Financial Technological Innovation, Sustainable Operations, and Efficiency: a Study of SMBs in Times of Crisis.

The restrictions of COVID-19 considerably impacted SMBs and opened several challenges in their sustainable operations. The present research suggests an inclusive picture of sustainable efficiency through the interrelation of factors that show strong associations to produce this impact to achieve sustainable efficiency in SMBs by integrating the models of strategic resources and financial technological innovation organization environment (FTOE) to examine how sustainable operations can work the FTOE factors while impacting sustainable efficiency. This study focuses on small and medium-sized businesses with employees around the world and includes data collected from various employee groups at four different managerial stages. Structural equation modeling is used to test the proposed hypotheses by incorporating 669 questionnaires. The overall results suggest that FTOE factors show a piece of important information for practices such as performance evaluation and training implying key procedures that drive toward sustainable operations (outputs). In addition, results encourage SMBs to put more effort into internal organizational and financial technological innovation aspects and promote a green revolution that requires stakeholders to implement a more positive environmental attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]