Multidimensional Model of High-Growth Companies: Do COVID-19 and the Ukraine–Russia Crisis Lead to Differences?

Abstract

Economies and the companies operating within them are currently facing numerous challenges and threats that are caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and recovery and are prolonged by the Ukraine–Russia crisis. Both have drastically changed the way companies operate. High-growth companies (HGCs) can be an important group because of their characteristics and can provide guidelines for efficiently addressing these challenges and creating new opportunities. Our research contributes to this field, as the objective of the article is to find out whether the global challenges (i.e., the COVID-19 and Ukraine–Russia crisis) lead to a difference in the strength of the influence between the analyzed determinants—the growth factors of HGCs. For this purpose, a structural model equation (SEM) was applied and a multigroup analysis between the two data sets (before and during the global challenges) was performed on the pooled sample of n = 242 HGCs from the Republic of Slovenia. The results showed some statistically significant differences that can be explained by the time perspective and possibly by the influence of global challenges. Thus, this paper makes an important contribution to science, as a reassessment of the theories and implicit assumptions in current research is needed due to global challenges. It is also useful for policy makers who want to consider the impact of recent global challenges in their policy recommendations and for HGCs seeking sustainable high growth.

Lean manufacturing practices and industry 4.0 technologies in food manufacturing companies: the Greek case

“…Nowadays, manufacturing companies all over the world operate under circumstances that are characterized by the rise of global trade (Kapoor et al, 2021), the opening up of new Lean manufacturing practices markets (Afonso et al, 2021;Sartal et al, 2022), increasing competitive pressure (Sartal et al, 2022;Chavez et al, 2022) and more frequent changes in the preferences of customers (Sartal et al, 2022) who require shorter lead times, higher product quality, more variety (Antony et al, 2022) and customized products and services (Jena and Patel, 2022). Furthermore, the economic downturn (Kapoor et al, 2021), the Covid-19 pandemic (Afonso et al, 2021;Nejad, 2023) and the energy crisis which is being prolonged by the Ukraine-Russia war (Freser, 2022) are also elements that influence companies all over the world nowadays. Under such circumstances, the business environment is complex, dynamic, volatile (Cadavid et al, 2020) and uncertain (Kapoor et al, 2021;Jena and Patel, 2022), and companies find themselves facing many obstacles which they must overcome in an effort to survive and be competitive (Bevilacqua et al, 2017;Chavez et al, 2022).…”