Businesses may adopt strategies and practices that support sustainable development goals. Such strategies include considering social and environmental impacts as well as prioritizing socio-environmental benefits at a higher level than profits. Supportive practices comprise enhancing social benefits and limiting environmental harm. What SDG-related strategies and practices are businesses pursuing? Are businesses implementing practices and strategies? Do the practices and strategies differ across societies? A survey of representative samples of 399 businesses in Colombia and 413 businesses in Egypt was conducted in 2021, by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The owner-managers reported that they frequently had strategies that considered social and environmental impacts of business operations, and they prioritized socio-environmental considerations over financial goals. In Columbia, there were more frequent practices that enhanced social benefits and limited environmental harm than in Egypt. In addition, strategies were implemented in practices supporting the SDGs more in Colombia than in Egypt. Our findings contribute to understanding business strategies that consider SDGs and their implementation in practices that are embedded in society.

Businesses around the world are rapidly adopting digital technologies. Adoption, though, is not even, but it varies over time and differs from society to society, depending on resources in the ecosystem. This study addresses how past, present, and future digitalization is developing globally and, in each society, depending on its resources. A survey of businesses in 47 countries, conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in 2021, provides national-level measures of digital technology adoption before and during the pandemic and the intention for adoption in the near future. Adoption of digital technology is found to vary significantly across both time and place. Before the pandemic, adoption was concentrated in the wealthiest societies. The pandemic was an external enabler, pushing less digitalized societies to catch up, independent of national economies, thus entailing some convergence. The early pandemic has been followed by intentions to digitalize, which differ widely, entailing some divergence. Intentions are strong in some societies that are forging ahead, but they are weaker in some less-digitalized and low-income societies that may be falling behind. The findings contribute to understanding digitalization as a global phenomenon and the pandemic as an external enabler that has promoted catching up and convergence in digitalization. Still, recovery is uneven and entailing divergence, as some societies are forging ahead while others are falling behind.

Gallo and Sveen, in 1991, specified problems of whether family businesses can take advantage of factors facilitating internationalization. We compare family and non-family businesses in innovation, export, and growth-expectation, and consider how outcomes are aligned, with a coupling that may be loose, with a synergy that benefits the business. This raises a further issue, is governance of a business affecting not only each of the outcomes but also their coupling. A representative sample of 530 Iranian businesses was surveyed in 2018 for Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Innovation, export, and growth-expectation are found to be lower in family businesses. Coupling between innovation and export, and also between export and growth-expectation, are found to be looser in family businesses. - Findings suggest that coupling among performance outcomes in family businesses can feasibly be tightened, thereby reinforcing performance. The findings contribute to understanding the performance endeavors of family businesses as problematized by Gallo and Sveen.

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