Hybrid Work as an Entrepreneurial Capability in Nigerian Service SMEs: A Critical Integrative Review and Research Agenda

This paper evaluates when hybrid work becomes an entrepreneurial capability: a service SME’s repeatable capacity to configure location, infrastructure, coordination and discretion to mobilise expertise and reconfigure delivery under uncertainty. Methodologically, this is a topic-specific secondary rescreen of an inherited 2021-2026 open-access evidence pack; it is not a new systematic database search. The review applied PRISMA 2020 transparency to the retained audit trail and rescreened 150 retrievable full texts (Page et al., 2021). Twenty studies qualified: six African empirical studies, 13 international empirical studies and one sectoral narrative review. Study-level appraisal and claim-level confidence were calibrated to design quality, construct fit and contextual proximity. Findings indicate that value depends on six routines: task-location matching, digital coordination, outcome-based management, autonomy and boundary design, learning and reconfiguration, and security and continuity. The routines are candidate building blocks of capability; evidence that one practice is effective does not by itself establish entrepreneurial capability. Stronger international designs associate coordinated schedules with retention without performance loss, while dispersed work can weaken collaboration and innovation. Direct Nigerian evidence remains cross-sectional or qualitative and therefore associative. Power unreliability, data cost, unequal home conditions and cybersecurity make capability quality more consequential than remote-day frequency. The paper distinguishes resources, practices and capability; explains how the six routines were derived through theory-guided and inductive synthesis; and offers six propositions and a design-specific Nigerian research agenda.