Grand challenges and emerging market small and medium enterprises: The role of strategic agility and gender diversity

Abstract

This paper examines the role played by strategic agility and gender diversity in enabling the creation of value for grand challenges (VCGCs) by small and medium‐sized enterprises originating from emerging markets (ESMEs). ESMEs face significant challenges due to the dynamic environments in which they operate and the limited support they receive from formal institutions. In such contexts, strategic agility enables ESMEs to drive VCGCs through responsible collaborative innovation. We further argue that gender diversity is an important boundary condition that influences the effect of strategic agility on VCGCs via responsible collaborative innovation. Utilizing 228 survey responses from ESMEs originating from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), our findings shed light on the vital role played by strategic agility in enhancing ESMEs' VCGCs. Specifically, our findings indicate that responsible collaborative innovation acts as an important mediating mechanism between strategic agility and VCGCs. In addition, gender diversity emerges as an important moderating factor in that, in the presence of more heterogeneous senior management teams, the effect of strategic agility on VCGCs through the mediating mechanism of responsible collaborative innovation is higher. These findings contribute to the literature on dynamic capabilities, upper echelons, and grand challenges by providing important insights into the mechanisms and boundary conditions of VCGCs in the context of emerging market firms.

The role of innovation in for‐profit firms' tackling of grand challenges: Special issue editorial

“…The following paper (Zahoor et al, 2024) The concluding paper in this special issue (Sahasranamam et al, 2024) illustrates the development of a process model suited to demonstrate how the ecosystem leader had co-created the innovation ecosystem that had led to the development of a low-cost heart valve. The findings show that the leader had engaged in three types of configuration boundary work: the establishment, modeling, and expansion of the ecosystem configuration.…”

Customers driving a firm's responsible innovation response for grand challenges: A co‐active issue‐selling perspective

“…Grand challenges are complex problems involving both social and technological elements and that influence the environment, society, health and welfare, and economies. These challenges are often derived from macro‐level (e.g., institutional) pressures and compel more coordinated, comprehensive, and systemic efforts (Doh et al, 2019; Ferraro et al, 2015; Zahoor et al, 2024). A firm's endeavors toward addressing such challenges requires the development of an awareness of the issues at hand, followed by the careful design of a strategy to tackle them (Grimes & Vogus, 2021).…”

“…A firm adopting and crafting a responsible approach may be propelled by its stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, suppliers, and investors), who foster the organizational leadership in developing a more holistic and prosocial perspective that transcends the immediate organization‐specific utilities. For example, some scholars find the enabling role of diverse senior management teams in creating innovative approaches for grand challenges in the context of emerging market small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (Zahoor et al, 2024), while others show the role of national government R&D investments in enabling a more efficient path for responsible innovation firms to address grand challenges in the context of more developed nations (Liu et al, 2024). Despite the importance of advancing a responsible innovation approach by firms in efforts to help address grand challenges (Voegtlin et al, 2022), it remains unclear not only what motivates customer firms, but also how customer and supplying firms co‐actively engage in adopting and crafting a responsible innovation approach to grand challenges.…”

“…Such firms are instrumental in finding “solutions in the form of new technologies and products… to complex and ambitious problems” (Agarwal et al, 2021, p. 385). A growing interest in research and practice on grand challenges (e.g., Christofi et al, 2024; Ferraro et al, 2015; Howard‐Grenville, 2021; Zahoor et al, 2024) suggests that engaging firms in grand challenges may be desirable. Thus, a key theoretical issue concerns why firms differ in responding to challenges that transcend corporate and national borders, with far‐reaching societal consequences (Buckley et al, 2017; George et al, 2016; Liu et al, 2024; von Schomberg, 2013).…”

Confronting the grand challenge of environmental sustainability within supply chains: How can organizational strategic agility drive environmental innovation?

“…Positive engagement with the natural environment is now an expected feature of good business (George & Schillebeeckx, 2018), necessary to remedy the adverse effects of for‐profit business on the natural environment (Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020). To this end, firms increasingly adopt more flexible and agile capabilities and structures, and an innovation‐oriented culture, to respond effectively to the grand challenge of environmental sustainability (Zahoor et al, 2024). Strategic agility is potent in adapting and adjusting processes to respond well to environmental demands (Teece et al, 2016).…”