Purpose - The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate which internal organizational factors drive digital transformation for business model innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds on a Delphi study from both a South African and Dutch scholarly and industry perspective. The Delphi study uses a questionnaire to query the commonly cited internal organizational factors that drive digital transformation for business model innovation in SMEs in an emerging and a developed economy. Findings – The paper identifies two important internal organizational factors driving digital transformation for business model innovation in SMEs: (a) a renewal of business strategy and (b) a renewal of business culture. It identifies various subfactors within these two internal organizational factors.   Originality/value – The study contributes to the current understanding of the internal organizational factors that drive digital transformation for business model innovation in SMEs. Researchers can use these factors and associated subfactors as a basis for future research. To practitioners, the findings provide a guideline on which business activities in SMEs to (re)arrange to enable digital transformation-induced business model innovation.

New online forms of giving have appeared next to more traditional ways like door-to-door collections. One of these new forms is philanthropic crowdfunding: donation- and reward-based crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a promising method for mobilising and recruiting donors who may be unreachable via traditional methods. We analysed online giving via crowdfunding, focusing on donor characteristics and giving behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis comprises survey research (n = 2125) observing giving behaviour on an individual level for both donors and non-donors. Our contributions are twofold. First, we report on the characteristics of donors who give to crowdfunding sources and in relation to donors who give via a door-to-door (i.e., ‘traditional’) collection focusing on micro- rather than macro-level data. Second, we compare the giving behaviour via crowdfunding with references to door-to-door collections before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that the percentage of individuals supporting crowdfunding did not increase between 2018 (11%) and 2020 (12%). Regarding the amount, donors donated 13% higher amounts in 2020, but the difference was not significant. Regarding the characteristics of donors, we find that social media has a substantive role in giving via crowdfunding irrespective of other personal markers such as age, education, income, and gender, while this is not relevant in the case of door-to-door collection. Moreover, most people give to crowdfunding projects that are connected to an acquaintance, which signals that familiarity with the person initiating the crowdfunding projects plays a role. We conclude that crowdfunding, relative to more traditional giving, focuses more on informal giving than formal giving. Such an understanding requires different strategies and stimuli to increase giving via crowdfunding. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

ABSTRACT The effect of environmental transformations on organizational identity in universities has been addressed from different perspectives, yet considering micro-dynamics and impact on actual practices of academic work has been neglected. This article addresses this gap by analyzing how institutional field prescriptions relative to an environmental transformation have been internalized into organizational members’ practices and what effect it has on the collective understanding of organizational identity. Our analytical context is represented by two schools at the biggest Dutch higher education organization. While most studies emphasize contestation and fragmentation with multiple interpretations of organizational identity within the same higher education organization during or as a consequence of environmental transformations, the analyzed case presents contrary results. Organizational members were consistent in describing their own organizational practices across schools. The stable and shared identity is strengthened via anti-identity through two distinct mechanisms: the process of socialization and contrasting to academia. Additionally, we show how through a third mechanism (association to the professional field) organizational members draw on the institutional field prescriptions to legitimize their teaching and research practices. Thus, this paper demonstrates that organizational identity can be stable and non-fragmented even when higher education organizations face and implement changes.

This paper addresses the homogeneous/heterogeneous dilemma regarding formal arrangements of university central governance structures. Most topical studies argue that these structures are becoming homogeneous across countries and prove it by adopting purposive sampling techniques. Yet, other scholars stress heterogeneity within countries. This paper aims to clarify this dilemma through a multi-level analysis that simultaneously considers three levels of embeddedness (i.e., supranational, national and institutional), by employing a policy translation perspective, which can accommodate both homogeneity and heterogeneity. The national sample comprises three countries (the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy). The institutional sample is comprehensive and encompasses all public universities within each country. The study discloses heterogeneity in how countries responded to supranational policy pressures as well as heterogeneous responses at the institutional level even when unitary laws are applied. Relying on these findings, we stress the importance of adopting comprehensive (rather than purposive) sampling to infer about international and/or national homogeneity because studies that generalise results based on one/few case studies per country could be biased by the sample selection criteria. In addition, the research implications of our analysis on steering-at-a-distance and on the relation between the grade of cogency of the national laws and homogeneous/heterogeneous reform outcomes are discussed.

ABSTRACT This article addresses academics who innovate in higher education and their characteristics. We undertake a qualitative case study of six individuals who implemented disruptive and transformative pedagogical approaches and curricular practices in their departments and/or at their institutions. Our findings point to six common characteristics – motivation to change institutionalized practices, interest in change, experience in the field, multi-embeddedness, authority to act, and the strategic use of social networks – which seem to play a role at individual levels in driving these disruptive and transformative approaches. While acknowledging studies in higher education that address innovation as a response to exogenous influences, this study highlights the role of individuals with certain characteristics in driving innovation and processes of endogenous change in higher education institutions. These findings are also relevant for higher education practitioners in their desire to foster innovative initiatives in institutional settings.