Calls for papers

 

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development

 

2020 International Conference on "Digitalisation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Developing Countries": Special Issue on: "Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Vietnam: Digitalisation for Sustainable Development"

Guest Editors:
Prof. Lam D. Nguyen, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA
Assoc. Prof. Nam H. Vu, Foreign Trade University, Vietnam

Vietnam has come a long way since its breakthrough economic transition in 1986 during a period of time where the country experienced significant insufficiency such as "lack of physical, institutional, banking and legal infrastructure; product quality; technology; marketing skills; free access to export markets; international business skills; tax incentives, clarity." (Dana, 1994). Like many other developing countries, Vietnam's economy has seen a significant development of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thus, supporting this development is the key on development agendas of Vietnam and these developing countries as SMEs contribute to employment creation, poverty reduction, and economic growth (CIEM, 2015; OECD, 2017, 2018; UN, 2012). Policies have been focused on addressing constraints, which impede competitiveness of the SMEs, including small size, limited access to resources such as finance, technology, human resources, and information, low capacity to innovate and be connected to the global value chains (Chowhan, 2016; Higuchi et al., 2015; Jimnez-Jimnez & Sanz-Valle, 2008; Vu et al., 2009, 2010).

Given a new context of an emergence of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 in the digital era, digitalisation has been shown to be an increasingly important strategy to open new opportunities for SMEs to overcome their weaknesses (Sommer, 2015). Digitalisation could be integrated into various business dimensions such as products, processes, and business models and serve as a core competence of SMEs (Li et al., 2009; Scuotto et al., 2017). Understanding about conditions for and effectiveness of digitalisation is, thus, essential to support SMEs to successfully digitalise their businesses and achieve sustainable development (Bowman et al., 2019, Mittal et al., 2018).

The special issue on "Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Vietnam: Digitalisation for Sustainable Development" provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to publish new findings from theoretical studies and practical cases, which can be generalised, modelled, disseminated and upscaled, to the vast majority of SMEs in developing countries. Papers on the following topics are welcomed to be submitted to the special issues: 1) Internal and external factors affecting digitalisation of SMEs; 2) Opportunities of and challenges for digitalisation of SMEs; 3) Adoption of digital technologies for creating new business models; 4) Digitalisation for product, process, marketing, and organisational innovation of SMEs; 5) Digitalisation for efficient integration into the global value chains by SMEs; 6) Digitalisation for improving corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics of SMEs; 7) Cases of successful digitalisation of SMEs. UK spelling is required.

The special issue is expected to disseminate new theoretical findings on digitalisation of SMEs; create a platform for demonstrating and generalising successful cases of digitalisation of SMEs in developing countries; propose polices for upscaling successful cases of digitalisation of SMEs to policy makers and entrepreneurs; and discuss possibilities to make it an annual conference.

The special issue is associated with an international conference on "Digitalisation of Small-and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Developing Countries" to be held in November 23-24, 2020 in Hanoi, Vietnam, and hosted by Foreign Trade University in collaboration with Viettel. Foreign Trade University is one of the best universities in Vietnam specialising in economics and business. Viettel is the largest telecommunications technology corporation in Vietnam, which is the leading corporation in digitalisation. The collaboration between the two organisations would make the best combination in terms of both academy and practices for the conference and the special issue.

References

Bouwman, H., Nikou, S., & Reuver, M. (2019). Digitalization, business models, and SMEs: How do business model innovation practices improve performance of digitalizing SMEs? Telecommunications Policy, 43(9), 101828.
Chowhan, J. (2016). Unpacking the black box: Understanding the relationship between strategy, HRM practices, innovation and organizational performance. Human Resource Management Journal, 26(2), 112–133.
CIEM. (2015). Characteristics of the Vietnamese business environment - Evidence from a SMEs survey in 2015. Hanoi: Social and Labour Publishing House.
Dana, L.P. (1994). A Marxist mini-dragon? Entrepreneurship in today's Vietnam. Journal of Small Business Management, 32(2), 95-102.
Higuchi, Y., Nam, V. H., & Sonobe, T. (2015). Sustained impacts of Kaizen training. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 120, 189-216.
Jimnez-Jimnez, D., & Sanz-Valle, R. (2008). Could HRM support organizational innovation? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(7), 1208-1221.
Li, J., Merenda, M., & Venkatachalam, A.R. (2009). Business process digitalization and new product development: An empirical study of small and medium-sized manufacturers. International Journal of E-Business Research, 5(1), 1-16.
Mittala, S., Khan, M.A., Romero, D., & Khana Wuesta, T. (2018). A critical review of smart manufacturing & industry 4.0 maturity models: Implications for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 49, 194-214.
OECD. (2017). Entrepreneurship at a glance 2017. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2018). Financing SMEs and entrepreneurs 2018: An OECD scoreboard. Paris: , OECD Publishing.
Scuotto, V., Santoro, G., Bresciani, S., & Giudice, M. D. (2017). Shifting intra-and inter-organizational innovation processes towards digital business: An empirical analysis of SMEs. Creativity and Innovation Management, 26(3), 247-255.
Sommer, L. (2015). Industrial revolution - industry 4.0: Are German manufacturing SMEs the first victims of this revolution? Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 8(5), 1512-1532.
UN. (2012). Policy guide book for SME development in Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok: UNESCAP.
Vu, N. H., Sonobe, T., & Otsuka, K. (2009). An inquiry into the transformation process of village-based industrial clusters: The case of an iron and steel cluster in northern Vietnam. Journal of Comparative Economics, 37(4), 568–581.
Vu, N. H., Sonobe, T., & Otsuka, K. (2010). An inquiry into the development process of village industries: The case of a knitwear cluster in Northern Vietnam. Journal of Development Studies, 46(2), 312-330.

This special issue welcomes qualitative as well as quantitative and mixed methodologies, as long as they are well grounded in the literature. Please refer to the following articles:

• Dana, L.P. & Dumez, H. (2015) 'Qualitative Research Revisited: Epistemology of a Comprehensive Approach,' International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Small Business 26 (2), October 2015, pp. 154-170.
• Dana, L.P. & Dana, T.E. (2005) 'Expanding the Scope of Methodologies Used in Entrepreneurship Research,' International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Small Business 2 (1), 2005, pp. 79-88.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Internal and external factors affecting digitalisation of SMEs
• Opportunities of and challenges for digitalisation of SMEs
• Adoption of digital technologies for creating new business models
• Digitalisation for product, process, marketing, and organisational innovation of SMEs
• Digitalisation for efficient integration into the global value chains by SMEs
• Digitalisation for improving corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics of SMEs
• Cases of successful Digitalisation of SMEs.

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

If you have any queries concerning this special issue, please email Prof. Lam D. Nguyen at lnguyen@bloomu.edu.

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 30 April, 2021

Notification to authors: 30 June, 2021

Final versions due by: 31 August, 2021