie internationalisation of firms, yet extant research has tended to examine the role of capabilities in international entrepreneurship in separate studies, neglecting that international enterprises tend to develop different bundles or portfolios of capabilities that may have differing impacts on their internationalisation. Applying the concept of dynamic managerial capabilities, this study illustrates how different capability portfolios of entrepreneurial decision-making and network capabilities explain early internationalisation of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Employing a machine learning method through artificial neural network (ANN) analysis, the findings show how early internationalisation is predicted by a portfolio of different dynamic managerial capabilities. This study thus contributes to the international entrepreneurship literature by outlining the capability portfolios necessary for early internationalisation and proposing a taxonomy for capability portfolios for early and late internationalising firms, by clarifying the role of dynamic managerial capabilities in early and successful entrepreneurial internationalisation and by introducing the ANN methodology as a useful tool in the research corpus of the international entrepreneurship domain.

International business today is increasingly stimulated to be conducted in a socially and environmentally responsible way. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have emphasized the role of international business as an agent of transformation. Sustainability and related issues are global by nature; thus, they have a reach in international business and in providing international entrepreneurial opportunities. Despite this, research on international business and sustainable development has focused primarily on large multinational enterprises, while studies on international entrepreneurship (IE) have remained relatively absent. This study contributes to the literature on the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by shedding light on how managers of international enterprises make sense of responsible business practices (RBPs). With an empirical sample of 179 Finnish internationalized SMEs and linear regression analysis, the study finds out that communication of sensemaking enhances the firms’ RBPs. This study illustrates the role of the sensemaking approach in IE, where it is essential to account for managerial sensemaking when seeking to explain how international entrepreneurial firms strategize for sustainable international business and can potentially contribute to Sustainable Development Goals.

Research on business models in international entrepreneurship has picked up recently, yet more clarification is needed in explaining business model change in internationally operating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, we provide a more nuanced view of why and how the institutional environment influences international SMEs’ efforts to change their business models to respond to a crisis. We take the COVID-19 pandemic as the starting point of analysis and propose a conceptual framework that links the institution-based view of strategy with research on business model change in international entrepreneurship at times of an external crisis. The institutional lens taken in this paper contributes to explaining business model change in internationally operating SMEs during times of global shock, crisis, or both. The developed model contributes by serving as a foundation for future empirical studies examining business models, institutions, crisis management, and resilience for the literature on entrepreneurship, small business management, and the internationalization of SMEs.

Today’s entrepreneurs and managers face challenges of a transformative character [...]

Intercultural business interaction has received limited scholarly attention in business-to-business (B2B) marketing research, with language and culture particularly being largely neglected topics despite the literature noting their importance in B2B marketing. This study addresses this omission by focusing on how managers make sense of the role of language in intercultural business interactions. We also explore the role of language as a potential source of individual power in international business (IB) relationships. The empirical enquiry focuses on an extreme case of Russians' intercultural business interactions with Finns or in Finland before the war in Ukraine. The findings show that context and language, as well as translation power dynamics are intertwined, generating an additional level of power dynamics that emerge from the business per se. Language particularly influences self-perceived power in business relationships and can lead to dependence or frustration due to linguistic limitations. The study contributes to research on B2B marketing and IB by highlighting that individual-level exposure to intercultural business interactions entails significant linguistic challenges that cannot be solved only by using English. Specifically, it contributes to addressing the issue of language in use, which has rarely been examined in the literature on intercultural interaction in the B2B environment.

The different social contexts and historical backgrounds of countries in which companies operate may influence how their managers understand and apply the concept of environmental commitment. Thus, the understanding of environmental commitment in the post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe can be expected to be different from the Western markets. This study sheds light on these issues by analyzing managerial stories about environmental commitment in Russia. It explains how managers' sensemaking is shaped by the Soviet socio-historical context. This study contributes to the limited literature on environmental commitment in post-communist societies and provides a link between environmental commitment and sensemaking research, thus responding to recent calls for a clarification of the microfoundations of corporate social responsibility.

KEYWORDS: International entrepreneurshipresiliencebusiness modelSME internationalizationdigitalization

Sustainability is a global trend that requires balancing environmental, social, and financial concerns. Issues related to social and environmental responsibility have attracted growing research interest in the research domains on small businesses and large multinational companies, but they are yet to be explored in the context of internationalized small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which experience the liabilities of foreignness and smallness but whose share of and impact on the world economy are growing. This study connects entrepreneurial decision-making with business responsibility and explores the effects of effectual decision-making logic on responsible business practices (RBPs) and their outcomes in the context of internationalized SMEs. The empirical part of the study was based on the survey data from a sample of 179 Finnish SMEs. The results obtained via linear regression modeling showed that a more pronounced effectual logic can lead to more RBPs in internationalized SMEs. The RBPs, in turn, were found to have a positive impact on the competitive performance of these SMEs, thus serving as mediators. This study contributes to the literature on responsible decision-making in both the research areas of internationalization of SMEs and small business responsibility.