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One of the most critical phenomena in modern economics is the potential impact of startups on innovation, economic growth, and employment rates at the regional, national and industrial levels (Sedláček & Sterk, 2017). While startups’ collective contributions are critical, the high-risk strategies they pursue lead to startups’ high failure rates, up to 90% in some industries (Arora et al., 2018; Cantamessa et al., 2018; Marmer et al., 2011), so improving organizational performance is vital to these businesses.- This study examines one critical organizational phenomenon – organizational silence – in Iranian startups. Organizational silence, first introduced in 2000 by Morrison and Milliken, is one of the most significant barriers to performance, growth, and innovation in organizations, where employees become silent consciously, refusing to express ideas, critiques, suggestions, and opinions about organizational operations to influential persons in the organization (Morrison & Milliken, 2000).

Companies are constantly on the lookout for methods to boost their performance (Bouwman et al., 2019; Jabbour et al., 2020; Taouab & Issor, 2019). The company will always work, earn, and maintain the constantly changing performance, including in the new normal era of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (Dora et al., 2021; Irawan, 2020; Jesus et al., 2020). The corporate world is not immune to the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies need to understand that rivalry is for physical and intangible assets, such as intellectual capital, when they want to thrive and succeed in the market. The higher the level of intellectual capital, the better the company will develop its intellectual capital to increase investor and stakeholder confidence in the company. Better use of intellectual capital will improve the company’s firm performance. Intellectual capital (IC) if we use the resourcebased theory (RBV) reference, then we can state that IC is a unique resource that can be used in the preparation and implementation of corporate strategies to create competitive advantage and corporate value, which in turn can increase company performance.

Since December 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread rapidly on a global scale (WHO, 2021), strongly affecting organizations from all sectors of activity. Employees, in particular (ILO, 2020), have been forced to quickly alter their work behaviors and manner of working, being obliged to abandon commuting to the workplace and resort to large-scale remote working (Nemțeanu et al., 2021a). The pandemic has made its strongest imprint on the sector of services (Fernandes, 2020), for whom teleworking has become ‘the new normal’ (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-Garcés, 2020; Nemțeanu & Dabija, 2021). This new context has dramatically altered task performance – employee productivity having been strongly affected due to the time needed to adapt to the new reality and working conditions (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-Garcés, 2020).

Intellectual capital has been a widely discussed topic in the last few decades (Palaščáková et al., 2019). The early research was solely focused on human capital as a strategic resource of a company (Hermanson, 1964). Follow up studies included a myriad of different elements of intellectual capital, i.e. structural and relational capital (Edvinsson, 1997; Pulić, 1998; Sveiby, 1997). Even though these authors have presented the structure of the intellectual capital, the consensus on the classification still has not been clearly set. Some authors propose separating Innovation capital from structural capital in the IT industries (Wang & Chang, 2005). Therefore, this study has followed the overview and classification of intellectual capital into four categories: human capital, relational capital, structural capital and innovation capital.

A supply chain is the integrated part of an organization in which the suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and consumers are involved and the information flow is linked through networks (Towill et al., 1992). Sustainability requires having sustainable business practices (Lai et al., 2020). From a practical point of view, sustainability focuses on minimizing the harmful impact of a firm on the environment, on enhancing good social relations, and on increasing the economic benefits of the firm, at the same time (Hendiani et al., 2020). The sustainability of the supply chain is therefore an important issue for the business organizations that are looking to attain a sustainable level in the global market (Kumar et al., 2019). To make the supply chain sustainable and resilient, it is essential to identify the basic performance indicators. By investigating the existing performance of an organization, a firm can take action against the problems that exist.

Sustainability is a theme that has gained interest among researchers and practitioners due to the increase of stakeholder awareness regarding environmental and social issues. In this context, the purchasing power of a company may turn out to be an important booster to bring positive changes to society. Corporations have to use this power to accomplish a goal and turn their supply chain in a driver for inclusive growth (Szegedi & Kerekes, 2012). Consequently, businesses have become conscious of the requirement of developing strategies, which can spread their usual corporate governance methods beyond the company’s borderline to their supply chain partners. According to Keating, Quazi and Kriz (2007), the appearance of purchasing approaches in favour of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the most noticeable display of this extension.

CSR (corporate social responsibility) disclosure evolved as a result of corporate reporting in response to changes in conditions in which companies operate. Gray, Owen and Adams (1996) describe CSR disclosure/reporting as „the process of communicating the social and environmental effects of the economic actions of organizations to particular interest groups within society and society at large“. Elkington (1997) states that the terms CSR reporting, Social Reporting, Corporate Citizenship, Sustainability Reporting and Triple Bottom Line Reporting have been employed in the studies interchangeably. To meet 21st century corporate challenges, the corporate reporting system has changed somehow with an inclusion of non-financial disclosure. Krasodomska and Cho (2017) explain the extent of non-financial reporting presented by the corporation regarding activities such as human resources, risk management, product innovation and quality, and impact of corporate decisions on environment and society.

One of the management tools that is gaining popularity in business practice is the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). The BSC was developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in 1992 as an alternative to traditional performance measurement approaches that focus solely on financial indicators and are based purely on a business´s past performance. During the years the Balanced Scorecard has evolved from its early use as a simple performance measurement framework to a full strategic planning and management system.

For the last years, global competition has strengthened the significance of a company’s ability to introduce new products, while responding to increasingly dynamic markets with customers rapidly changing needs, and thus claiming for shortening the time required to design, develop and manufacture, as well as for cost reduction, increased reliability, quality improvement and sustainability. In this context, firms are implementing a wide variety of different techniques, management processes and development strategies in their quest for shorter development cycles and permanent business alignment with the market requirements (Cunha & Putnik, 2006).

The operation and growth of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs – including micro enterprises) are significantly determined by the characteristic features and internal diversity of this group of entities (Torrès & Julien, 2005; Curran, 2006). The identification of characteristic properties leads to a qualitative and quantitative distinction between small and medium-sized companies from other entities, primarily including large enterprises (LEs) (Marchesnay, 1982; Bannier & Zahn, 2012).