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Sustainability-Oriented Innovation of SMEs
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Sustainability-Oriented Innovation of SMEs

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2022) | Viewed by 7974

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Seong-jin Choi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Business, Hanyang University, Seoul 133791, Korea
Interests: corporate political strategy; business ethics; China; innovation; startups
Dr. Sukyoon Jung

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Business, Hanyang University, Seoul 133791, Korea
Interests: nonmarket strategy; financial reporting; disclosure regulation
Dr. Jihoon Park

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Business, Hanyang University, Seoul 133791, Korea
Interests: technology innovation management; entrepreneurship; strategic management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Economists and management scholars have repeatedly highlighted that innovation is critical for corporate and national development (Calantone, Cavusgil, & Zhao, 2002). Recently, the quest for sustainability-oriented growth has been energized by the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought issues to light regarding economic polarization, environmental risk, and health issues. Thus, sustainable innovation is garnering attention from researchers and policymakers (Cillo, Petruzzelli, Ardito, Del Giudice, 2019). Sustainability-based innovation can be defined as “the development of new products, processes, services and technologies that contribute to the development and well-being of human needs and institutions while respecting natural resources and regeneration capacities” (Tello & Yoon, 2008, p. 165).

With this in mind, a few researchers have attempted to investigate sustainable innovation. Based on this reasoning, innovation should not only guarantee a competitive advantage for companies but also provide environmental benefits and produce social well-being (Carayannis, Grigoroudis, Del Giudice, Della Peruta, & Sindakis, 2017; Garcia & Calantone, 2002).

Despite the profusion of studies on sustainability-oriented innovation, there is scant research on sustainable innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thus, this Special Issue aims to invite original and relevant conceptual and empirical research that combines sustainability and innovation in the SME context to address the critical issues faced by businesses, organizations, and society. We also seek experimental research and meta-analyses, including interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral studies, that may address, but are not limited to, the following list of potential research topics:

  • Sustainability-oriented innovation for SMEs;
  • Sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship for SMEs;
  • Sustainability-oriented human resource management for SMEs;
  • Sustainability-oriented economy and finance for SMEs;
  • Sustainability-oriented mobility and tourism for SMEs;
  • Sustainability-oriented education innovation for SMEs;
  • Sustainability-oriented technology for SMEs.
  • Sustainability-oriented political strategies for SMEs.

Literature

Calantone, R. J., Cavusgil, S. T., & Zhao, Y. (2002). Learning orientation, firm innovation capability, and firm performance. Industrial marketing management, 31(6), 515-524.

Cillo, V., Petruzzelli, A. M., Ardito, L., & Del Giudice, M. (2019). Understanding sustainable innovation: A systematic literature review. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 26(5), 1012-1025.

Tello, S. F., & Yoon, E. (2008). Examining drivers of sustainable innovation. International Journal of Business Strategy, 8(3), 164-169.

Carayannis, E. G., Grigoroudis, E., Del Giudice, M., Della Peruta, M. R., & Sindakis, S. (2017). An exploration of contemporary organizational artifacts and routines in a sustainable excellence context. Journal of Knowledge Management.

Garcia, R., & Calantone, R. (2002). A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology: a literature review. Journal of Product Innovation Management: An international publication of the product development & management association, 19(2), 110-132.

Dr. Seong-jin Choi
Dr. Sukyoon Jung
Dr. Jihoon Park
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainability
  • innovation
  • small- and medium-sized enterprises

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 972 KiB  
Article
Unleashing the Moderating Influence of Firms’ Life Cycle Stages and National Income on Capital Structure Targeting Behavior: A Roadmap towards Sustainable Development
by Yongrong Xin, Muhammad Sajid Amin, Hashim Khan, Jiyuan Zheng and Muhammad Umer Quddoos
Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 2945; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15042945 - 06 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1911
Abstract
Firms adjust their capital structures to avoid financial distress and bankruptcy to sustain in the market. Asian firms have significantly different financial patterns than their USA and European counterparts. The moderation model gains a better understanding of the relationship between the model variables. [...] Read more.
Firms adjust their capital structures to avoid financial distress and bankruptcy to sustain in the market. Asian firms have significantly different financial patterns than their USA and European counterparts. The moderation model gains a better understanding of the relationship between the model variables. We tested the moderating roles of life cycle stages and macro-economic factor gross national income per capita to find their moderating impacts on the speed of adjustment towards target capital structures of Asian manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2018. Our sample of manufacturing industries comes from the eleven Asian economies. We used the dynamic GMM model to estimate moderating impacts and applied the pooled OLS and fixed effect estimations to test the validity of the coefficient of lagged leverage. We find that life cycle stages have positive moderating impacts, and different gross national incomes per capita have no significant effects in adjusting the capital structure. We test the combined moderating impacts of the life cycle and gross national income by applying the full model. The results reveal that moderator variables significantly impact adjusting the target capital structure. From the policy perspective, it is recommended that investors should consider the firms’ life cycle stages and per capita income of the economy in making their international investment portfolios. The government should ensure requisite finance for firms at subsidized interest rates to financially support them at critical stages like introduction and decline. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability-Oriented Innovation of SMEs)
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35 pages, 6593 KiB  
Article
Influence of the Government Department on the Production Capacity Reserve of Emergency Enterprises Based on Multi-Scenario Evolutionary Game
by Xinshang You, Shuo Zhao, Yanbo Yang and Dongli Zhang
Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15549; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315549 - 22 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1146
Abstract
With the frequent occurrence of world emergency events, the emergency management of government departments in various countries is facing great challenges. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shortage of various emergency resources is prominent, and the emergency supplies reserve combined by [...] Read more.
With the frequent occurrence of world emergency events, the emergency management of government departments in various countries is facing great challenges. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shortage of various emergency resources is prominent, and the emergency supplies reserve combined by governments and enterprises is an important guarantee for dealing with emergency management problems. This paper mainly studies the impact of a government sustainability-oriented innovation policy on the production capacity reserve of security emergency enterprises (SEEs), and constructs an evolutionary game model between the local government and SEEs. Then, it focuses on the impact of a reputation mechanism on the government enterprise cooperative reserve. According to the condition of a country, the central government’s punishment mechanism is introduced, and the evolutionary and stable strategies of the behavior choices of the local government and SEEs are compared and analyzed. Combined with the evolution degree of emergency events, the numerical simulation analysis is used to deduce and simulate the multi scenario of the example model. The results show that the reputation mechanism can effectively promote the evolution of government and enterprises to the ideal state under various scenarios. When the punishment intensity of the central government is higher than the total benefit of the implementation of the mere formality policy by the local government, it can effectively prevent the omission of the local government. This study provides a new idea for the government to formulate reasonable policies to promote SEEs to reserve production capacity, which is more conducive to government enterprise cooperation to deal with emergency events. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability-Oriented Innovation of SMEs)
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16 pages, 756 KiB  
Article
Predictors of Entrepreneurial Intention among High School Students in South Korea
by Min-Sun Kim, Andrian Dolfriandra Huruta and Cheng-Wen Lee
Sustainability 2022, 14(21), 14168; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142114168 - 30 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1376
Abstract
According to the theory of planned behavior, the goal of this research is to evaluate the connections between perceived entrepreneurial capacity, perceived social norm, attitude toward entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial intention. It also examines the mediating effect of the educational environment on these connections. [...] Read more.
According to the theory of planned behavior, the goal of this research is to evaluate the connections between perceived entrepreneurial capacity, perceived social norm, attitude toward entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial intention. It also examines the mediating effect of the educational environment on these connections. Based on the conceptual structure of the theory, this research study was organized to explore how the conception of the theory works in the case of Korean students and to further assess the role of the educational environment in the course of its operation. At Mirae High School of Science and Technology, eighty-nine respondents were used for the statistical analysis. One model was chosen to explore this research concept, namely, variance-based structural equation modeling (VB-SEM). All of the direct hypotheses are supported except the indirect hypothesis. The perceived entrepreneurial capacity positively influences entrepreneurial intention. The perceived social norm positively influences entrepreneurial intention. Additionally, a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship influences the intention to engage in it. The indirect effect is not in line with the expected hypothesis. The research’s findings contribute to the literature review by adding another empirical confirmation (educational environment’s role) from South Korean students’ viewpoint. It offers useful information and provides students with entrepreneurial skills. This research also contributes to the advancement of knowledge in relation to the predictors of entrepreneurship in students, and it could help governments to make decisions on entrepreneurship. Moreover, it highlights the direction in which a government or policymaker can take to pursue entrepreneurship and its education. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability-Oriented Innovation of SMEs)
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18 pages, 3445 KiB  
Article
Micro- and Small-Sized Enterprises’ Sustainability-Oriented Innovation for COVID-19
by Weilun Huang, Hengbin Yin, Seongjin Choi and Mohsin Muhammad
Sustainability 2022, 14(12), 7521; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14127521 - 20 Jun 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2477
Abstract
The economic impact of a public emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is often reduced by micro and small businesses (MSEs) undertaking sustainability-oriented innovation for public emergencies (SOIPE), which includes production and service innovation, information innovation, marketing innovation, and labor innovation. The originality [...] Read more.
The economic impact of a public emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is often reduced by micro and small businesses (MSEs) undertaking sustainability-oriented innovation for public emergencies (SOIPE), which includes production and service innovation, information innovation, marketing innovation, and labor innovation. The originality of this study lies in its prediction and evaluation of COVID-19′s challenges and SOIPE’s requirements to have a keen observation and discovery ability. In this paper, we combined nominal group technique, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process, least squares, and a case study to investigate governance, economic, financial, sociocultural, and environmental sustainability and demonstrate the MSEs’ sustainability evaluation model. In a qualitative study and literature review, MSEs were found to use SOIPE in a variety of ways. Some studies focused on marketing innovation, while others were hampered by their limited understanding. From both a theoretical and empirical perspective, this study suggests that MSEs should identify their optimal SOIPE based on the impact and volatility of a public emergency. In addition, this study presents an assessment of the impact and environmental volatility of a public emergency, as well as MSEs’ SOIPE, which is more helpful for enterprises. Finally, this study creatively introduces the SOIPE of MSEs, which has important policy ramifications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability-Oriented Innovation of SMEs)
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