Purpose – This study aims to contribute to fill the gap in the existing absorptive capacity (AC) literature relating to how organizational mechanisms applied both at the national and international level affect a firm’s AC. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review was carried out using analytical articles from two sources – Web of Science and Scopus – aiming to cover as many studies related to the AC research topic. Findings – The results show that the majority of the studies do not include a specific analysis of an organizational mechanism’s role as mediator or moderator of a firm’s AC. The analysis of the reverse knowledge set of mechanisms will provide for international business scholars and practitioners a compilation of specific strategies that MNC apply to improve AC. Originality/value – The study identifies four sets of organizational mechanisms: external search strategy; organizational knowledge management; reverse knowledge; and mechanisms not orientated to knowledge management; and it describes their specific relationships with AC.

Purpose – For better mapping the path of intellectual capital (IC) research, the purpose of this paper is to selectively review empirical studies of IC published, and identify theories, components and three dimensions of analysis: national IC (NIC), regional IC (RIC) and organizational IC (OIC). Design/methodology/approach – The systematic literature review (SLR) subject to analysis is based on empirical studies made between 1960 and 2016, and focuses on three dimensions of analysis: NIC, RIC and OIC. Four research questions were designed, using the following databases, namely, Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, for data collection purposes. Findings – The SLR unveils a multidimensional taxonomy for measuring and classifying the type of IC applicable to the different levels of analysis and provides some recommendations for future studies of NIC, RIC and OIC, by outlining the need for clear definitions of components and measures of IC and identifying strengths, limitations and future research avenues. Originality/value – In order to fill the gap found in the literature and the non-existence of a study clarifying the multiple dimensions of analysis of IC, this SLR makes a twofold, original contribution to the literature on management: providing an SLR of the main empirical studies dealing with different units of analysis; and identifying a multidimensional taxonomy for measuring and classifying the type of IC applicable to the different levels of analysis.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide insights of a systematic literature review (SLR) of the entrepreneurship education and training as facilitators of regional development. Current and future trends in the field are identified. Design/methodology/approach – The paper offers an SLR on the entrepreneurship education and training and advances through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis comprising the period 1973-2016. To collect data, only articles published in scientific journals were used in the SCOPUS database. Findings – The results highlight that both training and entrepreneurship education can be a strong strategic tool for regional development, and that it is important for entities such as academia, government and business to cooperate towards the same goal in order to strengthen the entrepreneurial intention of society. Findings reveal three clusters as trends of literature: entrepreneurial universities, entrepreneurial spirit and process of business creation. Originality/value – This paper contributes to fill the gap in terms of SLR on the importance of entrepreneurship education and training for regional development conducted by a bibliometric analysis. Keywords Entrepreneurship, Regional development, Bibliometric analysis, Systematic literature review, Education and training, Entrepreneurial universities.

Family firms (FF) represent an important business segment worldwide, contributing greatly to their country’s GDP and social well-being, giving employment and contributing to communities’ development. Due to their particularities, these organizations also face various challenges, one of the most relevant being inter-generational succession – transversal to all FF and their consequent sustainability over time. Given the importance of this issue, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the intention is to provide a general, wide-ranging view of the succession strategies most used by FF, mapping the existing literature. A total of 84 articles from the Scopus database were analysed. Through content analysis and bibliographic coupling techniques (VosViewer), four thematic groups of articles were identified, namely: (i) socio-emotional wealth and corporate governance, (ii) leadership and inter-generational conflicts, (iii) managing succession process and (iv) succession planning drivers. These themes/clusters originated a theoretical framework that depicts the investigation status of the field, and detailed suggestions for future investigations by cluster were also provided. Despite the relevance and long age of succession in FF, this is the first SLR to directly address succession strategies, offering implications for academics and practitioners, to guide a smooth succession.

This study aims to present the progress and development in research carried out on the strategies put into practice at nonprofit organisations. To this end, we carried out a systematic review of the literature making recourse to the ISI Web of Knowledge platform for the data collection process that resulted in the 62 scientific articles (published between 1981 and 2016) analysed in this review. This analysis correspondingly sets out a description of the studies, a timeframe for their respective dates of publication and details about the research methods applied. The results convey how, over the last four decades, there have been a range of studies of nonprofit organisation strategy-related themes with the greatest incidence clustered around the terms strategic management, strategic planning, strategic typology (Miles and Snow 1978), innovation strategies and the strategic management of human resources. We found that the 1980s focused on the theoretical foundations of strategy in nonprofit organisations and the 1990s showed a theoretical consolidation of strategy in nonprofit organisations. The first decade of the twenty-first century shows a focus on improving the management of nonprofit organisations, and in the past decade there has been a diversification in the strategies adopted by these organisations. We furthermore set out suggestions for future research alongside the theoretical and practical implications of this study.

Despite the mainstream entrepreneurship research had neglected the agricultural sector, this scenario seems to have changed in the last years with the study of new and diverse phenomena in several countries around the world. This study aims to analyse the state-of-the-art on agricultural entrepreneurship through a systematic literature review and applying the co-words bibliometric technique. The articles reviewed were obtained from the Scopus database, covering journals from all subject areas. The results allowed to identify three main approaches: i) Entrepreneurial Skills and Behaviour, ii) Entrepreneurial Strategies, and iii) Community and Entrepreneurial Activity. Based on this classification, the study shows that the Entrepreneurial Skills and Behaviour are examined essentially in developing countries, focusing on the assessment of entrepreneurship programmes, oriented not only to agricultural students in higher education institutes but also to women and young farmers. Entrepreneurial Strategies of farmers are analysed mainly in developed countries, although it can be based in the diversification of agricultural and non-agricultural businesses, innovation or market channels, depending considerably on factors such as country, type of product and size. Finally, the Community and Entrepreneurial Activity focuses essentially on the impacts of food production in communities of developed countries, highlighting the social entrepreneurship initiatives at urban agriculture.

As university–industry cooperation is associated with the transfer of knowledge and technology, this collaboration is an extremely important field of study for the world’s economies that helps companies become more competitive. The present research, thus, sought to explore and analyse the literature related to university–industry cooperation, using a co-citation analysis. This study’s objectives were to (1) identify the main co-cited references and the groups (i.e. clusters) they form and (2) discuss the challenges this literature presented in the study of university–industry cooperation. The articles reviewed were obtained with a search of the ISI’s Web of Science and were submitted to a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software. This systematic literature review revealed that companies are increasingly focused on cooperation with universities. The results include four clusters, namely, (1) Absorption Capacity, Knowledge and Competitiveness in University–Industry Relations, (2) Impact of Knowledge Spill-overs on University–Industry Relations, (3) Strategic Alliances for Industry Innovation, and (4) University–Industry Cooperation. This study thus contributes to a greater and more detailed understanding of the production flow,scientific practices, and trends in this new and stimulating field of research.

The circular economy emerged as an alternative model to the linear system, which now appears to be reaching its physical limitations. To transition to a circular economy, companies must not only be aware of but also engage in more sustainable practices. For such a transition, companies must rethink and innovate their business models and the ways they propose value to their clients while simultaneously considering environmental and social facets. This systematic literature review sought to map out from the company perspective the key topics interrelated with innovation and the circular economy, describing the internal and external factors to consider in such transition processes. Key lines of research were identified, and suggestions for future research and for facilitating movement toward a circular economy are provided. This work contributes to deepening the literature by identifying the priority areas concerning the circular economy and encouraging future research that meets international standards of excellence.

Objective: The objective of the article is to contribute to a greater and deeper understanding of the ES conceptualisation. The relevance of the topic of Entrepreneurial Strategy (ES) stems from growing interest of society in entrepreneurship, which has become extensively discussed although the concept of ES is still poorly understood. Research Design & Methods: A systematic literature review (SLR) referring to 427 articles from the Web of Science and Scopus databases was conducted. Findings: The results made it possible to identify five ES conceptual foundations: i) economic theory and entrepreneurship; ii) entrepreneurial strategies, concept – theory; iii) entrepreneurial strategies, framework – models; iv) entrepreneurial strategies, contexts – application; and v) entrepreneurial strategies, application - metrics. Implications & Recommendations: This SLR can help to highlight the gap in theories on ES, its conceptualisation and the fundamentals found in the literature. A research agenda is suggested for each ES foundation identified. Contribution & Value Added: The study is innovative given there have been no other identified SLR studies on the ES concept. The study attempts to contribute towards the literature by offering a model of interactions of the ES foundations.

The aim of this research is understanding the linkages between knowledge management organizational learning and memory concepts, its evolution and to explore models developed. We had developed a systematic literature review; synthetizing concepts and we propose an integrative model. From the Web of Science and Scopus databases, we analyzed a total of 2511 scientific articles between 1960 and 2017.The interconnection between the acquisition, distribution and interpretation of knowledge, their retention is made through the organizational memory. The organizational learning as a dynamic process based on knowledge, is translated through the various levels of action. Organizational learning seen as form of growth of the Organization and its concept is approached to incorporate the dynamic capabilities in the internal processes of the company. We summarize the key concepts can be used in the new future guidelines, with application practice organizations and your diagnosis, fomenting the given moment the strategic decision-making