The Role of Environment in Sustainable Entrepreneurial Orientation. The Case of Family Firms

Abstract

This study analyzes the role of the environment in the sustainable entrepreneurial orientation on the international performance of family firms. The results have been analyzed with Partial Least Squares regression. The three most important contributions of this work are: (1) The definition of sustainable business orientation as a third-order composite that integrates entrepreneurial orientation and corporate social responsibility is adequate as it presents appropriate values of reliability and validity; (2) entrepreneurial orientation is the main component of sustainable entrepreneurial orientation, with having corporate social responsibility a plus for entrepreneurial orientation; and (3) sustainable entrepreneurial orientation manages to explain 58.6% of the variability in the international performance of family firms and, finally, the environment has a positive moderating role, increasing up to 73.5%.

Manager’s Age, Sustainable Entrepreneurial Orientation and Sustainable Performance: A Conceptual Outlook

“…Prior literature considers entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and sustainable orientation (SO) as organizational cultural traits [45,46], therefore, SEO is conceptualized as an important constituent of organizational culture that is reflected in business philosophy [47]. It can be understood as an organization's readiness and willingness to undertake innovative, proactive and risky actions for the betterment of the company, society and the environment in which they operate.…”

“…It can be understood as an organization's readiness and willingness to undertake innovative, proactive and risky actions for the betterment of the company, society and the environment in which they operate. It is based on the identification of business opportunities, while considering the society, the planet and profit [47,48] and this orientation lets management understand that focusing on the triple bottom line is an investment, an obligation and an opportunity to sustain business in the long run [25].…”

“…Therefore, this study advocates that by developing a dynamic capability of SEO, the organization would be able to modify its processes and shift to sustainable operations to be highly productive, effective and efficient [52]. SEO has been studied by scholars in terms of strategic approach [25], in terms of determinants for adopting SEO on individual, organizational and contextual levels [20], the role of environment in SEO [47] and its impact on firm performance [23,53] and customer value co-creation [54]. This denotes the novelty of this proposed model.…”

“…However, based on EO, it can be established that EO enables organizations to create better relationships with stakeholders and improve customer satisfaction and employee safety. It may encourage organizations to act in a socially responsible manner [47]. Moreover, it is advocated that EO helps develops proactiveness capabilities in the organization to appropriately plan and anticipate the developmental needs of employees.…”

Customer functional value creation through a sustainable entrepreneurial orientation approach

“…Entrepreneurship as an economic engine coupled with the need to focus on growth based on the principles of sustainable development remains an open debate of interest given the scientific and practical implications of its application. Sustainable entrepreneurial orientation (Hern andez-Perlines & Ibarra Cisneros, 2018;Kraus, Burtscher, Vallaster, & Angerer, 2018), is one of the recent concepts that, together with business strategy, offers organizational performance research a new direction.…”