Abstract
This study examined how employees’ Inner Development Goals (IDGs) are associated with their perceptions of corporate sustainability performance (CSP) in Thai small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs, including micro enterprises), and whether this association runs indirectly through perceived organizational culture, corporate performance, or competitive advantage. Survey data from 720 SME employees in Bangkok were analyzed with covariance-based structural equation modeling, with IDGs modeled as a second-order construct of five dimensions. IDGs were positively associated with perceived organizational culture (β = 0.584), competitive advantage (β = 0.507), and, weakly, corporate performance (β = 0.160). Only organizational culture was consistently associated with perceived CSP (β = 0.271). The indirect association through culture (β = 0.159) remained significant with robust and bootstrap intervals, after removing overlapping items, with a multidimensional CSP specification, and after modeling common-method variance. However, its advantage over the competitive-advantage pathway disappeared when respondents giving uniform answers were excluded. The findings suggest organizational culture as a plausible, but not established, link between employees’ inner capacities and perceived sustainability practices. The cross-sectional, single-source design precludes causal and firm-level conclusions.