SMEs International Growth: Strategic Management and Green Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

The global push toward a more sustainable economy and society has been fostered by the financial crises, the environmental emergency, and the current pandemic. Regulations concerning environmental protection and the consumers’ green demands are requiring companies to integrate green innovation into their products and processes. Moreover, new regulations are progressively mandating and standardizing the processes of companies’ nonfinancial/sustainability reporting, requiring them to inform stakeholders about companies’ investments to pursue a more sustainable production (Directive 2014/95/EU and Proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) of April, 21^st 2021) (De Luca et al., 2020; Phan et al., 2020).

The concept of green innovation has become a highly discussed topic within companies and academia; nevertheless, many entrepreneurs still struggle to transform their approach, such as by reviewing and restructuring the organizational processes within their companies and implementing effective innovative solutions to reduce waste and resource consumption, to support social and human capital growth, and to promote effective supply chains and sustainable consumption styles (Abadzhiev et al., 2022; Lee and Kim, 2011). Therefore, green innovation is the process that contributes to the creation of new products, technologies, and management procedures that aim to mitigate or avoid environmental damage, improve the functioning of products and services for customers (Aguilera-Caracuel and Ortiz de-Mandojana, 2013; Castellacci and Lie, 2017), and increase resource efficiency (Wong et al, 2012), while contributing to organizational flexibility and effectiveness (Albort-Morant et al., 2018). For this reason, green innovation has become an essential strategy for companies to achieve sustainable economic growth and enhance a firm’s competitiveness (Chen et al., 2006; Chiou et al., 2011; de Azevedo et al., 2019; Weng et al., 2015).

The positive implications and the inhibiting factors of green innovation have been widely discussed in the literature (Chen et al., 2012; Karimi Takalo et al., 2021). Likewise, some driving forces of green innovation strategies have been identified, such as external pressures (Huang et al., 2016; Lin et al. 2014), internal capabilities (Chang, 2014; Dangelico, 2016), and organizational culture (Chou et al., 2014). Furthermore, if, on the one hand, organizational creativity and technology development influence the firm’s innovation, on the other hand, more recent digital technologies, such as big data analytics, could affect creativity and green product innovation. Studies agree that developing a green innovation strategy is crucial for SMEs to promote the environmental commitment in the organization while generating sustainable growth. However, across time, the different strategic orientations could affect the impact and the nature of green innovation (Soewarno et al., 2019). Similarly, a firm’s stakeholders influence the company’s strategic decisions in different ways (Guoyou et al., 2019; Veltri et al. 2020) and across time.

To integrate in an effective way the stakeholders’ demands and reduce the external pressures or dependency, some companies organize their corporate governance structures and enhance their networks to achieve legitimacy, support, and knowledge (Lee and Kim, 2011; Song et al., 2018; De Luca et al. 2022; Paolone et al., 2022). However, few studies have explored these challenges (Chen and Chen, 2017; Chiou et al., 2011; Dangelico et al., 2019; He and Jiang, 2019). The existing literature is mainly linked to manufacturing industries and few studies have explored the service sector or the internal dynamics that enable an effective strategic management of green innovation. Nevertheless, innovation provides some risks, and not all ideas benefit businesses or the environment persistently (Chen et al., 2013; Khalil and Nimmanunta, 2021). Corporate governance attributes, strategic management processes, network dynamics, the role of digital technologies, intangible and financial consequences or risks linked to green innovation, and the role of nonfinancial and/or sustainability reporting could all be discussed in future research.

Therefore, with this Special Issue, we call for further research to generate a better understanding of the driving factors, the inhibitors, the effects, and the risks of the strategic management of green innovation in SMEs, and the multiple ways through which companies can engage in this direction and eventually contribute to a more sustainable business environment.

Accordingly, we encourage the submission of contributions aiming to cover a wide range of topics including (but not limited to):

• Green innovation and SMEgrowth;
• Transformative power of SMEs adopting green innovation;
• Organizational impact of green innovation in SMEs;
• Internal and external drivers for green innovation;
• The role of digital technologies in green innovation;
• Corporate governance attributesand green innovation strategies;
• Inhibitors and risks of green innovation;
• Entrepreneurial and managerial approaches for green innovation;
• Knowledge management activities and green innovation;
• Supply chain management, network dynamics,and green innovation;
• Strategic decisionmaking, big data analytics, and green innovation;
• The role of intangible assets in green innovation;
• Nonfinancial reporting and sustainability reporting for SMEs;
• Financial and nonfinancial performance of green innovation;
• Green innovation and stakeholders’ engagement for SMEs.

Dr. Francesco De Luca
Dr. Daniela Di Berardino
Guest Editors

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• strategic management
• green innovation
• SMEs
• growth