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The global COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the EU in spring 2020, has stressed all areas of society to an unprecedented extent. The ensuing lack of medical supplies, disinfectants, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE) revealed real shortcomings in most EU countries’ preparedness for the situation. The sudden shortage of life-saving goods inverted the order of public procurement markets, with suppliers exploiting the situation to také the initiative at the expense of contracting authorities. The loss of government authorities’ monopsonist position in the public procurement markets (Folliot Lalliot & Yukins, 2020), together with the inability to deliver in time the necessary goods, often simple medical consumables, called into question the whole area of government purchasing. The traditional legislative framework of EU public procurement has thus proved unable to cope with the rapidly growing demand for medical equipment in the current situation.

As early as the 1980s and the early 1990s, empirical studies showed that public procurement can boost innovation, even more so than subsidies for research and development (Geroski, 1990; Rothwell & Zegweld, 1981). In 2006, Viviane Redding (EU Commissioner for Innovation) stated in a press release by the European Commission: “Europe needs to create such a trade environment that will support faster innovation and the acceptance of research results. The public sector has an immense purchasing power; however, it needs the right incentives to share the risks and benefits of investing in new technologies and services” (European Commission, 2006). Subsequently, in around 2007 there was a shift towards public procurement innovations in the EU, and a number of policies and tools to support this decision have been created since then. These policies and tools are currently being implemented, to a varying degree of success, in the national policies of individual EU member states.

Earnings management has raised global concern due to its detrimental influence on financial reporting and, consequently, on financial markets after financial scandals like Enron, and WorldCom. Earnings are a critical measure of a business’s performance and are thus crucial to financial statement users (Jiang & Kim, 2020; Li et al., 2022, Rankin et al., 2017). Under this perspective, it is frequently in the best interests of business owners and managers to manipulate reported earnings for personal gain (Chan et al., 2020; Habib et al., 2017). Manipulation of reported earnings either within GAAP principles or outside leads to inappropriate information about the firm (Rahman & Mohamed Ali, 2006). The financial reporting transparency may be mitigated by incorporating monitoring mechanisms like Corporate Governance (CG; Abu Afifa et al., 2022; Feng & Huang, 2020; Shleifer & Vishny, 1997).

Many changes have occurred in the area of quality management in recent years. The reason for these changes is the dynamic development of the economic and political situation. It is about the quality of the enterprises as a whole, which forces enterprises to focus on establishing quality management systems, which have become a necessary prerequisite for their success. The current period, which is affected by many rapidly changing factors, is extraordinary challenging for business management. Despite some macroeconomic indicators, such as increasing inflation, which cannot be eliminated on the corporate level, there are tools that can strengthen the competitiveness and performance of enterprises. According to Sainis et al. (2022), the sustainable way of thinking, planning and acting is getting increasingly integrated into the corporate strategies of an organization, and that is because it has an impact on economic well-being, competition and corporate reputation.

According to European Commission (2003), small and medium-sized enterprises are categorized into three different groups that are based on the number of their workers. In this regard, the categories and the number of staff headcounts are as follows: microenterprises 0–9; small enterprises 10–49; medium-sized enterprises 50–249. Although SMEs have a more flexible structure to be easily adapted to changing circumstances than larger firms (Civelek et al., 2021a), the majority of SMEs face more export obstacles (Civelek & Krajčík, 2022; Ključnikov et al., 2022) and financial problems due to having a lower amount of financial resources and assets than their larger counterparts (Civelek et al., 2020; Civelek et al., 2021b). Bankruptcy, financial performance, and financial risk management are the major problems that SMEs face in their operations.However, managers should be aware of the financial conditions of their firms when managing their business and when giving financial decisions (Kuběnka et al., 2021).

Business digitalization demands people to adapt to dynamic, modern life (Ritter & Pedersen, 2020). Business activities have moved beyond mere transaction, application, and social life, as technology utilization has increasingly become one of the company’s needs. Information technology has turned into a business opportunity every business actors try to seize (Caputo et al., 2021). Technology is seen as an investment for all business sectors, which is anticipated by the emergence of startup companies in the field of information technology. Technology optimization is aimed at responding to market demands effectively. The term startup refers to a new growing business established based mainly on digitalization and technology. It is established based on new market opportunities. Technology startup companies specializing in digital and information are exhibiting significant growth.In 2022, Indonesia hosts 2,346 start-up companies (www.katadata.com). These companies potentially promote significant economic growth and increase new employment and business opportunities.

The core function of business management is the management of business performance, while connecting individual sections of business activities and interfering in all of them. There are different views on the term “performance,” but it is most often associated with increasing the market value of a business and the appreciation of funds invested by investors. To manage the overall performance of a company, it is necessary to know not only the value representing a particular area but also the factors affecting its formation; therefore, this paper aims to examine the main determinants of operating profitability as the indicators of operating performance. Many scholars have paid their attention to profitability and its determinants, but they mostly focused on a selected country, industry, or a segment. A company cannot be considered to be an isolated entity, as its success is also influenced by the environment in which it operates.

Knowledge transfer, traditionally defined as the transmission of knowledge across organizational boundaries (Easterby-Smith et al., 2008), is related to firm performance in a positive way. Knowledge transfer improves innovative capabilities (Huizingh, 2011), accelerates innovation and strengthens competitive advantage (Foss et al., 2010). Unfortunately, knowledge transfer can also have negative consequences such as knowledge loss, knowledge leakage, etc. In the process of knowledge transfer, enterprises can acquire knowledge from cooperative companies through an exchange process. Firms must also share some of their own knowledge in order to jointly identify, acquire, and assimilate knowledge with collaborating partners (Ritala et al., 2015; Zhang & Baden-Fuller, 2010). In fact, prior research has revealed a paradox: firms can be under protective by sharing too much knowledge, thereby weakening their competitive position, or overprotective by sharing too little knowledge, thereby weakening the positive effects of knowledge transfer (Norman, 2002).

The development of economic relations, the emergence of new financial instruments, scientific and technological progress are among those factors that increase the risk of attracting cash flows to the shadow economy, create conditions for their laundering, and in some cases, find opportunities for corruption and organized crime. At the same time, the development of the financial monitoring system creates competitive advantages for developing the national economy and its sustainable growth.

The growing imperatives of applying the principles of sustainable development in the context of globalization, exposure to climate change, and technological dynamics are leading national and international companies to adopt new performance standards that go beyond the economic sphere. Achieving these performance standards is not only in the strict interest of companies but also of a set of stakeholders (investors, business partners, communities). International institutions, companies, and researchers are developing various strategic frameworks for managing stakeholder relations, both general and sector-specific (Khalilzadeh et al., 2021), integrated reporting being one of the tools to concretize these frameworks. Therefore, making the performance information public has become a business practice. Thus, in the last decade, the number of users of integrated reporting (IR) has increased substantially, serving the purpose of companies to focus not only on financial reporting but also on non-financial issues.

In line with the recent regulatory and practical development of sustainable finance, financial investments are under increasing pressure to be sustainable and responsible (i.e., to generate both long-term competitive financial returns and positive societal impact). Different stakeholders, from policy makers, over international bodies to private actors, undertake initiatives to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into financial decisions, which has been coming to the fore, especially in recent years. Sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) – implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles in finance – has thus become a new, alternative investment philosophy. At the same time, the SRI performance is an area of interest to institutional and individual investors (Brzeszczynski & McIntosh, 2014) and a research topic of an increasing number of studies.

Innovation is a determining factor for economic growth and competitiveness among national economies. Investments in research and development (R&D) represent a good indicator for evaluating the degree of innovation and the potential for economic growth among the Member States of the European Union. Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD – Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D) is the main indicator of R&D intensity and refers to the total amount of R&D expenditure in an economy by commercial enterprises, governments, higher education institutions and the non-profit private sector organizations. Research and development expenses of companies include all expenses incurred by private companies in a certain period of time: salaries of employees involved in the R&D process, costs of materials, equipment and patents (Borahan, 2022).