Mitja Ruzzier

• Chair at University of Primorska

Environmental issues have been at the heart of the global and EU member states policy agenda at least for the last decade. Currently, support for innovation is one of the focal areas of environmental sustainability development, with a focus on digitalization and information technology as leading driving forces of the current sixth wave of innovatio...

This research explores the role of demographic changes and digitalization in fostering eco-innovations and their subsequent effects on company growth. Employing a quantitative approach, the study investigates how shifts in demographics and the adoption of digital technologies influence eco-innovative practices across companies. The findings reveal...

Renewable energy has become an important objective especially for fighting climate change and improving energy security. This study has employed two methods for data analysis (i.e., regression analysis and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis) in order to seize the complexity of the phenomenon and explore antecedents of willingness to pay for...

Startups and SMES are considered to be key players in the economic development of nations. That means it is necessary to establish an ecosystem that will allow these firms to develop and grow. Our paper deals with the role of regional innovation ecosystems in the process of developing and nurturing these companies. In particular, we investigate the...

This paper presents a conceptual model of international entrepreneurial intention (IEI) through the lens of planned behavior and expectancy-valence theories. Extending the entrepreneurial intentions literature, where attitude to sustainability has started to have an increasingly important influence, to post-launch decisions, we provide an improved...

Motivated by the growing worldwide concern for sustainable development, in this study, we explore the antecedents of green consumerism in an economy driven by environmental sustainability concerns. Drawing on a survey of 705 Slovenian consumers, we find that consumers' environmental commitment, perception of eco‐products, and perception of barriers...

This paper focuses on the second dimension of the EU Commission's energy strategy - development of the fully integrated European energy market and reviews prior research on market development indicators and the methods used to assess the state of energy market development as well as aims to determine the role of regulation on energy market developm...

Transition to sustainability is a long-term challenge which should also actively engage consumers, as consumption causes environmental stress. In order to understand how consumers adopt eco-products, we conducted an extensive literature review of green consumerism and presented findings of 47 previous research works. In addition, this study’s aim w...

The purpose of the study is to develop a multidimensional construct of networking self-efficacy, empirically test its multidimensionality, and analyse its relationship to firm growth. The empirical study is based on data collected through a structured questionnaire that was emailed to entrepreneurs from small- and medium-sized firms in Slovenia. Th...

This study addresses a certain research issue: how do the Big Five personality traits of managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) impact the business performance of companies? A representative random sample of managers of SMEs in Slovenia was used for data collection through survey research. Hypotheses and the model were tested using s...

Branding seems to be an important issue among all companies, also among newly established and young companies with high growth potential or so-called startups. This was also confirmed in our empirical research, conducted among 195 Slovenian startups. Startup founders/ceos see branding as the most important business strategy in their companies. Sepa...

In dynamic business environments entrepreneurs increasingly strive to customise new products/services to displayed and latent user needs. User-driven innovation (U.D.I.) aims to incorporate user needs by giving users an active role in the innovation process. Despite the growing interest of researchers in U.D.I., empirical evidence remains scarce, b...

In this paper, we explore the main inhibiting factors associated with the process of entry and escalation of SMES in international markets, with a focus on Emerging Markets. We identify and propose seven main categories of Institutional Voids and three main types of resources that may critically determine SMES’ performances on EMS, namely, internat...

This study explores the relationship between internationalization and firm economic performance by investigating the mediating effect of eco-innovation. Using data from 151 Slovenian internationalized companies and structural equation modeling, we find that internationalization is significantly and positively associated with firm-level economic per...

Eco-innovation has become an important instrument to help companies reduce their environmental impact and gain a competitive advantage in increasingly competitive environments. Despite recent research conducted in this field, findings concerning the relationship between eco-innovation and firm performance remain conflicting, inconclusive and incomp...

Eco-innovation plays an increasingly important role for the competitiveness of companies. It opens up new market opportunities due to the growing demand for eco-friendly products and can increase business efficiency. Using a dynamic capabilities lens, this article analyzes the relationships between various types of eco-innovation (product, process...

This study endeavors to explore the driving forces of process eco-innovation and its effect on company performance by adopting an integrative approach. We focus on process eco-innovation, which pertains to technological and non-technological solutions that result in a reduction of material and energy costs for companies. In this regard, the study s...

This article provides a cross-country analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of innovation processes in the European Union countries, with a focus on Slovenia and the four countries of the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland). By examining relationships between different composite innovation indicators, our study...

This study seeks to elucidate the drivers of and barriers to eco-innovation deployment. In order to obtain greater insight into the motives for and hindrances to eco-innovation deployment, we employ a case study approach, based on interviews of five Slovenian companies active in eco-innovation. The main insights of this study are threefold. First,...

This paper provides an overview of the emerging literature on the drivers of eco-innovation. Its main contribution lies in separating the drivers associated with the phases of development and diffusion and in identifying particular drivers based on different eco-innovation types. We find that research in this area primarily adopts the resource-base...

Export marketing and international business literature support the view that firm size–a reflection of number of employees, and sales–is positively related to export intensity and is a distinguishing factor between internationalized and non-internationalized firms. According to the resource-based view heterogeneous resource profiles that enable fir...

The focus of entities nowadays is not only on financial results but also on ecological and social impacts of their businesses. This focus should be applied to all marketing principles. Unlike research on contributions, which emphasizes its general importance for entities’ operation in the market, there is little work exploring sustainability issues...

This paper explains Eco-Innovation (EI) activities of clusters deriving from 11 countries of Southeastern European (SEE) region. The study indicates that more than a half of the analyzed clusters in the SEE region have set objectives related to EI in their cluster strategies, while just a few of them primarily focused on EI. Thus, results suggest t...

Four generations are currently present in the labour market, and different events have affected their evolution. Theoretical backgrounds of stereotypes and generations, as presented in this paper, serve as the basis for our qualitative research based on theoretical knowledge about generations, stereotypes, and intergenerational stereotypes. The res...

Background and Purpose: Providing a win-win situation for enterprises and the environment is raising the importance of eco-innovation. This article sheds light on the eco-innovation activities implemented within the clusters of the South Eastern European region (hereafter the SEE region). The main objective of this paper is to provide an outline of...

Based on a sample of 108 Slovenian companies, from the 1,000 most internationalised ones, we strived to explore the relationship between two strategic directions - innovation and internationalisation. The relationships between factor of innovation and the dependent variables of internationalisation (scale and scope) have been tested with regression...

The paper’s main purpose is to present a cross-cultural model of the customer-based brand equity for a tourism destination, encompassing our four proposed dimensions: awareness, image, quality and loyalty. Previous research findings on the concept of measurement invariance were employed in our empirical investigation of the proposed model, which wa...

In recent years, entrepreneurs and SMEs have been forced to adapt to a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized world, an evolution that has had a profound impact on marketing strategies. This timely volume identifies the many new opportunities available to entrepreneurs and SMEs in the global marketplace, and offers tactical and strategic marketi...

This study uses a structural equation modeling technique to verify a theoretically proposed model of a customer’s evaluation of a tourism destination brand. We therefore employed a measure of the customer-based brand equity of a tourism destination and tested it on the case of Austria from the perspectives of German and Croatian tourists. The propo...

The paper presents a modern approach to brand conceptualisation and interprets its complexity by presenting different themes regarding branding, its evolving process as well as its characteristics in comparison to products. In a modern approach the brand should be treated as a complex entity. The author argues that a modern approach goes beyond its...

This paper investigates key success factors in logistics outsourcing. A model is used to illustrate outsourcing relationships and then applied to three examples from the logistics sector. The model is presented as a tool which can help managers to minimize the chance of failure by explicitly addressing key issues prior to the implementation of a pa...

In this paper by the literature review we interpreted changes in society and other changing conditions that have contributed to the emergence of user-driven innovation and a ‘design thinking’ approach. The two areas are very similar in practice, so we suggest combining them into a construct. The construct is a pioneer contribution to the developmen...

This paper discusses the psychological characteristics of entrepreneurs and focuses on the individuals propensity to risk-taking, considering that throughout the history of research on entrepreneurship, the latter has been defined as a key characteristic that determines the decision to establish a company. Following an overview of existing theories...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use a structural equation modelling technique to verify a theoretically proposed model of knowledge management (KM). Design/methodology/approach – Existing studies on KM were reviewed and their limitations were identified. Mailed structured questionnaire data for this study were collected from small- and me...

In this chapter, human capital of entrepreneurs, firm resources and their influence on the opportunity perception to operate on in international markets are being analyzed using the multiple regression analysis. The analyses performed on the selected sample of internationalized Slovenian SMEs, just partly confirmed our expected relationships and pr...

This chapter integrates brand identity and equity as a two-dimensional approach to destination branding. By incorporating the supply- and demand-side perspectives, the approach enables different destination stakeholders to be included in this process. Drawing on general branding and marketing literature, the study presents a three-part framework fo...

Analyzing the Process of Patent Submission with a Special Emphasis on the Phases of the Research Process - the Case of Slovenia This article presents some findings about the process of patenting of Slovenian and foreign researchers in scientific research. Based on the reviewed literature and with help of our conceptual model, we establish that the...

An entrepreneur's social capital can be important for their firm's growth. The creation of a network can be largely determined by strategy. This study makes a contribution by developing and testing a model of the firm growth driven by the entrepreneur's social capital that considers the entrepreneur's resource acquisition network ties. In the model...

An entrepreneur's social capital can be important for their firm's growth. The creation of a network can be largely determined by strategy. This study makes a contribution by developing and testing a model of the firm growth driven by the entrepreneur's social capital that considers the entrepreneur's resource acquisition network ties. In the model...

The paper investigates the personal network of an entrepreneur that owns a small family venture. The aim of the present paper is to examine the role of the spouse in the family firm’s networking. The research results show that the entrepreneur’s wife has a significant influence on the family firm’s network performing. She is present in all cliques...

This study uses a structural equation modeling technique to predict the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the entrepreneur's human capital (dimensions: international business skills, international orientation, environmental perception, and management know-how). While international orientation and environmental r...

The internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is explored by focusing on a clarification of the internationalization construct. A set of hypotheses is conceptually developed, including the main dimensions of internationalization (operation mode, market, product, time and performance). The proposed multi-dimensional internati...

This study uses a structural equation modeling technique to predict the degree of internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) based on the entrepreneur's network structure as one of the most important features of social capital. Two dimensions of the entrepreneur's network structure are developed and examined: strong and weak...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the similarities and differences in the internationalization of SMEs and MNEs and the specific factors affecting them. Design/methodology/approach The relevant literature was reviewed particularly in the context of the major theories of internationalization. Findings The positive and negative asp...

The paper investigates the customer's perspective on a tourism destination brand through four proposed dimensions: awareness, image, quality and loyalty dimension. In addition to the brand's dimensions evaluation, the influence of previous visitation on each proposed dimension is presented. The evaluation of tourism destination brand Slovenia in th...

The resource-based approach is a new promising theoretical framework that is applied to the internationalisation of SMEs. Derived from strategic management it provides value-added theoretical propositions about the uniqueness of certain resources that have turned out to be critical for the internationalisation process of SMEs. This paper examines t...

The paper presents the theoretical background to internationalization strategies for the case of the hotel industry. However, although the hotel industry’s internationalization has already been analyzed, the paper presents a rare example of its application to small and medium-sized hotel firms. In order to reveal the distinctive internationalizatio...