Call for Papers: The performance effects of digitalization processes and digital competencies among SMEs

Posted on 2024-12-11

                                                               Special Issue for TEC Empresarial

                    The Performance Effects of Digitalization Processes and Digital Competencies among SMEs

Guest editors:

Esteban Lafuente, School of Business, Costa Rica Institute of Technology

Albena Pergelova, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada

Desislava Yordanova, Department of Business Administration, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria

 

Rationale

In an increasingly complex and dynamic economic environment, businesses struggle between the design of value-adding strategies and the selection of technologies that help achieve their goals and, ultimately, contribute to improve their performance level. The world is today a more digitally integrated place (Goldfarb and Tucker, 2019; Lafuente et al., 2024), and digitalization processes amplify SMEs’ strategy-operations challenge. Digital technologies are altering the way firms build their strategic capabilities and consequently generate value. The propagation of digital technologies offers promising pathways for enhancing business performance in various directions (e.g., green-oriented performance, innovation, internationalization) (Blichfeldt and Faullant, 2021; Grashof and Kopka, 2023; Hu et al., 2024; Pergelova et al., 2019; Usai et al., 2021). New and smaller ventures face important challenges in adopting digital technologies due to their liabilities of smallness and newness that limit their capacity to invest in new technologies as well as their digital technology know-how and digital technology capabilities (Colombelli et al., 2024). Despite these challenges, new and small enterprises possess specific strengths including their flexibility and coherent culture which present opportunities for their digitalization (Eller et al., 2020).

Although the connection between digital technologies and performance is attractive and has recently been analyzed from multiple angles (Dalenogare et al., 2018; Björkdahl, 2020; Cennamo, 2021, Gama and Magistretti, 2023; Pergelova and Yordanova, 2024), a challenge of great relevance for scholars and policy makers has emerged in this discussion.

Organizations are a bundle of resources and capabilities, and the adoption of digital technologies by SMEs might affect different operational and organizational aspects which, in turn, inevitably influence performance metrics.

In this sense, scholars have fueled the debate on how to model SMEs’ performance and its connection to digital technologies. SMEs need to accommodate different aspects that affect the functioning of their operations in order to fully realize the potential of their resources and digital technologies (Björkdahl, 2020; Berente et al., 2021; Blichfeldt and Faullant, 2021; Lafuente et al., 2024).

The analysis of how SMEs can effectively adopt digital technologies and evaluate the outcomes of these efforts constitutes a challenge to researchers interested in evaluating the operational and organizational impact resulting from the adoption of digital technologies. Additionally, researchers should adopt a critical perspective that leads to generating valuable insights on the outcomes of performance-enhancing strategies that rely on digital technologies in different economic settings.

Following these arguments, the proposed special issue for TEC Empresarial therefore invites novel and original contributions that promote a better understanding of how and why SMEs adopt digital technologies, and how these technologies as well as digital-induced strategies impact organizational outcomes (e.g., innovation, internationalization, improvements in business operations, and other financial and/or non-financial metrics). In addition, the special issue seeks to put greater emphasis on SMEs’ technological capabilities and their connection to different performance metrics in different (developed and developing) geographic contexts.

Specific topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • What drives the adoption of digital technologies for SMEs? And, do SMEs operating in developed and developing economies show different patterns when it comes to adopting digital technologies?
  • What barriers and challenges do SMEs encounter when adopting digital technologies, such as data-driven digital tools and technologies with physical applications?
  • How do SMEs adapt / change their operations to incorporate digital technologies? What are the main challenges in this process?
  • Does digitalization contribute to creating or developing SMEs’ expansion strategies (e.g., internationalization)?
  • What capabilities do SMEs need to leverage digital technologies optimally to achieve better performance outcomes?
  • Analysis of digitalization processes and performance outcomes in different groups of SMEs (e.g., microenterprises, family businesses, women-led SMEs, etc.)
  • How does digitalization affect different performance metrics (financial and non-financial) for SMEs?

In methodological terms, we encourage a diverse range of submissions, including qualitative and empirically-based submissions. Moreover, we recommend that authors pay explicit attention to the policy and managerial implications of their findings.

Submission guidelines

Manuscripts submitted to the special issue will be subject to a first rigorous screening by the Guest Editors who will invite authors of the selected papers to submit their work for formal consideration by the journal. The special issue is subject to the normal double-blind review process established by TEC Empresarial. For any query please contact the Guest Editors.

Submission deadline (Full manuscript): June 15th, 2025

All submitted manuscripts MUST follow TEC Empresarial’s format guidelines (see instructions at the end of this document).

Authors MUST submit a MS-Word document with the full version of their manuscript (i.e., title page, and manuscript including figures, tables, and references) via email to revistaae@itcr.ac.cr .  Please indicate in the subject and the body of the email that the paper is submitted for consideration in the special issue on SME digitalization.

Bibliography

Appio, F.P., Frattini, F., Petruzzelli, A.M., & Neirotti, P. (2022). Digital Transformation and Innovation Management: A Synthesis of Existing Research and an Agenda for Future Studies. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 38(1), 4-20.

Berente, N., Gu, B., Recker, J., & Santhanam, R. (2021). Managing artificial intelligence. MIS Quarterly, 45(3), 1433-1450.

Björkdahl, (2020). Strategies for Digitalization in Manufacturing Firms. California Management Review, 62(4), 17-36.

Blichfeldt, H., & Faullant, R. (2021). Performance effects of digital technology adoption and product & service innovation—A process-industry perspective. Technovation, 105, 102275.

Cennamo, C. (2021). Competing in digital markets: A platform-based perspective. Academy of Management Perspectives, 35(2), 265-291.

Colombelli, A., Paolucci, E., Raguseo, E., & Elia, G. (2024). The creation of digital innovative start-ups: the role of digital knowledge spillovers and digital skill endowment. Small Business Economics, 62(3), 917-937.

Dalenogare, L. S., Benitez, G. B., Ayala, N. F., & A.G. Frank, A. G. (2018). The expected contribution of Industry 4.0 technologies for industrial performance. International Journal of Production Economics, 204, 383-394.

Eller, R., Alford, P., Kallmünzer, A., & Peters, M. (2020). Antecedents, consequences, and challenges of small and medium-sized enterprise digitalization. Journal of Business Research, 112, 119-127.

Gama, F., & Magistretti, S. (2023). Artificial intelligence in innovation management: A review of innovation capabilities and a taxonomy of AI applications. Journal of Product Innovation Management, in press, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12698

Goldfarb, A., & Tucker, C. (2019). Digital economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 57(1), 3-43.

Grashof, N., & Kopka, A. (2023). Artificial intelligence and radical innovation: An opportunity for all companies? Small Business Economics, 61(2), 771-797.

Hu, L., Filipescu, D., & Pergelova, A. (2024). Understanding SMEs’ Internationalization through Digital Platforms: The Role of Knowledge Sharing and Consumer Education. International Marketing Review, 41 (5), 1044-1073. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-09-2023-0252

Lafuente, E., Acs, Z. J., & Szerb, L. (2024). Analysis of the digital platform economy around the world: A network DEA model for identifying policy priorities. Journal of Small Business Management, 62(2), 847-891.

Pergelova, A., Manolova, T., Simeonova‐Ganeva, R., & Yordanova, D. (2019). Democratizing Entrepreneurship? Digital Technologies and the Internationalization of Female‐Led SMEs. Journal of Small Business Management, 57 (1), 14-39. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsbm.12494

Pergelova, A., & Yordanova, D. (2024). The human element in digital transformation: The role of talent management for SMEs. Journal of the International Council for Small Business, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/26437015.2024.2404177

Usai, A., Fiano, F., Petruzzelli, A. M., Paoloni, P., Briamonte, M. F., & Orlando, B. (2021). Unveiling the impact of the adoption of digital technologies on firms’ innovation performance. Journal of Business Research, 133, 327-336.

Guest Editors

Authors with questions about the suitability of proposed topics for this special issue are encouraged to contact the guest editors:

 

  • Esteban Lafuente (PhD) (elafuente@itcr.ac.cr) is a Professor in the School of Business at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (ITCR). He is also Editor of Small Business Economics. His research mostly focuses on the economic analysis of organizations, with special emphasis on models of production economics, digitalization, and organizational behavior. In another research stream, he is interested in work safety practices and policies, and their economic benefits from an organizational and territorial perspective. Prof. Lafuente’s publication record includes a variety of articles published in, among others, Research Policy, Regional Studies, British Journal of Management, Small Business Economics, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Business Research, and Safety Science.

 

  • Albena Pergelova (PhD) (pergelovaa@MacEwan.ca) is Professor at MacEwan University (Canada). Dr. Pergelova’s research is cross-disciplinary (marketing and entrepreneurship) with a special focus on how technology contributes to shifts in values, practices and power relationships in society. Within the field of marketing, her major focus has been on the role of interactive media as empowering tools for both organizations and consumers. Within the field of entrepreneurship, she is interested in groups underrepresented in mainstream literature (e.g., female entrepreneurs, emerging market entrepreneurs) and the role of technology in empowering entrepreneurs to achieve multiple objectives (both economic and non-economic). Her publication record includes a variety of articles published in, among others, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Small Business Management, International Marketing Review, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.

 

  • Desislava Yordanova (PhD) (d_yordanova@abv.bg) is a Full Professor in the Department of Business Administration at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria). She is a member of the expert board of the Center for Entrepreneurship of St. Kliment Ohridski, the International Entrepreneurship Research and Education Network of Central European Universities (ERENET), and the Global Entrepreneurship Network. Her research primarily focuses on issues related to entrepreneurship and small businesses, and her work has been published in, among others, the International Small Business Journal, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of International Management, and International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research,

 

General article format guidelines

Format: MS Word. Language: English. Extension: 8000 words maximum, all included.  Bibliographic references: APA format V7 https://apastyle.apa.org/

You must send two documents

 

1) First, the blind manuscript (without authors' information), including:

Title of the article in uppercase, bold and centered.

Abstract: Authors must include a one-paragraph abstract of up to 250 words for all articles. The abstract is a concise summary of the entire paper and must be able to stand alone, separate from the rest of the paper. The abstract must include the objective of the study, a brief description of the data and methods used in the study, and a summary of the most relevant results and conclusions.

Keywords: Authors should include a maximum of five keywords that describe the theoretical and methodological orientation of the paper.

Body of the article

Bibliographic references: APA format (accessible at http://www.apastyle.org/)

 

2) The second document is the title page, including:

Title of the article in uppercase, bold and centered.                                                          

Authors: names, affiliation, email, ORCID identifier. Below the title, in bold and aligned to the left

Acknowledgments: When submitting a manuscript, authors should add only to the title page an acknowledgments section that includes the names of any sponsors of your research, including grant numbers, and/or people you would like to thank. The acknowledgments section should appear immediately before the list of references when the paper is accepted for publication.

Disclosure statement:  No potential conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

Copyright policy

All authors submitting an article to TEC Empresarial acknowledge that the said article has not been published previously and that the work is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Likewise, the authors confirm that the study is original and that its content is the product of the authors’ intellectual contribution. All data and references to previously published materials are duly identified and included in the bibliographic notes. Also, the authors assume full responsibility for any litigation or claim due to intellectual property rights, exonerating the Business School at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (ITCR) from all responsibility. 

For accepted manuscripts, the authors keep the copyright and give to the journal the right of first publication and the rights to edit, reproduce, distribute, and communicate the study in the country and abroad through printed and electronic media. 

The digital version of the journal is registered under the  BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons license. Therefore, this work may be copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

The authors keep the copyright and give the journal the right of the first publication and the possibility of editing, reproducing, distributing, exhibiting, and communicating in the country and abroad through printed and electronic means. On the other hand, the author declares to assume the commitment on any litigation or claim related to the rights of intellectual property, exonerating of responsibility to the Business School of the Costa Rica Institute of Technology.

 

If you want to dowload the CfP please click here: Call for Papers