Hidden Champions (HCs) are firms unknown to the wider public, but global leaders in the niche markets they serve. This paper looks at distinctive features of these firms, focusing on their dynamic capabilities. Employing a unique data base on German firms, we identify a representative sample of...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the scope for international private standards to play a role in reducing business risk. Business risk is measured as variability in revenue, customer base, informal payments, and temporary firm closure. The results show lower levels of business risk...

This paper analyses the differentials of productive values in Vietnamese micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and how market constraints have hindered their performance. Quantitative analyses suggest substantial differences in value addition among manufacturing MSMEs, and the crucial...

The Circular Economy concept has emerged to face current unsustainable economic trends. Circularity requires to go beyond mainstream linear business models in favour of new design strategies and production processes able to support an efficient use and a continuous flow of resources. Clarifying...

This paper examines the relationship between workplace organisation and innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It uses data for 30 countries, drawn from the European Company Survey, the OECD Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies and the Community...

The Circular Economy concept has emerged to face current unsustainable economic trends. Circularity requires to go beyond mainstream linear business models in favour of new design strategies and production processes able to support an efficient use and a continuous flow of resources. Clarifying...

In the present paper, various groups of innovating German SMEs are empirically identified according to their use (or non-use) of in-house R&D, their reliance on external sources of knowledge, and the degree of internal interactive learning that they employ.In order to account for non-R&D...

This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms' profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms' performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain...

As the Sri Lankan economy attempts to transform into a more value-added and knowledge-led one, recent advancements in technology and innovation have created a plethora of new opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises. This paper provides four case studies of innovative enterprises and...

While it has been increasingly recognized that efficient management holds the key to the development of micro and small enterprises in developing countries, we know very little about the managerial capacity of business owners and managers in these countries. In order to explore whether we can...