From the Editor 
 

It is a great pleasure to present two exceptionally talented scholars who were invited to 
co-edit this special issue. On behalf of all of us at JSBS, we thank you for this valuable
research.  

Gerald E. Hills 
Editor 
Bradley University 
 
 
 
 

Letter from Special Edition Editors 
 
Welcome readers!  On behalf of Domingo Enrique Ribeiro-Soriano and me, we would 
like to thank you for reading this special issue of JSBS from the 2nd Annual GIKA 
Conference held at the University of Valencia, Spain. The conference increased from 
approximately 70 papers and presentations the first year to more than 225 the second 
year. Featuring papers focused on entrepreneurship and strategy, we have chosen papers 
from the conference that fit our mission and readership. These papers come from a 
variety of disciplines and countries but all focus on small business, strategy, and 
entrepreneurship. We hope you will enjoy reading these articles from around the world. 

In “Validation of a Measuring Instrument for the Relationship Between Knowledge 
Transfer and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Family Firms,” Barroso Martínez, Bañegil 
Palacios, and Sanguino Galván perform an empirical study to reflect the validity and 
robustness of their knowledge transfer measurement scale. The goal of this scale is to 
determine the nature of the relationships between knowledge transfer, entrepreneurial 
orientation, and performance. The measuring instrument is innovative because previous 
measuring scales are unable to measure the aforementioned relationships. This research 
reveals that, although entrepreneurship depends on many factors at different 
organizational levels, people’s willingness to share their knowledge plays an important 
role in entrepreneurial capacity. The authors conclude that entrepreneurial orientation 
involves an extensive process of knowledge sharing among members of family-run 
businesses. 

Castaño-Martínez, Martínez-Rodríguez, and Ruiz-Fuensanta’s paper,“The Influence of 
Socioeconomic Factors on Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” contributes to the analysis 
of the factors that encourage entrepreneurs to innovate in their businesses. A broad range 
of elements condition entrepreneurial innovation. In this paper, however, the authors 
devote their attention to studying the role of socioeconomic factors such as social capital, 
institutions, and income distribution. These elements, which shape the environment in 
which businesses operate, can act as important incentives for innovation, or, conversely, 

S TRATEG Y 
 JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS 



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