This study examines the impact of sustainability innovation on innovation performance and the mediating effects of knowledge sharing and knowledge application on this relationship. We hypothesize that small and medium-sized enterprises implementing sustainability innovation are able to achieve better innovation outcomes. We tested the hypotheses using structural equation modeling and Smart PLS on a data set of 185 industrial companies. The results support our conceptualization and demonstrate its utility in explaining improvements in achieving innovation performance if sustainability innovation is adopted. Simultaneously, we demonstrate that knowledge sharing and knowledge application mediate the effects of sustainability innovation on innovation performance. Findings have important implications regarding sustainability innovation implementation in industrial companies and its impact on improving innovation outcomes, both direct and mediated by knowledge sharing and knowledge application.

The current article examines the less explored challenges and strategies for achieving a resilient and sustainable courier sector within a multi-hazard environment in Romania, primarily focusing on its economic aspects. It incorporates a literature review on resilience and analyses balance data from the ListăFirme website from 2008 to 2023. In the year 2007, Romania entered the European Union, integrating into broader European markets and thus contributing to the expansion of the courier sector. The study uses a mix of methods, incorporating in-depth interviews with courier representatives, an online questionnaire and an analysis of the courier companies to evaluate the sector’s resilience. Special emphasis is placed on the on-demand delivery solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic when the courier sector faced unprecedented surge in demand and demonstrated its capacity to adapt rapidly to changing market conditions. This focus is relevant given the rise of the GIG economy (Iancu, 2022) and the growing importance of last-mile delivery solutions in modern logistics. The assumptions were that the courier sector has always been resilient, mainly because of its synchronicity with e-commerce development, and that hazardous environments such as the COVID-19 pandemic strengthened the industry instead of weakening it. Guided by the central research question: how to define resilient management practices in the courier sector and how these practices can be applied to other sectors of the economy, the study aims to highlight the principles of resilience. In doing so, it seeks to provide theoretical insights and practical strategies that could enhance resilience across various economic sectors facing similar multi-hazardous challenges.

This article examines the economic resilience of Romania’s postal and courier sector in a multi-hazard context marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war. The sector is defined as postal activities under universal service obligation (NACE 5310) and other postal and courier activities (NACE 5320). Using annual county-level data for all 42 Romanian counties for 2008–2023, sourced from ListăFirme.ro and based on figures reported to the Ministry of Finance, the study combines bibliometric mapping with static panel regression using county fixed effects. The results show a positive association at the 5% level between delivery-sector turnover and national turnover after the transformations required for stationarity. The findings suggest that the sector retained and, in relative terms, strengthened its economic weight during successive crises. The article contributes by operationalizing sector-level economic resilience in a Romanian multi-hazard setting and by identifying managerial and policy implications for logistics continuity, regional inclusion and future contingency planning.