Purpose: This study explores the knowledge development of network-based market orientation (MO) for the internationalization of disruptive innovation (DI) by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Methodology: To manage knowledge development for DI internationalization, a business model was applied to a case study of an individual example. The studied company participated in a series of workshops and allowed on-site visits and interviews for two years in a European Union-funded project. The workshops helped the company to gather MO and networking knowledge and then apply that knowledge internally in the organization and externally, in interactions with suppliers, buyers, and other members of the buyer chain.

Findings: Although technological and market efforts usually proceed separately, this study shows that technical and MO knowledge can go together through external and internal networking.

Research limitations/implications: To overcome the limitation of having just one example in a case study, several SMEs can be included in future research to produce a comparative analysis. A further study can investigate how technical and market networks can be integrated in the knowledge development process to speed up internationalization. Managers can learn to internationalize DI by collaborating, knowledge sharing, and networking with other SMEs, suppliers, and firms in the buyer chain.

Originality: The current study contributes to DI literature by highlighting knowledge generation in SMEs from a process perspective as well as by integrating technical and MO efforts for internationalization.

Purpose: The article aims to examine the impact of women’s decision-making power in families on their gender stereotypes about business executives in the promising but insufficiently explored regions of Central Europe (CE) and Central Asia (CA).

Methodology: The study utilized multiple linear regression and Spearman’s correlation coefficients to analyze survey data (No=6,869) from Central European (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) and Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan).
Findings: Central Asian women demonstrated stronger gender stereotypes about business executives compared to the Central European sample. Equally shared power in decision-making with a part-ner has a positive impact on weakening women’s gender stereotypes about top managers. Men’s unilateral decision-making correlates with their spouses’ higher gender bias, whereas independent women’s decisions do not reveal a relationship with their gender stereotypes.

Research limitations: The study does not control respondents’ marital and mother’s status and excludes one of the Central Asian states, namely Turkmenistan.

Research implications: Policymakers can use the present findings to forecast how familialist pol-icies reproduce gender stereotypes and inhibit gender equality. The research complements the specificity of the vicious cycle linking gender roles and stereotypes in the context of CE and CA and expands the “family cage” phenomenon.

Originality/value: First massive research on gender stereotypes about business executives embrac-ing the Visegrad Group and four Central Asian states. The study discovers the internal aspect of family impact on women’s views of top managers that has been neglected before.

Purpose: This study aims to verify the quality of the teacher competency inventory as a pedagogical competencies measure of teachers in higher education institutions.

Design methodology: The development and testing of the teacher competency inventory covered three phases: (1) item generation, (2) dimension identification and data reduction (factor analysis), and (3) scale evaluation. The current study tests its construct validity, using an independent samples t-test, variance analysis, and Anova in two different environments.

Findings: Results indicate that the inventory measures unitary constructs and provide its predictive capacity. The developed instrument measures levels of future-oriented pedagogical competencies with comparable reliability and validity.

Practical implications: Teacher competency inventory may be applied to teachers’ recruitment, selection, development, and performance evaluation with the goal to identify current and required levels of competencies. The inventory allows one to compare teacher competencies with the expected competency profile. Possible differences may indicate deficits or overruns in relation to the expected profile.

Originality: Teacher competency inventory is a meaningful tool to improve human resource practices – including recruitment, selection, and teacher performance monitoring – and to indicate the current and required level of competencies. The identified competency gap can help plan teacher development to increase job performance.

Purpose: This article investigates trends in studies on the impact of cultural factors on mobile
marketing acceptance. To that end, the article provides a literature review of technology acceptance models and cultural models used in research on mobile marketing.

Design/method/approach: This study used qualitative methods to assess the situation of studying cultural factors in the context of mobile marketing acceptance. Various bibliographic sources were consulted, mainly from publications specializing in mobile marketing and cultural theories. These queries were primarily performed through Scopus, one of the main databases of indexed publications related to this topic.

Findings: In the field of mobile marketing, interest in the impact of cultural factors on consumer behavior has steadily increased over the past decade. Furthermore, the research showed the role and impact of each cultural dimension on mobile marketing acceptance. Cultural differences lead to differences in consumer behavior toward mobile marketing.

Originality/Value: This overview provides a comprehensive discussion and appraisal of cultural
theories, a review of technology acceptance theories, and an analysis of previous cross-cultural
studies on technology adoption.

Purpose: One of the regulatory responses to the 2008 financial crisis was to internalize the costs related to banks’ distress by introducing bank levies. More than 23 European banking sectors have been confronted with the new levy regime imposing the additional tax on banks’ balance sheet.

Methodology: This study analyzes the effect of the levy introduction on banks’ profitability, credit activity, and on their business models. More importantly, we confront two different levy regimes – one imposed on banks’ assets and the other on liabilities – to assess their differential impact. A generalized least squares regression with a random effect is performed on a data sample of Hungarian and German credit institutions from 2005 to 2015.

Results: The results show that levy introduction weakened banking sectors in terms of their profitability as well as their lending activity. Even though banks try to compensate for the cost of the levies by passing some of the costs on to the customers and restructuring their operations to limit the tax burden, we find that these activities are not sufficient to offset the whole tax burden. We also note that while the asset levy has a more severe effect on banks’ profits, the liability levy severely affects banks’ lending due to lower interest margin resulting from higher cost of funding.

Findings: Our research results provide important conclusions for regulators, especially during turbulent periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen the banking sectors by considering the levy suspension.

Purpose: The article presents research on enterprises from various economic environments, namely the mature Finnish market and the Polish post-transformation one. Thus, our study examined how the external (international) environment affected the internationalization and business opportunities of Polish and Finnish SMEs.

Methodology: Data for the Polish sub-sample was collected from January to February 2021 using the mixed CATI/CAWI method. We used multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to check for measurement invariance, and chi-square independence test and logistic regression to verify the hypothesis.

Findings: Perceiving the environment as hostile hinders internationalization for Poland only and not for Finland. According to theoretical premises and earlier studies, entrepreneurial marketing orientation (EMO) increases the probability of internationalization in both countries. However, countries differ in terms of which EMO dimensions – and to what extent – influence internationalization.

Implications: In turbulent times, such as a pandemic, respondents might take the worst moment of turbulence as a reference point while assessing environmental hostility and appraising it as favorable. Perceiving the environment as hostile hinders internationalization in some sets only. In a mature economy, resources such as human capital, managerial experience, and access to finance may help to mitigate the negative influence of environmental hostility on internationalization. Respondents in both countries perceived the EMO dimensions in a similar way, so the EMO scale proved to be invariant and useful in a different country setting. Nevertheless, the EMO dimensions that are the main drivers of internationalization were country specific.

Originality: The article presents a study on the influence of environment characteristics on the internationalization of enterprises from various economic environments, i.e. the mature Finnish market and the Polish post-transition one. Thus, the article fills the literature gap regarding comparative studies of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) acting in different country sets.