Purpose: The paper focusses on the intrapersonal vs environmental barriers to women's career advancement to the top leadership positions in the information and communication technology (ICT) business and envisages the individual, organisational as well as societal practices for overcoming such barriers in the given sector.Design/methodology/approach: The study relies on the qualitative research method of expert interviews with top-level women managers in the leading ICT companies in Lithuania. The study allowed identifying and structuring the key barriers to women's careers and three-level practices for overcoming them.Findings: The research has shown that the key intrapersonal barriers are related to the lack of self-confidence and perceived glass ceiling. The main environmental barriers are male domination and socially gendered professions. The practices for overcoming women's career barriers can be categorised into three levels – individual, organisational and societal. The study has shown that the most important individual practices are the ability to continuously self-educate and self-affirmation. On the organisational level, the following key practices can be applied: mentorship and inclusive company culture. The societal practices for improving women's career advancement in ICT are mainly represented by the visibility of successful leaders as role models and initiatives increasing awareness for an inclusive society.Research limitations/implications: The research limitations are largely related to the research sample selected for the qualitative research (interviews). The respondents are already established in the top leadership positions, so may only have a retrospective view on the obstacles to the respondents' careers. A larger sample could provide a more generalisable data, whilst a larger number of interview participants for preselected categories, like company category or tenure in a position, would provide insights on the different stages of career growth and company's influence for the individual's growth. The authors encourage extending research to other sectoral and national contexts.Practical implications: The research sets out the key barriers that can be overcome with the help of individual, organisational and societal practices. This provides a comprehensive list of practices that can be adopted by the organisations (in the ICT and beyond), as well as the policy makers on the societal level.Social implications: Addressing the issues of gender balance and women's career advancement in one of the fastest growing industries (ICT) has profound social implications. Qualitative research has shown how the barriers can be overcome at different levels of the social system.Originality/value: The paper marks one of the first attempts to introduce a three-level approach to addressing the intrapersonal and environmental barriers to the advancement of women's careers with a particular focus on the ICT sectoral context.

This conceptual paper focuses on the importance of extending thecollaborative dynamic capabilities(C-DCs) view and its emphasis on the boundary spanningstrategic communities(SCs) fromfirm-centric to thenetwork-centric perspective. The C-DC view is an original theoretical perspective that offers a good explanation of corporate-level transformations in the context of cross-sectoral convergence. Although the focus of prevailing research on large firms as cornerstones of SCs is valid, it does not fully capture the more complex dynamics that take in the horizontal networks of firms. We show that C-DC and SC theoretical perspectives can be adapted to the context of regional industrial clusters and contribute to their strategic renewal. The paper conceptualizes the different challenges and nature of leadership that prevail in SC-based firms networks. It also presents the different enabling aspects of collaborative DCs (with regard to trust building, co-specialization and capability synthesis) in firm- vs. network-centric environments.

When evaluating the competitive environment in the context of the pandemic, the pandemic’s global scale must be considered, since all products related to COVID-19 management have no regional competition but rather immediately switch to global competition and compete with similar products or substitutes. It should be noted that no products intended for managing the pandemic were available before its outburst. Even with the onset of the pandemic, not many specialized products, except for some general protection measures, were developed. However, in the two years after the pandemic began, competitive products intended for managing COVID-19 emerged into the market. The global scale of the pandemic automatically created worldwide demand for such products, which leads to a global shift in competitiveness. As a result, the competitive environment for products intended to manage COVID-19 is changing. Research purpose: To evaluate the competitive products—modern and robotized indoor disinfection equipment—available in the market and those under development. Research objectives: To develop a methodology for evaluating the competitive products and to select evaluation criteria and methods; to evaluate the competitive products in terms of their functionality and technical characteristics; and to research the channels and methods employed to launch competitive products into the market and provide analysis of best practice.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the development of entrepreneurship competences (EC) shaped by self-directed experiential learning (SDEL) within business and entrepreneurship studies internships. Design/methodology/approach: The investigation applied deductive qualitative research guided by SDEL framework. Students' weekly reflections on entrepreneurship internships were analyzed to identify enabling and constraining behavior, affecting EC development. Seventeen undergraduate students provided their written consent to the use of their reflections for this study. Lists of keywords were then inductively derived from the coded data to characterize empirically confirmed SDEL patterns. Keyword distribution was analyzed throughout the reflections on EntreComp-defined competences. Findings: The study identified distinct patterns through which self-directed learning (SDL) would either enable or limit the progression across Kolb's experiential learning (EL) phases in the development of EC. SDL manifested unevenly across EL phases, with strengths in dealing with concrete experience and reflective observation, along with notable limitations in engaging with conceptualization and experimentation. Contextual factors, task design and learner readiness had significantly shaped these outcomes. Originality/value: The research advances a theoretical understanding of SDEL by mapping the emergence of its enabling and limiting elements in the SDL-EL interaction. Lists of keywords, assigned to the SDEL framework, propose a replicable tool for analyzing reflective texts, offering a way to anticipate, support and evaluate learning behaviors in educational contexts. The findings occurred in a natural learning environment, as students were not prompted to consider SDL or EL concepts. The disclosures represent authentic and spontaneous manifestations of SDEL occurrence in actuality.