Abstract:Purpose: Industry 4.0 represents a special challenge for businesses in general and for SMEs in particular. The study at hand will examine companies´ awareness, readiness and capability to meet this challenge taking into account the special role of SMEs Design/methodology/approach: The results of nine studies dealing with this range of topics are examined in the framework of a systematic review and compared with regard to the objective of the study at hand. Findings:The review showed that, as a rule, there is an awareness concerning the relevance of the topic. The readiness and the capability to meet this challenge existin parts; however, they strongly depend on the enterprise size. The smaller SMEs are, the higher the risk that they will become victims instead of beneficiaries of this revolution. This deepens the knowledge in adaption deficits German SME still have and opens different approaches for further research and action plans.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) has since its development some 20 years ago proved to be a powerful approach to explain human behaviour. It has been successfully applied to a wide range of behaviours. Interestingly, it is in particular complex behaviour such as managerial decision making which saw only a few attempts to use TPB. This is in particular true for company internationalisation. While the main elements of the theory are generally accepted, it has been suggested at many occasions that the model would benefit by the inclusion of more constructs in terms of explanatory quality. Among the elements proposed, Past Behaviour is of particular importance. Although being vividly discussed, researchers did not come to a definitive judgement on whether or not the construct really should be integrated as an independent factor. The paper at hand adresses these issues by developping a framework for an extended TPB which should be relevant in particular for complex behaviours such as International Entrepreneurship. It is based on an extensive literature review which identifies two main lines of research in terms of Past Behaviour. Using a decomposition approach to integrate Past Behaviour, the shortcomings of earlier approaches are avoided. The framework features a second contribution by explicitly modelling information processing modes, which are proposed to influence development of intentions.

While International Entrepreneurship has attracted scholars' attention during the last two decades, the impact cognitive aspects exert has been studied on cursory level only. The purpose of this paper was to apply the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to the very field of International Entrepreneurship in order to examine whether this theory contributes to clarify what influences Small and Medium-sized Enterprises' (SME) decision-makers' intention-an important cognitive antecedent to behavior-to play an active part in internationalization. In particular, it had to be clarified whether or not International Entrepreneurship-due to its contextual specificities-deserves to be extended by further elements, i.e. experience and knowledge. Based on more than 100 responses from German SME executives, the study yielded several interesting results. First, TPB indeed helps explain how intentions to actively participate in international business are built. Second, an extension of the theory's basic model seems to make sense, probably due to the specificities of international entrepreneurial behavior. As for the extensions, direct and moderating effects have been observed. Furthermore, cognitive elements seem to be key entrepreneurial resources which serve as sort of enablers. From these results several conclusions can be drawn. Cognitive aspects are a promising starting point for understanding decision-making in SME. Thus, the intersection of international entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial cognition deserves further attention-several examples for possible future studies are presented. Policies supporting SME should be extended: pure resource-based approaches seem to be insufficient. Furthermore, entrepreneurship courses and curricula should reflect the relevance of cognitive aspects.

Internationalization, SME, Entrepreneurship, Attitude, TPB,

Studies show that many students struggle with properly organizing their academic activities; what makes things even worse is that up to 90% of students are at least part-time procrastinators. In order to clarify how these students could be supported, the article at hand deals with the influences and possible benefits of implementation intentions in an academic learning context and substantiates the literature discussion with data collected among students. Aiming at studying the antecedents of academic performance from a cognitive perspective, the research complements an extended form of the Theory of Planned Behaviour by integrating procrastination and experience. Unlike many other studies, this paper does not focus on reasons for nor different forms of procrastination, but rather develops a comprehensive framework for understanding academic learning. A structural equation modelling approach is applied for this purpose using an empirical data base. For the outcome of this research different hypotheses are investigated especially in reference to implementation intentions. In the majority of cases the theories presented during the literature review can be substantiated with the empirical data used for the study. Key findings are the significant influences of goal intentions, as well as experience, and their positive effect on implementation intentions. Furthermore, the negative influence of procrastination is underlined by the results of the paper and identified as a major problem for college students. Other findings of the paper are the effects of subjective norms and PBC (Perceived Behaviour Control) on the formation of goal intentions. Nevertheless, the study brings up several further questions and identifies areas where research should be deepened, that is behaviour itself.