PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the moderating influence of the external environment on the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial network, government business support and SMEs performance. The objectives of the study are achieved using the resource-based view and dynamic capability theory.Design/methodology/approachThe survey method of research was used by personally administering questionnaires to the respondents. Multistage sampling techniques are used in selecting 470 SMEs owners/managers that participated in the survey. SPSS 24 and PLS-SEM 3.0 were used in the analysis of the data.FindingsIn the Nigerian context, the findings indicated that EC, EO and GBS directly influence the SMEs performance. Surprisingly, SMEs performance is not influenced by EN. Similarly, EE significantly moderated the relationship between EC, GBS and SMEs performance. On the contrary, EE does not have any moderating influence on the relationship between EO, EN and SMEs performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to northeastern Nigeria. The study is limited to the EC, EO, EN GBS EE and SMEs performance and the use of cross-sectional data. The findings imply that SMEs owners/managers need a high level of entrepreneurial competencies and government business support to achieve a better performance especially in an external environment that is characterised by dynamism, diversity, complexity and hostility. Hence, providing support for both RBV and DCT.Practical implicationsThus, the study offers additional empirical evidence from Nigeria and also expands knowledge and understanding in this field. The findings offer owners/managers, government agencies, financial institutions and other stakeholders of SMEs strategies EC, EO, GBS and EE to achieve a better SMEs performance.Originality/valueThe conceptual framework of the study is unique, and the study was conducted in northeastern Nigeria which is grossly underrepresented in the literature. It also provided understanding on the moderating influence of EE on the framework.

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This paper focused on the relationship between the four main dimensions of entrepreneurial thinking and the performance of 384 Jordanian companies. A survey of 384 small companies exposed the presence of a direct and positive relationship between the four dimensions of entrepreneurial thinking, namely identification of opportunity, risk-taking, tolerance ambiguity and creative and innovative, and performance. The findings highlighted the idea that the more the Jordanian companies identify their opportunities, accept the risk of success or failure, accept tolerance ambiguity and encourage the innovation, the more they will improve their performance. Furthermore, the outcome of the four relationships; innovation-performance, risk taking-performance, tolerance ambiguity-performance and opportunity identification-performance is enormous and statistically significant. This study offered references for enterprises of how their entrepreneurial thinking positively influences their performance.