The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated some of the challenges that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face in times of crisis, disrupting their operations, weakening their financial positions, and exposing them to a wide range of financial risks. While previous studies have viewed digital transformation as a vital source of innovation and productivity growth for economic recovery in SMEs, there has been limited focus on digital transformation in the regional context, with very little attention focused on women-led enterprises. This study aims to investigate (i) the determinants of perception of digital transformation among regional SMEs, and (ii) whether the gender of the SME owner or manager has an impact on the drivers of the digital transformation experiences of SMEs operating in regional Australia. Building upon the resource-based view, this study uses a unique dataset of 281 SMEs collected from a survey conducted within a regional area of Queensland, Australia. Employing Feasible Generalised Least Squares and Generalised Least Squares estimations, the study found that the perceptions of digital transformation can be explained by the use of social network platforms, innovation processes, workplace culture, and information and communication technologies. This study also found that there is a significant difference between female-led and male-led SMEs regarding their perceptions of digital transformation. This study offers two key policy and practical insights: (i) digital transformation of regional SMEs should be used as a fundamental tool for crisis recovery strategies, and (ii) the need for policymakers to mainstream gender into postcrisis transformative interventions and policies should be fast tracked.

Managers need to better understand how information and communication technologies (ICTs) lead to informed decisions about the investment and advantages of such technologies. However, at best, the empirical evidence on the business value of technology is mixed in relation to small firms. A total of 43 firms satisfied the study’s definition of start-ups. The final survey included 54 questions on access to and use of ICTs, innovation, firm characteristics, as well as the participants’ demographics, of which 11 factors were analyzed as part of this study. We found compelling evidence to support the positive effects of ICTs on firm-level innovation and performance based on the primary survey data of 270 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in an Australian regional area. Moreover, we found that ICT strategies and skills are important factors that drive innovation and the overall performance of SMEs. In addition, various conditions, such as an agile workplace culture and international trade, can help firms improve their performance. Young businesses, particularly start-ups with ICT skills, show an improved innovation capability. However, remoteness appears to influence innovation negatively for nascent firms. Thus, managers should focus on improving ICT skills, strategies, and networking that help facilitate tangible ICT investments to foster innovation and growth.

Within the emerging domain of entrepreneurial leadership research, gender issues have been largely ignored. This study aims to examine the nexus between entrepreneurial leader identity, entrepreneurial passion, and growth intention. This is done within the stacked context of being a woman entrepreneur, and in rural, regional and remote (RRR) Australia. This unique study draws upon a cross-sectional survey of 99 women entrepreneurs, employing a partial least square structural equation model. The study has found a positive relationship between entrepreneurial leader identity on the one hand and growth intention and passion on the other but could not find any conclusive evidence of a relationship between entrepreneurial passion and venture growth intention. The study opens new research avenues into the novel construct of entrepreneurial leader identity and helps to better understand the dynamics of RRR women entrepreneurship in the Australian context.

Insight into the challenges for women entrepreneurship engagement is significantly lacking in the context of Rural, Regional and Remote (RRR) communities. Evidence suggests that a deeper understanding of the role of capital in entrepreneurship engagement for RRR women may shed light on some of the complex issues in this sphere. This paper investigates the impact of economic, social, and cultural capital on RRR women’s entrepreneurship activities. The study surveyed 188 women entrepreneurs located in RRR locations in Queensland, Australia and confirmed the importance of economic, social, and cultural capital, in facilitating and enabling RRR women to engage in entrepreneurial activities. The results further highlighted that regardless of the volume of objectified and institutionalised cultural capital accumulated by these women, accumulation of social capital remained a strong driver for engagement preferences and success indicators. We suggest that this is due to the deeply entrenched values and behaviours relating to the critical formation and maintenance of networks as a survival mechanism when living in RRR locations in Australia. The results of this study provide a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial practices, circumstances and attitudes of RRR women. Further, the novel application of Bourdieu’s theory of capital in this quantitative study exploring the role of capital factors for RRR women provides a platform for engaging discourse amongst entrepreneurial researchers. The findings will aid governments and policy makers in the development of programs designed to stimulate entrepreneurial engagement for women in rural, regional and remote contexts.

The purpose of this study is to understand employees’ attributions of human resource management (HRM) practices and how these attributions confluence with employees’ creativity. We propose the concept of human resource attribution (HR attribution) as a construct that can aid in understanding employees' creativity. This research studies how human resource (HR) attributions play a part in the creativity of employees in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Colombia's Atlántico Region. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 SME employees. Our results were analyzed with reflexive thematic analysis. Generated themes enclosed individual factors (the HR attribution participants made, and the employees’ level of organizational commitment) and organizational factors (managerial practices). The results indicate that a key construct of employees’ creativity is their interpretation of why HRM practices are implemented. This suggests that the actual HRM practices are not always the elements that matter for employees’ creativity in all contexts. Furthermore, other individual and social constructs were found to be relevant to Colombian employees’ creativity. Future studies should quantitatively test the impact of HR attributions on SME employees’ creativity.