The study aims to understand the interplay between sustainability strategy and the approach to sustainability reporting in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To achieve this purpose, a case study is developed, examining four companies that exemplify different sustainability strategy types delineated by Baumgartner: introverted, extroverted, conservative, and visionary. According to the findings of the research, while it is possible to identify sustainability strategies based on the key defining elements of the adopted conceptual map, and to interpret the company’s perception and approach to sustainability reporting considering the sustainability strategy, integrating owner-manager values, stakeholder proximity, and supply chain dynamics the conceptual map becomes a more adaptable and practical tool for SMEs seeking to thrive in an increasingly sustainability-focused business landscape. The incorporation of these insights extends Baumgartner’s work, enhancing the comprehension of sustainability strategies within SMEs and providing implications for regulatory bodies, consultants, and managers.

In big companies, Circular Economy (CE) is being explored, nevertheless, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) struggle to follow because of particular barriers and a lack of practical guide. Here, we use Style & Design, a French industrial SME, as a case study to explore how SMEs can perform a successful CE integration. This article aims at proposing a multi-internal actor circularity diagnosis method. It focuses on building an inclusive and co-constructed therefore well-accepted and persistent integration of CE for SMEs, which is lacking today in the existing literature. This work relies on a mixed qualitative and quantitative data analysis applied on a corpus of 42 one-hour-long semi-structured interviews, with 37 different professions. We capture the view of the current and desired situation and identify CE barriers unique to each interviewed worker. We also connect with each worker and open the dialog for the rest of the CE deployment. The final goal is to assemble this worker-oriented diagnosis with quantitative diagnosis, like Life Cycle Analysis of the products and Material Flow Analysis of the factory, to diagnose a complete picture of an industrial SME circularity.

In industry, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis is an established quality tool for minimizing development risks in systems, products and processes. Nevertheless, the presented use case shows that the application of the FMEA method in the development of Product-Service Systems in a SME requires modifications to ensure that the special character of PSS is appropriately included and that risks can be adequately assessed and prioritized.

Despite the well-documented contributions of intrapreneurial behavior to organizational performance, the manifestations of the psychosocial factors at play remain poorly understood. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, social exchange theory, and social cognitive theory, we propose that perceptions of organizational support would contribute to employees' intrapreneurial intentions and behaviors, but only insofar as employees feel confident about their intrapreneurial skills. The data were collected from 179 employees of a Canadian small and medium enterprise (SME) specializing in damage insurance. The regression analysis results indicate that the indirect effect of perceived organizational support on intrapreneurial behavior through intrapreneurial intention is moderated by intrapreneurial self-efficacy. These findings reveal that intrapreneurial self-efficacy is a boundary motivational condition for perceived organizational support to act on the intrapreneurial process so that intention can translate into behavior. The paper provides useful avenues for managers seeking to identify contextual and motivational levers to develop, sustain, and improve employee intrapreneurship.

In this study, the empirical evidence regarding small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) growth determinants allows us to conclude that: (1) stimulating factors are cash flow and gross domestic product; (2) restrictive factors are: debt, firm size, age of the firm and the interest rate; and (3) in the period after 2008, the financial crisis and implementation of austerity measures, in the Portuguese context, produced a negative effect on SME growth. In the period 2008–2012, that is, after the beginning of the financial crisis, cash flow had less importance, while debt was found to have a stronger negative effect on SME growth, compared with the pre-crisis period.

This paper provides a comparative perspective of public procurement policies for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the United States and Europe. Public procurement is increasingly recognized as a strategic function of public administration because of the huge amount of resources it consumes, as well as the important policy objectives it seeks to promote, including SME-related objectives. Progress towards meeting SME procurement participation goals, however, remains elusive on both sides of the Atlantic. Policy makers and administrators have little comparative research upon which to draw regarding the effectiveness of various policy approaches, a shortcoming this paper seeks to address. An institutional perspective is adopted which helps explain similarities and differences in U.S. and European SME policies.

The paper used a social exchange lens to explore the impact of the quality of the relationship between supervisors and service employees on individual and organisational outcomes. The findings provide further evidence that the quality of the relationship between supervisors and service employees is a significant factor - in this case explaining almost half of the reasons as to why employees accepted or rejected organisational changes. Using the social exchange lens, the theory argues that the same characteristics evident in high quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships (effective levels of information, feedback and respect) are also likely to provide the ideal conditions for employees' to address their fears and answer their questions about potential organisational changes. As a result, service employees are more likely to accept the organisational changes. In addition, this study suggests that approximately half of job productivity and satisfaction is affected by the way LMX firstly affects employees' satisfaction with organisational communication processes, and secondly, their acceptance of organisational changes within SMEs.

This paper provides a better understanding of the motivational incentives driving franchising choice from the female franchisee's perspective. A qualitative methodology was adopted in this research to gain a clearer picture of the salient issues influencing female entrepreneurs' evaluations of alternative business models when making the self-employment decision. A sample of 14 female franchisees and 12 female independent business owners was interviewed to gather data on the reasons supporting a woman's initial decision to enter self-employment. Major contrasts have been identified between female franchisees and independent business owners suggesting that franchisors need to re-design their selection strategies and communication methods to promote female participation, sustain system wide growth and add creative diversity in franchise systems that have limited growth potential due to the lack suitable franchisees.