Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) emphasizes the identification and exploitation of business opportunities, while entrepreneurial action learning (EAL) underscores the acquisition of knowledge through practical experience and continuous improvement. Breakthroughs in both aspects contribute to maintaining flexibility, adapting to changes, and enabling success in competitive markets. The key to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lies in a clear Entrepreneurial Orientation, a focus on Entrepreneurial Action Learning, and the cultivation of innovation spirit through continuous practice and experience accumulation, thereby enhancing entrepreneurial performance (EP). This study aims to explore the impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on the Entrepreneurial Performance of SMEs, clarify the mediating role of Entrepreneurial Action Learning between Entrepreneurial Orientation and Entrepreneurial Performance, and investigate the variability of Entrepreneurial Performance among different industries. By means of data collection from 598 SMEs, data analysis was conducted using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The analysis results indicate that entrepreneurial orientation has a positive impact on entrepreneurial action learning and entrepreneurial performance, and entrepreneurial action learning has a positive impact on entrepreneurial performance. The study also found that entrepreneurial action learning partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial performance. There are certain differences in entrepreneurial performance among different industries. This study enriches the relevant literature in the field of entrepreneurship. Additionally, research on entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial action learning, and entrepreneurial performance in specific regional contexts is very limited, making this study valuable for subsequent research in related areas.

Effective small and medium enterprise (SME) leadership demands creative solutions to ensure organisations survive and thrive during the turbulent times that COVID-19 continues to bring. This paper explores how SME leaders (in micro and small organisations) prioritise and access the skills and development needed to provide effective and sustainable leadership to organisations, focusing on the role of resilience and the benefits it provides. Participants were selected through purposive and snowballing sampling. Online surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted and provided qualitative data that contributes to an understanding of the role of resilience and the view of participants as to what is needed to effectively respond to a dynamic environment. Evidence shows that SME leaders prioritise learning and development opportunities that provide demonstrable benefits throughout the organisation. Building business resilience remains a fuzzy concept; however, viewing resilience as a multi-level construct offers benefits when designing and delivering development opportunities. It has been found that networking, partnerships, and relationship building promote resilience and may offer a solution to how to embed resilience building into development opportunities that SME leaders value and wish to engage with. This article contributes by illustrating and exploring leadership development within SMEs during a period of unexpected and untested uncertainty. The pandemic caused major shock waves within business communities, and SMEs were significantly affected. The research is limited in that it is expected to be a once-in-a lifetime event, and as such conditions may not be replicable, learning opportunities for other ‘shock’ events are possible. The findings of this paper have relevance to practice in that, while the event may be one-off, shocks to the business environment are not.

The development of the personal innovative competences in workers is of capital importance for the competitiveness of organizations, where the ability of the employees must respond in an innovative way to diverse situations that arise in specific contexts. Considering this, the question arises: How do innovative employees' competences affect the sustainable development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)? Therefore, the objective of this work is to present a multi-criteria method based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP), to relate innovative personal competences and the sustainable development of MSMEs. An instrument was applied to groups of experts from 31 Ecuadorian fruit-exporting MSMEs, to develop a multi-criteria decisional network that allowed identifying the innovative personal abilities that have the greatest impact on the sustainable development of these organizations. The results demonstrate the relevance of the elements of innovative personal competencies, with a cumulative participation of 39.15%, Sustainable Export Development with 32.18% and Improvements with 28.66%. It also presents three types of analysis: i) Global to establish the weight of each variable; ii) Influences, to establish solid cause-effect relationships between the variables and iii) Integrated. The most relevant innovative personal competences for sustainable development and improvements for exporting SMEs are teamwork, critical thinking, and creativity within the international context.

Sustainable development has attracted widespread attention worldwide, and the circular economy has become one of the essential policies of many countries. Small and medium-sized enterprises are important drivers of world economic growth and can significantly impact the environment. Therefore, SMEs are critical players in implementing a circular economy as the basis for creating a sustainable society. Although a wealth of research on SME environmental management issues can be found in the literature, more must be known about the infusion of green practices in SMEs. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the green practice infusion of Taiwanese SMEs, a context that is particularly relevant due to Taiwan’s strong focus on environmental sustainability and its circular economy industrial development policy. Through a questionnaire survey, this study examined the factors that influence green practice infusion behavior in Taiwanese SMEs and the impact of green practice infusion on circular economy performance. The findings show that the relative advantages and compatibility of the circular economy, organizational support, human resource quality, regulatory pressure, and government support significantly impact the green practice infusion of Taiwanese SMEs. The effects of complexity, customer pressure, and environmental uncertainty on SMEs’ infusion of green practices are not statistically significant. Circular economy performance is positively correlated with green practice infusion. This study can broaden the research scope of SMEs’ environmental management and contribute to a deeper understanding of SMEs’ green practice infusion and circular economy.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of innovative organizational culture on innovativeness through human resource management and the innovative skills of personnel. The population of this study comprised small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand from both the manufacturing and service sectors. Purposive sampling was employed to gather information from entrepreneurs, executives, or department managers of SMEs through an online questionnaire distributed via email, obtaining a total of 440 responses. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and structural equation models (SEM) for hypothesis testing. The results indicated that SMEs in this context had a moderate level of innovative organizational culture, human resource management, innovative skills, and innovativeness. Moreover, the structural equation model was consistent with the empirical data, revealing that innovative organizational culture has a direct influence on innovativeness. Furthermore, human resource management and the innovative skills of personnel were found to be partial mediators in the relationship between innovative organizational culture and innovativeness. The indirect effect through these two variables was greater than the direct effect. These findings confirmed the relationship between innovative organizational culture, human resource management, innovative skills, and innovativeness among SMEs in Thailand, leading to guidelines for businesses to improve their innovativeness.

The expanding blue economy, marked by its focus on sustainable use of ocean resources, offers enormous opportunity for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). However, for SMEs to properly integrate and succeed in this economy, they must first have a thorough awareness of the sector’s challenges and prospects. This research used a scoping review and a qualitative study to identify the challenges and opportunities facing SMEs operating in the blue economy. The study discovered recurring themes and gaps in the existing literature by conducting an extensive examination of scholarly publications. The key challenges identified include complicated regulatory frameworks, restricted access to funding, infrastructure restrictions, talent deficiencies, government support, and market outreach. In-depth interviews with Malaysian SME leaders, industry stakeholders, and policymakers were conducted to decipher these findings. The results of interviews confirmed the relevance of the regulatory framework, infrastructure restrictions, talent deficit, and market access challenges in the Malaysian context. In particular, the study revealed emerging opportunities for Malaysian blue SMEs in sectors such as renewable energy, sustainable fisheries, marine biotechnology, and ecotourism. The study emphasizes the importance of an encouraging policy framework, knowledge-sharing platforms, and capacity building activities. It finishes by underlining the ability of SMEs to drive a sustainable and thriving blue economy, if challenges are systematically handled, and opportunities are appropriately capitalized.