This research work empirically contributes to the entrepreneurial leadership field by analysing how certain combinations of leadership factors impact entrepreneurship in both its launch and consolidation phases. Two relational models are proposed to study whether entrepreneurial leadership factors are positively related to different entrepreneurial activity process stages. The first analyses the effect on the venture’s launch and start-up phases, and the second examines the impact on the entrepreneurship consolidation stage. Utilising data from 50 countries of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a quantitative partial least squares structural equation method was employed to validate the proposed models. The main conclusion was that the use of some leadership capabilities has an unequal influence on entrepreneurship during its life cycle. This study contributes to the field in two ways: we firstly show that leadership factors are contextual, and their contribution depends on the stage of the entrepreneurial process in which the activity is located; secondly, this research reveals that the development of leadership factors, such as self-efficacy, networking, vision and innovative behaviour, positively condition the start-up and launch phases of entrepreneurship. The outcomes of this research demonstrate significant theoretical and empirical implications by bridging the existing gaps in the niche of entrepreneurial leadership factors.

Motivated by the recent study of De Vito and Gómez (2020), this paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic could influence the liquidity of Greek listed firms. It also explores the main factors that drive the level of operating cash flow (OCF). By simulating a decrease of 50% and 75% in sales, we perform stress-tests on three liquidity ratios for 154 listed firms on Athens Stock Exchange considering their degree of flexibility. For these firms, we also investigate if industry sector matters. Finally, OLS and quantile regression analysis is performed to gain a more detailed and complete picture of the determinants of the OCF. The findings show that on average a firm with limited flexibility, in the worst scenario, would consume its cash reserves in about two months. Furthermore, approximately 9% of all firms would become illiquid in about one year, whereas about 12% would become illiquid within two years. It is also observed that liquidity does not significantly variate across sectors. On average, as revealed by OLS method, the findings support that Total Governance, ROA and Female board significantly affect the OCF. The paper enables policymakers to perceive the magnitude of liquidity risk and improve their decision making.

Although many firms operate on global digital platforms, small countries and firms also play an essential role at the national level, especially during crises and the slowdown in globalization. This research investigates trade patterns in digital services at the country and firm level and identifies challenges in this area in providing new information and tools to startup mentors and policymakers, who need more evidence for national authorities to develop mentorship and digital programmes. The study also contributes to transaction cost theory, explaining how it is possible to reduce transaction costs. The methodology involves using quantitative and experimental methods, logistic regression for firms and correspondence analysis for countries. The WTO dataset was used to visualise trade in services data and to interpret clusters of digitalised countries. Interestingly, Estonia stands apart from other post-socialist countries in terms of digital services exports, being among smaller countries and hosting the highest concentration of startups per capita. The firmlevel analysis revealed that firms trading in digital services differ from others – being smaller, more focused on exports and more often controlled by non-residents. The study encourages investments in small countries and small firms that trade successfully in digital services.

Digital transformation of public administration creates opportunities for transparency, accountability, efficiency, and better tax collection. Benefits are even more critical considering the coronavirus crisis when millions of people worldwide engage in online solutions. Our research paper offers clear insights into the public administrations’ strategic management when it comes to the impact of digitalization upon local tax revenues collection. In this setting, we investigate the effects of the digitalization of the Romanian public sector, focusing on local tax revenues collection covering the period 2015–2021. The data was collected from the national platform for e-payments – ghiseul.ro. To assess the impact of digitalization, we opted for the panel data analysis, complemented by reliability and robustness tests. The local tax revenues are settled as the dependent variable and analysed in relationship with the number of payments made via the above-mentioned platform (assigned as a proxy for digitalization). Gross domestic product per capita, Unemployment rate, and Average net earnings are control variables. Our outcomes show that digitalization impacts local tax revenues, but it differs across the country, the highest impact being registered in the case of macroregion 3. All independent variables are statistically significant, leading to the assumption that the empirical model is accurate. Keyword : digitalization, local tax revenue, public administration, Romania, panel data analysis, tax collection, tax compliance, Covid-19

Data have changed the characteristics of the global value chain in the context of digital economy. Standards and innovation are the key facilitators of digital economy. Considering the collaborative development of innovation and standardization, this paper constructs a theoretical model of the impact of innovation and standardization levels on company competitiveness. Furthermore, the moderating effect of the coupling coordination of innovation and standardization was analyzed for both factors. In total, 171 listed companies in the field of digital economy were selected as the research. The results indicated that a company’s level of innovation and standardization influences company competitiveness. Moreover, the relationship between innovation and standardization was found to be a coordinating development relationship and not a conventional promotion or hindrance. This article also proposed some pertinent suggestions for companies involved in the global value chain competition.

Two ex-ante variables are introduced to characterize the analysts’ biased behavior, namely the analysts’ disagreement and self-selection in analysts’ earnings forecasts. The study investigates the impact of the analysts’ disagreement and self-selection on the stock returns. A theoretical analysis derives how the stock returns are correlated with the two variables. There are two channels through which the stocks are priced according to the analysts’ disagreement. The first one is the risk channel as the analysts’ disagreement is associated with earnings uncertainty. The stock price will be discounted before the actual earnings announcement. The second one is the optimistic bias channel. The optimistic bias channel means that the stock is overpriced if the investors do not correct the analysts’ bias. The self-selection is negatively correlated with the stock return through the optimistic bias channel as more self-selection means more optimistic bias as low forecasting values are not revealed. The empirical analysis using data from the Chinese stock market supports the theoretical conclusion.

Investment, the entry of foreign firms depends of a large extent on the country’s goodwill, which is reflected in various ratings. This representation of the situation is approximate, as it does not estimate the differences between the values of the indicators with adjacent grades. This can be avoided by dividing countries into homogeneous groups. It is appropriate to do so on the basis of non-linear grouping rather than linear grouping. It is based on the transformation of data into a dimensionless scale and linear grouping. In the case, its homogeneity increases thanks to the levelling of the most distinctive values and the alignment of the statistical characteristics of the groups. The aim of the article is to propose in principle, a new approach to the ranking of countries on the basis of their level of economic development. It was found that the nonlinear decision of countries into homogenous groups and compared to the linear grouping more accurately reflect the current situation.

Sunflower is a strategic crop in the agriculture of Ukraine as it is important for food and energy production. Recently the processing of secondary products, solving the issues of waste disposal and improving the environment have been paid much attention. This is an example of a cyclic economy, as during the production of oil from sunflowers, their husk can be used for energy production. The ash obtained by burning husk is a valuable complex mineral fertilizer and can be further applied as ecological fertilizer. The aim of this article is to assess the energy and investment potential for sunflowers as an internal reserve for increasing production efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In particular, the equivalents of energy substitution of sunflower husks for energy costs at fat-and-oil enterprises, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions are estimated. A generalized scheme for the production of electricity from sunflower husks is considered. In particular, the use of ash from sunflower husks as a fertilizer is described. The research has shown that the sunflower husks available in Ukraine can be used more efficiently to produce electricity. Therefore policy recommendations were developed based on a study conducted.

Governance in family firms can profoundly influence corporate behavior and performance. Recently, family firm governance (FFG) has attracted extensive attention as increasing empirical research has been published. However, few studies have attempted to map the global research on this growing field. In this paper, a comprehensive literature review and bibliometric analysis are conducted to provide an overview of the FFG. A total of 626 relevant studies from the Web of Sciences Core Collection database between 1998 and 2020 are analyzed. First, based on a literature review by identifying the classification of FFG and topics related to family governance, an overall conceptual structure is proposed. Second, the performance and influence of journals, authors and papers are analyzed by descriptive bibliometric analysis. Finally, with assistance from the CiteSpace and VoS viewer tools, the co-authorship, co-occurrence and co-citation network are presented to display the social and intellectual structure and find the hotspots. The findings of this study help to objectively understand the evolution of FFG and to capture potential research directions.

This study aims to contribute to the systematisation of knowledge in the field of business strategies and analyse its trends. An initial dataset of 884 articles was extracted from the WoS and Scopus databases based on keywords. This dataset was reduced to 430 articles by detailed reading and processed through bibliometric analysis and text mining. The bibliometric analysis confirmed an increasing number of articles, unbalanced contributions of individual journals, and unbalanced citation rates by articles and authors. Textmining analysis showed the dominance of Porter’s generic strategies and Miles and Snow’s typology of strategies. The results show that the theory of business strategy is not subject to trends and has not yet been significantly affected by changes in real business, thus creating opportunities for future research. This study addresses the gap in the comprehensive review of trends in business strategy development.