Entrepreneurial Competencies, Innovation Enablers and Sustainable Competitive Advantage Among Micro Firms Across Cultures: A Comparative Study of Canada and Malaysia

Abstract

Recent research on start-up businesses has drawn attention to the central importance of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) by accelerating the continuous development of entrepreneurial competencies (EC) through bridging the mediating and moderating peer relationships for entrepreneurial success. Such peer relationships among innovation enablers (IE), government support (GS) and competitive intelligence awareness (CIA) are vital in connecting EC to achieve SCA. However, prior studies scantily emphasized the causal linkages between two different contexts, particularly Canada and Malaysia. This study unpacks the black box of peer relationships contributing to EC and sustainable growth. We espoused a deductive approach with a quantitative methodology using SPSS AMOS version 22 for measurements to address the gaps in the entrepreneurship literature. The dataset comprises 750 respondents from micro-sized wholesale, retail and service firms with 1–3 employees, evenly split between Malaysia and Canada. The empirical sample results show that for Canadian entrepreneurs, the direct effect of EC has a positive and significant influence on SCA, but is negatively and significantly associated in the Malaysian context. Moreover, the CIA had a positive and significant moderating effect on the relationship between EC and IE in both Canadian and Malaysian samples. However, the CIA moderating effect on the relationship between EC and SCA is only positive and significant in the Canadian sample and insignificant in the Malaysian context. Lastly, the moderating effect of GS on the relationship between EC and SCA is positive and significant in the Canadian sample and insignificant in the Malaysian sample. These findings also offer practical clarity to the puzzle of how some EC can become the cornerstone of these firms’ sustainable growth by adopting IE in conjunction with CIA and GS.