The DOI matches its Crossref record; 58 of the 58 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Industrial business associations improving the internationalisation of SMEs with digital platforms: A design science research approach
Abstract
Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the lack of design knowledge on digital platforms (DPs), by studying the new and specific context of DPs managed by industrial business associations (IBAs) to improve the internationalisation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). A specific objective is to elicit detailed digital platform’s requirements and features for this particular organisational context. A design science research (DSR) approach is adopted to develop design propositions (the artifact), following the context-intervention-mechanism-outcome logic (CIMO-logic). The design propositions are derived for DPs that can support different types of generative mechanisms of social interaction: information sharing, collaboration, and collective action. The design propositions are obtained by balancing empirical knowledge based on interviews performed with IBAs and SMEs in Portugal and in the UK, with theoretical knowledge from the literature of information systems, DPs and collaborative networks (CNs). The utility of the design propositions is further evaluated by experts and IBAs. The findings are proved to be relevant for practice, mainly for IBAs, SMEs, and digital platform designers to develop more effective collaborative DPs and sociotechnical systems, supporting CNs and the internationalisation needs of SMEs. The knowledge generated in this study brings new design knowledge on DPs, contributing with design propositions translated into tangible and concrete requirements and capabilities, situated in a specific context and empirical setting.
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“Finally, digitalization is proven as a crucial tool to overcome internationalization challenges of firms, especially SMEs, to establish a collaborative network to gain a competitive advantage in foreign markets and obtain the right information (Costa et al., 2020).”
From Digital Transformation in International Trade: Opportunities, Challenges, and Policy Implications (2025) · cites this paper as Costa et al., 2020
Citations
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Cited by
Digital Transformation in International Trade: Opportunities, Challenges, and Policy Implications
Mirzaye, S., & Mohiuddin, M. (2025) · Journal of Risk and Financial Management · doi:10.3390/jrfm18080421 · Cited by 86
Metadata
- Authors
- Costa, E., Soares, A. L., & de Sousa, J. P.
- Affiliations
- INESC TEC (PT)
- Universidade do Porto (PT)
- Corresponding author
- Costa, Eric
- Venue
- International Journal of Information Management
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-08
- Volume
- 53
- Pages
- 102070
- ISSN
- 0268-4012 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3009506371
- Cited by
- 100
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 7
- FWCI
- 17.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- Locations
- International Journal of Information Management (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Portuguese funding agency
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
- Project “TEC4Growth - Pervasive Intelligence
- Enhancers and Proofs of Concept with Industrial (Impact/NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000020)
- North Portugal Regional Operational Programme
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Business Strategy and Innovation
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management Information Systems › Information Systems Theories and Implementation
- Keywords
- digital platforms, SME internationalization, small and medium-sized enterprises, collaborative networks, design propositions, socio-technical systems, information sharing, collective action, cooperation mechanisms
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
