Femvertising, a progressive advertising approach, combines product promotion with empowering messages for women. Recent trends, especially in feminine hygiene, have shifted towards such empowering narratives, moving away from traditional stigmatized portrayals of women. This research investigates how femvertising impacts consumer perceptions in feminine hygiene advertising. Focusing on transformational versus informational advertising, we examine femvertising's effects on purchase behavior together with the role of perceived authenticity, and the impact of consumers' construal level mindset. The findings from four experimental studies reveal that transformational messages significantly boost purchase behavior more than informational ones. Key to this effect is the alignment of message framing with the consumer's construal level and the mediating role of perceived authenticity. These results provide critical insights for brands using femvertising strategies, emphasizing the importance of authentic, resonant messages aligned with the target audience's mindset.

There is a growing recognition that firms increase their collaboration breadth by opening their boundaries to more innovation partners, sourcing and integrating complementary knowledge, skills, and resources and, in turn, improving their innovation performance. However, not all firms benefit equally from collaboration breadth. We argue that the literature has not considered important contingency factors that can mitigate such benefits. This paper enhances understanding of the relationship between collaboration breadth and innovation performance by contending, and empirically confirming, that the magnitude and direction of this association depend on the type of constraints the firm faces. Drawing on organizational learning theory, it is argued that firms encountering financial, knowledge, and institutional innovation constraints will compromise the effects of their openness. The empirical findings suggest that innovative firms face challenges balancing trade-offs between a broad collaboration network and high financial, knowledge, and institutional constraints. 

The emergence of data as a critical asset and the prevalence of technologies such as the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) on the one hand, and the importance of collaborations for value creation on the other hand have given rise to a new breed of ecosystems known as data ecosystems. While data ecosystems provide new business opportunities, proposing and capturing value in those ecosystems is challenging, and the extant literature provides little guidance in this regard. Our research encompasses two studies that address this limitation and establish a framework for business-model archetypes in the context of AIoT data ecosystems. In the first study, exploratory qualitative research on 28 leading AIoT data ecosystem actors leads to the identification of value propositions and value-capture mechanisms in these ecosystems. We identify eight possible value propositions and eight possible value-capture mechanisms. The second, qualitative study centers on 19 expert interviews. Our analysis leads to the identification of two dimensions – control and customization – that guide the conceptualization and formation of business-model archetypes. Using these dimensions, we develop a framework for business-model archetypes in AIoT data ecosystems. Our findings contribute to the discourse on data ecosystems and offer new perspectives valuable for both researchers and industry practitioners.

The era of digitization coincides with a growing interest in social and environmental sustainability. Management scholars, therefore, turned their attention to the intersection of both trends, seeking a better understanding of how firms can manage digital sustainability. Business models are a central element in the strategic management of digital sustainability. Due to the diverse roots in the digitization literature, the sustainability literature and the business model literature, previous work on digital-sustainable business models is highly fragmented. We, therefore, develop a strategic management framework and conduct an integrative literature review to synthesize fragmented insights, covering 134 studies published between 2007 and 2023 in leading academic journals. Examining the synthesized body of knowledge from the lens of affordances and our framework's inclusive strategic management perspective, we then identify promising avenues for further strategy research. Among others, future research should examine complementarities and conflicts between the three business model dimensions (value propositions, value creation and delivery processes, value capture mechanisms), between multiple options within each dimension, between different digital technologies, between various digital affordances, between digitalization and sustainability and between the outcomes of the triple-bottom-line. More efforts should also be directed towards the antecedents and boundary conditions of digital-sustainable business models and towards questions of generalizability, especially towards generalizable theoretical mechanisms. Our framework, synthesis and research agenda support strategy scholars in advancing our understanding of business models for digital sustainability.

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this study is shed light on the underlying forces behind entrepreneurship within a regional innovation system (RIS) in a remote rural region. The authors examine the following questions: Which are the main underlying forces behind the entrepreneurial process in a rural RIS characterized by traditionally low-tech, small-scale businesses? How can the development of a low-tech regional innovation system be conceptualized?

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

The design of the study is based on entrepreneurship theory. Data analysis followed practices used in phenomenography, a research approach used to analyse and identify commonalities and variations in populations' perceptions of a certain phenomenon. Data are composed using semi-structured interviews and a database composed of company information of all firms in the population.

FINDINGS

A proactive mobilization of regional stakeholders and resources can be an important driving force behind the entrepreneurial process and generation of a rural RIS. Innovation can be generated within low-tech industries turning the rural context into an asset. An RIS in a remote rural context can be initiated and orchestrated by regional authorities, but knowledge brokering and orchestration can also be managed by networks of small-scale businesses brought together by mutual benefit and common interests.

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS

Regional innovation systems theory is most often used to study high-tech industries. But by combining regional innovation systems with rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship context theory is a fruitful avenue to understand the role of rural entrepreneurship in regional development, even in remote and peripheral regions. Innovation does not need to entail high-tech international environments; it can appear as the result of efforts in low-tech industries in rural and remote environments. The authors’ findings need to be scrutinized; therefore, the authors call for more research on regional innovation systems in rural environments.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

It is possible for regional authorities to orchestrate a development process through the actions of a strong regional agent but also by supporting the creation of networks of small businesses that are built on trust and common interests.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

This study contributes to the literature with a new perspective to the study of entrepreneurship and of regional innovation systems. Entrepreneurship research with focus on rural contexts most often highlight limits to entrepreneurship and see entrepreneurship as “just running a business”. A perspective that starts from innovation and innovative behaviour, despite the rural context and embedded resources, helps to generate new knowledge that can enrich the understanding of entrepreneurship and also be the foundation for more precise business development policies in rural settings.

Every organization, knowingly or unknowingly, operates a business model. However, while private actors frequently make use of the business model concept to actively manage their service provision, public organizations struggle with adopting it. This has led to a separate literature stream in which public management scholars developed public sector adaptations of the business model concept. As the business model conceptualizations in the general and public management literatures diverge, insight transfer between both streams is becoming increasingly difficult. Building on the need for more conceptual alignment in business model research, this article explores how the divergent conceptualizations of business models in the general and public management literatures can be reintegrated. It first presents the results of a focused literature review to illustrate their commonalities and differences. The article then introduces an integrated business model framework for the private and public sectors to merge the findings of both streams as well as to provide a common language for public-private business model realization. By advocating an integrated approach, we aim to bridge the emerging gap between the general and public management business model literatures, thereby seeking to counteract the gap's adverse implications for business model research as well as practice.

Using a gendered crisis approach, this study investigates the impact of sanctions on Iranian women's nascent entrepreneurial behaviours. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's individual-level data and sanctions intensity data on 10,781 individuals, aged 18-65 from 2008 to 2018, the findings indicate that sanctions lower the perceived opportunities to start a business for women more so than for men. Although sanctions did not influence perceived start-up skills, suggesting resilience among women amid the challenges, sanctions did reduce the fear of failure for women more so than for men. Policymakers, both in the Collective West and in Iran, can use these insights to develop gender-inclusive measures and support women's entrepreneurship in sanction-affected contexts.

The business landscape has significantly changed in the last few years due to unforeseen incidents such as the recent pandemic and war in Europe. While such incidents have interrupted or even impaired economies and businesses, they have also accelerated digitalization. Parallel to this, many countries have started moving towards sustainability and realized the importance of circularity on a large scale. Thus, international industrial firms must deal with new regulations. Despite the growth of research on digitalization and circular economy, our understanding of international industrial manufacturers and their business models, in particular, is limited. Thus, this research aims to study international industrial manufacturers digitally enabled circular business models. A case study approach covered a case company, six partners, three sister companies, and the parent company. The findings reveal the characteristics of a digitally enabled circular business model and its outcomes, including resource utilization, supply chain, and sustainable efficiency. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

This study investigates how internationally active firms’ international promotion strategy is linked to international marketing performance. It addresses the issue of effectively balancing the economic benefits of standardized strategies with the potential performance gains achieved when adapting to local customer preferences and market situations. Based on contingency theory and the strategic fit paradigm, we argue that there is no panacea solution to the promotion strategy standardization versus adaptation debate. Instead, our empirical results from 298 international entrepreneurial product-market ventures based in Sweden support the view that international firms must fit the promotion strategy to relevant macro- and micro-environmental conditions in order to optimize their international marketing performance. Our results caution against assuming that all environmental factors exert an equivalent effect on the level of international promotion strategy standardization and reveal that neither standardization nor adaptation is a superior strategy in pursuing international marketing performance.

Building on the negative to mixed effects of natural disasters on entrepreneurial activity, we posit that regional rugged individualism attenuates the decline in business activity following natural disasters. We find that greater property damage from natural disasters in the presence of greater rugged individualism does not affect the establishment entry rate. However, it lowers the decline in establishment exit rates and the job reallocation rate decline by small effect sizes (0.3%). The findings show that regional individualism in the face of natural disasters does not increase entrepreneurial activity but abates the decline in entrepreneurial activity.