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PurposeThis study investigates the personal factors influencing innovative entrepreneurship combined with additional contextual insights from high-income European countries. Specifically, this study has three main objectives: (i) to measure differences in the level of entrepreneurial innovativeness activity among high-income European regions; (ii) to uncover key factors leading to appropriate levels of entrepreneurial innovativeness and (iii) to suggest policies that may enhance the regional level of entrepreneurial innovation.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 4,430 nascent and new entrepreneurs from 16 different high-income European countries drawn from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Adult Population Survey (APS) was used in conjunction with macroeconomic indicators. Data were analyzed using a logistic regression analysis.FindingsThere are significant differences in the conditions that influence entrepreneurial innovativeness in European regions. These variations in entrepreneurial activity can be explained using contextual factors and individual characteristics. Although technological novelty increases the probability of innovative entrepreneurship, the technology effect is significantly greater in Western Europe than other regions across Europe.Originality/valueThis study illustrates how a contextualized view of entrepreneurship enriches the knowledge of the human and dynamic socioeconomic drivers that motivate innovative entrepreneurial action in high-income European countries.

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This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on enterprise resource planning (ERP) business value by investigating organizational ERP development in view of the active involvement, vision, and direction of top management teams (TMTs). A top-down approach to ERP adoption and implementation was adopted with sociomaterial and social construction assumptions about the mechanisms that generate ERP business value. A single ERP case study was analyzed in an industrial setting by interpretive means, thus providing theoretically based, detailed and interesting insights. Our research suggests that ERP benefits emerge during the TMT’s encounters with the ERP system through pragmatic action and situated improvisations. Our findings suggest that ERP adoption is strongly influenced by TMT characteristics and social processes, while complementary process-change needs are perceived by the executive participation during implementation. We also suggest that when the ERP system goes live, a synergistic relationship termed TMT-IT imbrication will create the technological infrastructure perceived as ERP value. At this postimplementation stage, various TMT characteristics and processes are proposed that greatly influence top managers’ patterns of imbrication behavior. Several propositions are developed and summarized in a framework to enhance the current understanding of managerial agency in achieving business benefits from ERP systems. The paper concludes with implications for top managers and future research directions.

This conceptual paper revisits and updates the concept of top management support (TMS), which has been the long-established rationale for explaining the role of top managers in digitalization activities. In our view, the concept of TMS is grounded in technological determinism, accounts for attitudinal and behavioral aspects that appear to be little more than exhortation and accepts the occasional responsibility of top managers in technology management. We consider both the crucial role that top managers may play in the digitalization process and the fact that digital technologies have become pervasive in today’s organizations. Then, we develop a model by which top managers and digital technologies are cooperatively involved for digitalization. For that, we have looked through the theoretical lens of imbrication and attention perspectives to reconstruct the role of top managers in the digital transformation process. In our view, each imbrication layer can be viewed as a process where top managers form beliefs to act on digital opportunities for strategic action. Specifically, our model provides insights into how executives’ characteristics and social processes impact the likelihood of forming either beliefs about radical or incremental opportunities requiring strategic action. Additionally, we offer several hypotheses that enrich our knowledge of the relationship between top managers and the digitalization process.