This literature review analyzes studies that deal with the meanings that consumers form about firms’ family nature. Through the analysis of 83 papers, we highlight the importance of firms’ family nature from consumers’ perceptual, social, and cultural perspectives, at the micro, meso, and macro levels. Beside the common meanings that consumers attach to firms’ family nature, our review showed that in some cases, firms’ family nature acquired meanings that were deemed to be so important that they eventually provided consumers with self-identification, communitarian identification, and novel market configurations, and even made the family firm the industry’s prototypical organizational form.

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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the relational dimension of a networked business incubator (NBI), by investigating the intermediary role of incubator management in fostering social and business ties linking tenants among each other, with the incubator management and external actors.\ud Design/methodology/approach - The paper offers a literature review on the NBIs and advances a comprehensive analytical framework of the networked incubation model. This framework is empirically illustrated through a case study research on a leading Italian private NBI, namely, H-Farm. The collection of primary data was conducted by means of face-to-face in-depth interviews and a survey. Data were processed through social network analysis (SNA) tools.\ud Findings - The results highlight the co-presence and interaction of social and business ties, which build up a vital environment nurturing an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Community-based relationships and the intermediation of incubator management are crucial for supporting tenants in product and business development activities.\ud Research limitations/implications - These results pave the way to further research, oriented to the conceptualization of a NBI as a (small) cluster. Moreover, the application of the SNA tools adopted invites further research on networked incubators, applying the same methodology in new directions.\ud Originality/value - This paper adds to previous literature on NBIs by providing evidence of the intermediary role of incubator management in promoting and facilitating social and business relationships occurring among tenants, between tenants and the incubator management, as well as with external advisors, clients and suppliers

The internationalisation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is an increasing phenomenon but the effective advantages of internationalisation have been disputed yet. This study extends internationalisation research by focusing on learning perspective to investigate the relationship between firm's internationalisation and performance. Specifically, a path regression model is applied to examine how exploitative and exploratory learning is able to moderate SMEs' exporting process to drive business performance. The differences in organisational learning are further investigated compared to domestic firms. The findings suggest exploitation does not affect SMEs' internationalisationperformance link but it is likely a critical antecedent to efficiently move to global markets, while exploration plays a significant role to positively leverage the effect of international involvement on business performance. Second abstractAunque la internacionalizaciòn de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYME) es un fenomeno cada vez màs extendido, todavia hay muchas dudas sobre sus reales beneficios en terminos de rendimientos financieros. Este estudio contribuye a la investigación sobre la internacionalizaciòn analizando la relaciòn entre la internacionalizaciòn y el rendimiento desde una perspectiva basada en el aprendizaje. En primer lugar, se ha realizado una comparaciòn entre empresas internacionales y empresas locales para evaluar la existencia de diferentes niveles de aprendizaje. Despuès, un modelo de análisis de senderos ha sido implementado para estudiar el rol del aprendizaje de explotación y exploración para moderar el Forthcoming in Journal of International Entrepreneurship2 efecto del proceso de exportaciòn de los rendimientos de las PYME. Los resultados demuestran, por una parte, que el aprendizaje de explotación no afecta en la relaciòn entre la internacionalizaciòn y el rendimiento y podria ser màs bien una condiciòn previa para acceder al mercado global, y por otro lado, al contrario, el aprendizaje de exploración favorecido del aumento de la implicaciòn internacional genera efectos positivos sobre los rendimientos financieros de empresas Keywords Internationalisation, exporting, exploitative and exploratory learning, business performance, SMEs. Summary HighlightsContributions: Since the uncertainty related to internationalisation-performance relationship for both small and large businesses, this study focuses on SMEs' internationalisation in order to examine the role of exploitative and exploratory learning in leveraging the effect of exporting process on financial performance. Purpose/Research Question: Does international involvement of SMEs affect their business performance? What is the role of learning on internationalisationperformance link? Are the exporting SMEs more learning oriented than domestic ones? And, more specifically, how does the exploitative and exploratory learning moderate the effect of SMEs' exporting on business performance? Findings/Results: Path regression model is implemented to te...

This work contributes to previous research on the relationship between specific features of a regional knowledge space and the technological progress of the region. In particular, the main element of originality of this work is to have singled out the determinants of the technological progress intensity and relevance. We acknowledge the importance of knowledge assets for new knowledge production, and we identify path-dependent processes that allow a region to become increasingly competitive in terms of innovation potential. In particular, adopting an evolutionary view of regional development, we describe the regional knowledge space through four crucial characteristics: 1) technological knowledge base, 2) technological cumulativeness, 3) technological diversification, and 4) technological relatedness. We then measure to what extent each of the knowledge space's characteristics differently affects the technological progress intensity and relevance of the region. A longitudinal study of 269 European regions over the period 1996-2012 was organized using data from REGPAT and Eurostat databases. Results show that technological relatedness affects positively both the intensity and relevance of the technological progress of European regions and that the other components of the knowledge space show a different impact on the two features of the technological progress. Finally, implications for EU policies supporting and stimulating regional technological progress are discussed.