This year marked the 32nd Annual Association of Marketing Theory and Practice (AMTP) conference. The conference was held at Hilton Head, South Carolina, US, from 13-16 March 2024.

The AMTP conference is an academic, international, marketing conference that emphasizes the integration of academic theory with practical marketing strategies. As described on the AMTP webpage: “Our conference aims for an encouraging, collegial environment in which faculty and students as well as practitioners can share ideas, build research streams, and develop partnerships for future projects.”

Already the third year in a row, I have received the Best Paper Award in the Entrepreneurship & Small Business track. It is an honor to receive such an award, as it is a recognition of the hard work my colleagues and I invested in the development of our research. The title of this year’s awarded paper is: “Detecting Barriers and Drivers to the Adoption of Circular Business Models in Small Companies from Developed and Developing Countries” and the list of my co-authors is the following: Nathalie Touratier-Muller (University of Pau), Stefan Markovic (NEOMA Business School), Vesna Damnjanovic (University of Belgrade).

The paper presents circular business models (CBMs) as an important aspect of the social and ecological transition of developing and developed markets and indicates that there is a lack of research on CBMs in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, in this study, we examined motivations to adopt CBMs in SMEs, as well as barriers and drivers to their adoption. We collected data on 36 companies from France (a developed market) and Serbia (a developing market) and identified similarities as well as differences between these two contexts. Our findings indicate the potential that SMEs possess to positively influence their respective economies by adopting and implementing CBMs. You can read the whole conference proceedings at the following link: ”Detecting Barriers and Drivers to the Adoption of Circular Business Mo” by Nathalie Touratier-Muller, Nikolina Koporcic et al. (georgiasouthern.edu)

This paper is developed as a part of my Research Council of Finland project (Decision number 355949) and might be of interest to Laurea’s RDI experts in Service Business and Circular Economy, as well as students in e.g., Leading Transformational Change master’s degree programme.

About the author

Dr. Nikolina Koporcic (Ph.D. in Economics and Business Administration) is a Principal Researcher at Laurea University of Applied Sciences and an Academy Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland. Nikolina also holds the title of a Docent (Adjunct Professor) at the University of Turku and acts as an Associate Editor of Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility Journal. Her research areas include the co-creation of value, open innovation, corporate branding, entrepreneurship, business relationships and networks. In particular, she is studying the importance of Interactive Network Branding for small firms in business markets. Nikolina has published 16 peer-reviewed academic articles, 3 books, 8 book chapters, 22 conference proceedings, and 10 Laurea Journal articles. orcid.org/0000-0001-5050-3819