Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) are known to drive innovations, economic growth, and job creation. Numerous studies have analysed small businesses' innovations using new products and processes, with indicators such as funding, innovation activities, and collaborations. However, other vital determinants such as public procurement contracts and intellectual property rights protections capable of influencing innovations have not received enough scholarly attention, especially in the context of Central European countries. This paper aims to examine whether public procurement contracts, market orientations, public subsidies, intellectual property rights, and other firm characteristics shape small businesses' innovation outcomes in the Czech Republic. The results based on a cross-sectional sample of 4,193 small businesses from the Community Innovation survey 2014 prove that European utility models positively influence major and minor forms of innovation but not general innovations. Our findings also show that foreign procurement contracts matter for small businesses' major and minor forms of innovation but not general innovations. Our results further demonstrate that exporting, collaborations with universities and other public research organizations, and external research and development positively influence major and minor forms of innovation but not general innovations. The results on the average treatment effects confirm that firms' collaborations with universities and public research organizations have the highest additionality effects on major and minor forms of innovations. Finally, we find evidence that firm size and belonging to the enterprise group positively impact small businesses’ general innovations. We conclude with practical implications for policymakers and firm managers in Visegrad economies on measures that could be adopted to develop and improve upon existing and new policy initiatives to increase the effect of major and minor innovation outcomes.

Innovation has become a key factor of production, driving and sustaining firms’ productivity and competitiveness. Despite the growing importance attached to innovations, existing studies have produced different results on the factors driving firm-level innovations. This study investigates the factors driving innovations in the service and manufacturing sector firms in Thailand. The study tests proposed hypotheses using cross-sectional data on a sample of 613 firms from the World Bank enterprise survey of 2016. Our empirical results show that specific aspects of the business environment, such as policy instability, legal institutions, corruption, and informal competition, negatively influence non-technological innovations. Contrarily, we find that formal training, foreign technology licenses, research and development have marginal and additionality effects that positively enhance both technological and non-technological innovations. We provide practical implications for firm managers and policymakers in Thailand on adaptive measures to improve the business environment to make it conducive for firm-level innovations.

Public sector digitalization and technological innovation are increasingly being recognized as key drivers of sustainable development. To maintain sustainable growth, it is imperative for economies within the European Union (EU) to adopt public digitalization and technological innovation practices to mitigate the risk of negative economic and environmental outcomes. However, the interplay between these two factors and their impact on sustainability remain underexplored. We draw insights from the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) theory to develop and test a theoretical model to assess the mediating role of technological innovation in the relationship between public digitalization and sustainability in the context of the European Union (EU). Using a panel dataset of EU countries from 2018 to 2023, this study employs structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the direct and indirect effects of public digitalization and technological innovation on sustainability. The findings suggest that public digitalization positively and significantly influences technological innovation, which, in turn, fosters sustainability progress. Moreover, our findings confirm that technological innovation positively mediates the relationship between public digitalization and sustainability. These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners seeking to harness the power of public digitalization and technological innovation to achieve sustainable development goals. This study highlights the importance of promoting technological innovation as a catalyst for public digitalization and a driver of sustainability progress in the EU.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the relationship between green supply chain management (Green SCM) practices and environmental performance, and develop an integrated model to explain the mediating role of ecocentricity on the relationship between Green SCM practices and environmental performance in the context of the Ghanaian downstream petroleum industry.Design/methodology/approach: To address the objectives of the study, a survey had been conducted among companies in the Ghanaian downstream value chain. The paper used the structural equation modeling approach and smart partial least squares (Smart-PLS) analytical tool.Findings: The study revealed that Green SCM practices had a significant and positive relationship with supply chain ecocentricity and environmental performance. The study further revealed that supply chain ecocentricity significantly mediated the relationship between Green SCM practices and environmental performance.Practical implications: The study has developed a new integrated model to enhance oil and gas marketing and distribution company's adaptation and implementation of Green SCM practices.Originality/value: The study had successfully applied the natural resource-based view and the stakeholder theory in the context of Ghana's downstream petroleum industry. Specifically, these theories had been integrated to form a new model to explain the relationship between Green SCM practices, supply chain ecocentricity and environmental performance in the context of Ghana's downstream petroleum industry. The newly developed integrated model has wider predictability as compared to the individual theories.