Entrepreneurship is considered to be one of the most critical factors contributing to the successful performance of business, innovations, and growth of the economy. Entrepreneurship is the main driver of innovation and sustainable business. The purpose of this research is to assess the main traits that are deemed essential for the successful performance of a firm. A model is developed to assess how entrepreneurs’ creativity, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation influence the performance of small firms through the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as a mediating variable. The hypotheses are tested by using Smart PLS (partial least squares path modeling) on a sample of 353 business owners to seek the insight of entrepreneurial traits on small-firm performance. The findings of the research show that self-efficacy and EO have a significant and positive association with the performance of a firm, while creativity and internal locus of control are fully mediated by EO. The subjective measures are used to examine the performance of a firm in terms of growth, sustainability, and financial performance, but the same can also be assessed by objective measures. The practical implication of this research provides entrepreneurs with a different perspective of the entrepreneurial traits that contribute to successful firm performance. The originality of the research lies in the attempt to explore the entrepreneurial traits that significantly influence the effectiveness of the performance of firms in the Pakistani context.

The 21st century is an era of disruption, vanishing entities lagging behind to transform themselves. Digital transformation therefore has gained much recognition especially in the 21st century, as the technological advancement assists in significantly optimizing business operations, product service and design innovation. Organizations around the world are investing and making constant efforts in digital transformation by updating and upgrading their business processes in order to improve the firm’s performance and achieve competitive advantage. However digital transformation requires the workforce to possess adequate competencies, both for implementation and utilization post implementation, as these technological changes bring intense shifts in the attitude and behaviour of the traditional ways of doing. This paper, therefore, attempts to bridge the gap in literature for the changing needs of today’s workforce competencies that are deemed necessary in the era of digital transformation, by gathering evidences from literature analysis. The paper contributes to the body of literature by directing industry practitioners and researchers to adopt a wider outlook, while undergoing the journey of digital transformation, which encompasses diversity in workforce competencies. The researcher has discussed diversity and digital transformation, with the perspective of what digital transformation needs is what gender diversity offers.

This research aims to improve an understanding of the lived experience of the gender diversity of respondents in the Pakistani context. It provides a rich description of the influence that gender diversity had on the organizational culture and the employees. Specific benefits anticipated by the organization, from implementation of gender diversity and related challenges were explored. In depth interviews were conducted with key personnel including HR managers assigned with a specific task to implement gender diversity across the organization. The findings reveal that a lot of concentrated efforts have been put in to eradicate the mental barriers within the system and also inculcate the culture of diverse sets of people, especially gender, allowing multiple and diverse opinions within the organization. Targeted efforts towards gender diversity have started showing its fruits; as such implementation has led to improved performance for the organizations and creation of job opportunities for the female gender, which may have been ignored earlier. Moreover, the organization strongly believes that ongoing efforts will yield better results. Therefore, focused efforts, initiatives and constant messages to change the mindset need to continue. The trustworthiness of the data will be established through triangulation and a chain of evidence has been established between the research objective, research questions and the interview data.