Marion Polge, Université de Montpellier

Isabelle Calmé, Université de Tours

Colette Fourcade, Université de Montpellier

For a long time considered as the "small scale" of SMEs, Very Small Enterprises (SMEs) remain marginalized as an autonomous object of study in management research. Yet the foundational work of P.-A. Julien and M. Marchesnay laid essential foundations: the first by highlighting the constitutive heterogeneity of the SME population, the second by identifying the characteristics specific to the management system of the "hypofirm." This special issue follows in their footsteps, reinterrogating their contributions to SME research without, however, leading to an in-depth exploration of their most reduced segment, particularly SMEs. Beyond the size effect, can SMEs be distinguished from SMEs by their nature?

If we move away from the purely dimensional question, SMEs appear as singular organizational forms, capable of functioning in environments marked by uncertainty. Their light structuring, the high intensity of interactions they mobilize daily, and their proximity to their local ecosystem give them rapid and often innovative adjustment modes. They do not merely reproduce the SME model in miniature: they develop specific ways of coping with constraints, managing resources and envisioning the future, giving rise to original entrepreneurial dynamics, sometimes more sober, more resilient or more iterative than those observed in more established organizations.

Their theoretical discretion contrasts with their statistical and social reality: enterprises with fewer than 10 employees represent more than 90% of enterprises in most European economies. They play an essential role in local ecosystems and embody entrepreneurial projects in their own right: their leaders do not aspire to become SME leaders, they choose the SME through strategic will. This specificity invites us to reconsider the SME as an object of study in itself, endowed with organizational logics and a capacity for continuous evolution that merit closer analysis.

Since 2020, several systemic mutations – health crises, ecological disruptions, resource depletion, inflation, rising inequalities, massive digitization – have fundamentally questioned the foundations of the dominant socio-economic model that tends towards productivity and competitiveness. In this context of chronic instability, SMEs appear as a central heuristic object for thinking differently about the enterprise from an economic, social and even societal point of view. Far from being simple "small enterprises," they constitute a place of experimentation for new models, to be differentiated from models focused on growth or rationalization of processes. Halfway between the micro-entrepreneur and SMEs, does it not prefigure an (or) SME-ist model(s) in its own right?

New forms of projects are developing, oriented towards chosen subsistence, societal contribution, or the search for ethical coherence. These forms are driven by post-materialist aspirations: creating an activity to live differently, to anchor oneself in a territory, to make society differently.

From a socio-economic point of view, the relationship to performance is being reconfigured. For many SMEs, it is no longer a matter of growing at all costs, but of aiming for balance, sustainability, or local impact. Performance becomes multiform: relational, ecological, existential. This choice reflects not opposition to a model, but rather an aspiration to flourish in a proxemic activity, in the space that surrounds the individual, "within reach" (here, of the manager).

The scarcity of resources, no longer perceived as a constraint, becomes a source of innovative strategic behaviors. SMEs engage in processes of resourcefulness, combining frugality, bricolage, mutualization, and reasoned resource management. In a world facing the depletion of natural resources, their ability to make do with little, to invent bold solutions, becomes a strategic competence, even a source of inspiration for other economic models.

The social aspect guides the action of SMEs: the link to material constraint is not limited to economics. From a perspective involving cooperative logics and social and solidarity economy, some SMEs reconfigure their action through a renewed relationship with the living. They integrate natural ecosystems into their governance, relying on participatory and territorialized organizational modes, characteristics of cooperative dynamics. This repositioning leads to practices sometimes informal, but profoundly innovative, that put tension on classical categories of performance and innovation, while reaffirming the role of the enterprise in the preservation and care of environments.

Societal developments, and more specifically the massive arrival of new technologies – digital platforms, automation, AI – profoundly transform the conditions of existence of SMEs, which occupy a particular position between individual entrepreneurship and structured SMEs, that is, organizations that are both very small, flexible, but subject to growing professional and economic demands. Some seize these technologies to create new forms of activity; others are fragile due to processes of uberization and algorithmic dependency; still others develop thanks to the emergence of new needs related to digitization. These transformations also raise social, ethical and political issues concerning the future of self-employment, digital sovereignty and control of tools.

From a micro-economic point of view, the profound renewal of leadership figures: post-salaried career changes, women entrepreneurs, neo-rural residents, young graduates seeking meaning, engaged entrepreneurs. This diversity produces new forms of relationship to work, to growth, and to risk, which merit specific attention. They do not hesitate to question the performance criteria that sit at the center of managerial concerns.

From a meso-economic point of view, the SME is not merely inserted into a local environment: it participates fully in the configuration and evolution of the territorial entrepreneurial system. If some work on entrepreneurial ecosystems has proposed relatively disembodied models, sometimes disconnected from concrete socio-territorial anchors, recent research instead invites us to reaffirm the territorial depth of these dynamics. In the lineage of local productive systems and industrial districts developed by the Italian school, the territory must be understood not as a simple physical support, but as a socio-economic space endowed with identities, resources and specific practices that shape entrepreneurial trajectories. This perspective aligns with the conclusions of the Terram Institute report (2024), according to which SMEs structure the vitality and cohesion of territories. Yet this finding reveals a paradox: dependent on social resources and local networks, they simultaneously contribute to transforming them. Therefore, how can we understand their impact when they are both shaped by the territory and actors in its recomposition?

In total, SMEs can no longer be thought of as reduced versions of SMEs, but as original and pertinent forms of organizations, adapted to an era marked by complexity, uncertainty and planetary limits. They constitute laboratories of resilience, sobriety and entrepreneurial reinvention, often ignored by classical analytical frameworks. They express the essence of robustness, characterized by a high density of interactions. This dynamic creates fertile ground for the development of a continuous evolution capability.

Potential topics

• Atypical strategic trajectories and diversification of SME leader profiles: profiles, motivations, relationship to work and risk, career bifurcations
• Redefining performance in SMEs: alternative indicators, rejection of growth, work-life balance, territorial anchoring, relationship to living systems
• SMEs, ecology and resource scarcity: frugal business models, circular economy, chosen degrowth, regenerative enterprise, ecological impact
• SMEs and technologies: appropriation, marginalization or resistance to digitization, artificial intelligence, uberization or platform economy
• Alternative forms of organization and innovation: bricolage, mutualization, cooperation, hybridization of statuses, informal or hybrid practices
• Role of SMEs in social and territorial transitions: local resilience, inclusion dynamics, responses to systemic crises, economic justice
• Research methodologies and epistemologies adapted to SMEs: partnership research, critical approaches, life narratives, entrepreneurial ethnography

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Launch webinar for call for contributions
• October 30, 2026: Submission of complete articles, meeting the journal's standards, on the RIPME digital platform
• November 13, 2026: Decision of rejection or sending for evaluation
• January 15, 2027: First evaluation decision transmitted to authors
• March 26, 2027: Return of 2nd version and sending for evaluation if necessary
• June 1, 2027: Decision transmitted to authors
• September 20, 2027: Return of 3rd version and final evaluation by editorial committee
• November 20, 2027: Receipt of final versions

Masatoshi Kato, Kwansei Gakuin University

David Audretsch, Indiana University

Roy Thurik, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Maksim Belitski, University of Reading

Alex Coad, Waseda Business School

Eric Liguori, Florida State University

Rapid technological change, globalization of supply chains and demand, increasing physical and digital connectivity, and inter-dependencies between actors in innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems are forcing entrepreneurs and managers to rethink how they organize beyond the manufacturing of products and services, how they innovate, what technologies they adopt, and what markets they enter. The forms and models of organization affect a firm's ability to become exceptional. At the core of firm organization, the factors that distinguish them from their counterparts in the industry and region are firm size, firm age, stage of entrepreneurial continuum, institutional context, and technology-savviness. Firms that have been able to optimize their organization will outperform their regional competitors, markets, and industry; create new forms of growth at a different pace; and approach the innovation and production frontier. Through organizations in different forms, entrepreneurs and mature firms create product and process innovation and coordinate people, external ecosystem actors, government, suppliers, and capital to achieve frontier outcomes.

This collection is especially interested in organizational forms enabling rapid growth without compromising productivity, efficiency, and societal impact, and facilitating innovation and market entry, firm resilience, and survival within both firm shocks and exogenous shocks. Moreover, the collection is interested in understanding how firms' high growth, scaling, and exceptional performance are driven by novel organizational forms. This focus is timely for the Journal of Small Business Management as an intellectual platform that studies why and how the most novel forms and models of organization in performance, growth, efficiency, and innovation are emerging in large tech firms and in exceptional performers among micro-, small-, and micro-firms, in social entrepreneurial firms, and even non-profit organizations. The special focus includes the novel forms of organization that allow for persistent steady growth, high value added, and other exceptional performers—such as niche innovators, scaleups, accelerators, blitzscalers, hidden champions, and Mittelstand-type firms and hyperspecialized firms—that repeatedly outperform their counterparts in the industry.

By combining specific forms of organization, these firms often operate nearby or at the innovation and production frontier despite constrained resources and through global or localized resource orchestration. Hidden champions or niche innovators—for example, hyperspecialized digital and non-digital firms that focus on a small set of activities and scale through digital technologies or localized networks and interdependencies with complements and partners often plugging into collaborators' value chains—are highly successful small firms that hold top global market positions in niche segments.

Global outreach is an important locus to understand novel forms of organization. Global firms, such as micro-multinationals or born-global firms, are young and small firms that internationalize early, working with a lean core and extensive external partners for production, distribution, or customer acquisition, and often relying on global value-chain orchestrators. While prior work has examined financial performance, resource management, scaling, and innovation in such firms, most evidence comes from European contexts, with little evidence from other regions of the world. For example, niche leaders in parts of Asia may begin with an imitation strategy and then move up the value ladder. These firms may be more likely to pursue listing and brand recognition, may expand into adjacent domains beyond niche focus, and may balance domestic and global knowledge via investment in training, R&D, and engagement with ecosystem actors regionally and globally. Little is known about how organizational forms differ across regions, industries, countries, and clusters, or which specific characteristics enable them to experiment, adopt, and develop certain forms of organization that ensure their exceptional performance.

This online collection invites work that theorizes and empirically examines novel forms and models of organization, including structures, processes, architectures, institutions, and governance, that enable firms of different ages, sizes, and niche focus to approach or redefine the productivity and innovation frontier. The collection welcomes research that opens the black box of novel forms and models of organization, enabling firms to outperform their close and distant competitors, recombine a variety of knowledge, and adopt new modes of working, hiring, and innovating to achieve exceptional performance. Additionally, the collection welcomes research that explains when, how, and why particular organizational forms and models outperform others across regions, industries, clusters, and ecosystems in diverse contexts of high-cost developed economies, high-cost emerging economies, and other developing economies.

This collection is expected to investigate how novel forms of organization can appear beyond the OECD and WEIRD countries representing Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies (primarily North America, Western Europe, Australia, and parts of East Asia like Japan/South Korea). Interestingly, most developed Asian economies have actively identified and cultivated niche leaders and innovators through national programs, such as Japan's Global Niche Top Companies Selection 100 and South Korea's World-Class 300 & Global Specialized Enterprise Cultivation. In China, two policy-driven categories—niche champions and specialized, advanced, differentiated, and innovative firms—aim to move small businesses up global value chains, emphasizing market performance, strategic uniqueness through innovation, competitive advantage, internationalization, and sustainable growth. Understanding new forms and models of organization for innovation and firm growth will create a rich empirical setting and extend existing growth and innovation theories.

Potential topics

• How do firms adopting novel forms of organization differ in leadership, governance, and decision-making, and how do these differences shape innovation and productivity at the frontier?
• What internal microstructures (e.g., boards, design, cross-functional teams, routines) enable firms to combine and recombine internal capabilities with external knowledge and ecosystem actors to achieve exceptional performance?
• How do novel organizational forms affect authority, accountability, and coordination across functions, and what are the effects on innovation speed, product and managerial innovation, value creation, talent retention, growth, and scaling?
• Which combinations of internal investment (make), external acquisition (buy), and alliance orchestration (ally) constitute novel organizational models that sustain frontier performance across firm types (hidden champions, niche leaders, sustained innovators, blitzscalers, scalers, etc.)?
• How does the diversity (institutional and geographic) of external knowledge and innovation partners translate into firms adopting novel forms of organization, and what internal routines convert diverse inputs into outcomes?
• Under what conditions do international vs regional knowledge collaboration and spillovers generate non-redundant knowledge that improves innovation and performance, and how do firms with different organizational forms apply, filter, and integrate this knowledge?
• How does digitalization (AI and robotics, data systems, cloud, prominent role of intangibles, etc.) reshape internal process architectures, and which organizational forms best convert digital investments into productivity and innovation gains?
• Which governance models (data rights, intellectual property, cybersecurity, partner contracts) enable novel organizational forms to adopt and scale complex technologies while maintaining trust and control in technology and partners?
• How do digitally savvy firms pivot and reconfigure organizational forms to build resilience to supply, demand, and geopolitical shocks, and what design features predict faster recovery and sustained innovation?
• How do firms implement novel forms of organization while embedded in industry and entrepreneurial ecosystems, and how does ecosystem position shape organizational models for innovation and scaling?
• How do niche leaders and other exceptional performers orchestrate global supply chains as an organizational capability, not only a sourcing choice, across regional and international contexts?
• What partner portfolio mixes (universities, suppliers, customers, competitors, government, research labs, conferences, competitions, trade and industrial associations, scientific communities) are associated with frontier outcomes, and what form of organization do firms need to adopt to efficiently govern such collaborations, knowledge spillovers, and firm strategies?
• How do relationships with government shape novel organizational models through procurement, standards, subsidies, and cluster governance, and when do these relationships enhance versus constrain innovation and productivity?
• How do organizational models vary between emerging and traditional industries and across industrial clusters of novel and emerging industries where traditional forms of organization are no longer working?
• How do deglobalization pressures and techno-nationalism reshape firms' organizational choices?
• What distinctive business model configurations characterize exceptional performers across countries, regions, industries, and stages of growth, age, and size, and how are these configurations enabled by organizational form?
• How do European, Asian, American, and African leaders in WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries differ in adopting and experimenting with novel forms of organization?
• What contextual factors explain these cross-country differences?
• Do niche leaders exhibit distinctive innovation patterns (radical vs incremental, product vs process, ecosystem vs standalone), and which organizational designs best explain variation in these patterns and their performance effects?

Timeline

• November 1, 2026: Manuscript submission opens
• November 15, 2026: Submission deadline for extended abstracts and full papers
• January 31, 2027: Manuscript deadline

This special issue seeks to advance understanding of social entrepreneurship in rapidly transforming global contexts. We invite submissions that explore how social enterprises are adapting to new economic, technological, and social environments while maintaining their commitment to social and environmental impact.

Potential topics

• Social entrepreneurship in evolving markets and contexts
• Impact measurement and evaluation of social enterprises
• Hybrid business models combining social and commercial goals
• Digital transformation and social entrepreneurship
• Policy and regulatory frameworks for social enterprises
• Stakeholder engagement and partnerships in social entrepreneurship
• Scaling social impact
• Environmental sustainability and social entrepreneurship

Timeline

• October 31, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Louis Fauger, Amazon Research & Georgia Institute of Technology

Markus Gerschberger, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria

Matthieu Lauras, KEDGE Business School

The Physical Internet (PI) is moving from vision to reality. Beyond foundational concepts, organizations are now experimenting with pilots, demonstrators, living labs and large-scale initiatives that test how PI principles can be implemented, governed and scaled. This Special Issue seeks rigorous, practice-oriented and empirically grounded contributions that provide actionable insights for managers, policymakers and supply chain stakeholders. The Special Issue is associated with the IPIC 2026 International Conference (June 2026, France), but submissions are open to all authors.

We welcome papers focusing on the implementation and operationalization of the PI, including empirical studies (qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods), case studies, pilots, demonstrators and living labs, practice-based research and industry-driven innovations, and funded projects and cross-industry initiatives. Conceptual contributions are welcome only if strongly connected to real implementation challenges and managerial implications.

All submissions are expected to adopt a sound scientific methodology while clearly demonstrating managerial relevance and actionable lessons learned.

Potential topics

• PI use cases, pilots and demonstrators
• Business models and value creation in open and shared logistics
• Governance and coordination mechanisms for interoperable networks
• Supply chain intelligence, data sharing and digital platforms
• Transition pathways, roadmaps and maturity models
• Managerial and organizational challenges of PI adoption
• Public policy, regulation and public–private collaboration
• Sustainability, circular logistics and environmental performance
• Empirical studies (qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods)
• Case studies, pilots, demonstrators and living labs
• Practice-based research and industry-driven innovations
• Funded projects and cross-industry initiatives

Timeline

• June 1, 2026: Submission platform opened
• November 30, 2026: Paper submission deadline