Dr Jill Juergensen

Organizational innovation (OI) is important for multinational enterprises (MNEs) to adapt to changes in their broader technological and market environments. Despite its power to transform organizations, OI has remained at the periphery of international business (IB) scholarship. The premise of this paper is that IB is particularly equipped to further our understanding of OI. IB studies place significant value on ‘context’ and how the context in which the firm operates can enable or hinder the evolution of internal routines and practices, leading (or not) to OI. We identify the key challenges which have contributed to the seemingly less important role of OI in IB, notable amongst them being the ambiguity of concepts associated with OI across different research fields. We advance the research agenda by offering a comprehensive definition of organizational innovation. We then put forward an integrative framework where we discuss the importance, and contribution, of IB to OI and vice versa.

We conduct a systematic review of the relationship between international diversification (ID) and firm-level innovation (I), considering articles published between 1989 and 2020. The relationship between international diversification and innovation strategies is dynamic and complex, and recent evidence challenges the traditional notion that upgrading firm-specific advantages through technological innovation can be sufficient to guarantee international firm growth and performance. We develop a unified framework that integrates findings from extant ID-I research while also proposing new avenues for further research on topics such as: how firms deal with potentially conflicting ID-I goals, how underlying firm motives shape the interactions between these goals, and how new technologies and institutional dynamism increasingly influence the ID-I relationship. We also discuss how and why the new contexts in which decisions are made, together with the prevalence of relatively newer types of firms (e.g., those associated with global value chains, latest wave of emerging market multinationals, digitalized service MNEs), require a more modern conceptualization of the ID-I relationship. •We conduct a review of the international diversification (ID) and innovation (I) relationship, as studied since 1989.•Recent evidence challenges the traditional notion that (technological) innovation is sufficient for ID and performance.•Given new contexts and relatively newer types of firms, we require a broader conceptualization of the ID-I relationship.

We consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector, and draw suggests policy implications. The sudden onslaught of the pandemic has acted as an economic shock, and we consider how it is likely to affect different types of manufacturing SMEs. We distinguish between immediate effects, a result of the almost-simultaneous lockdowns across Europe and its major trading partners, and longer-term implications for both SMEs and the global value chains where they are inserted. In the shorter run, most SMEs have faced logistical challenges in addition to demand disruptions, although the severity has differed across firms and industries. We argue that in the longer-term, there will be different challenges and opportunities depending on the type of SME. Policy interventions will also need to be sensitive to the different types of SMEs, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. The policy mix will need to shift from its initial focus on the survival of European SMEs in the short term, towards a more structural and longer-term approach based on promoting their renewal and growth through innovation, internationalization and networking.