Search Results (15)

New ventures operating in volatile and unpredictable environments must rely on rapid adaptation and decisive action, making improvisation a critical entrepreneurial capability. This study examines how improvisation enhances new venture performance by uncovering the psychological and learning-based mechanisms through which its effects unfold. Drawing on the Knowledge-Based View (KBV) and Social Learning Theory (SLT), the model proposes that improvisation strengthens entrepreneurial self-efficacy, enabling entrepreneurs to approach uncertainty with greater confidence and adaptive judgment. Using a two-wave survey of 322 startup founders in Turkey and analyses conducted through PROCESS and complementary SEM estimation, the findings show that improvisation significantly boosts both entrepreneurial self-efficacy and new venture performance. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy emerges as a key mediating mechanism, indicating that improvisational experiences help entrepreneurs develop mastery, reinforce capability beliefs, and translate spontaneous action into improved outcomes. The results further suggest that improvisational episodes provide immediate learning cues that enhance situational awareness and decision-making agility, deepening the psychological pathway that links spontaneous behavior to venture performance. Additionally, relative explorative learning significantly moderates the relationship between improvisation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, demonstrating that entrepreneurs benefit more from improvisation when they actively pursue new knowledge, experiment with unfamiliar approaches, and challenge routine assumptions. This moderating role clarifies when improvisation produces its strongest effects, while the mediating mechanism explains how performance improvements materialize through confidence-building processes. By integrating these mechanisms into a unified explanation, the study advances understanding of the improvisation–performance relationship and highlights the importance of learning-oriented behavior in converting spontaneous action into sustained entrepreneurial advantage. The findings offer theoretical contributions and actionable insights for entrepreneurs seeking to strengthen adaptability, resilience, and competitiveness in fast-changing environments. Full article

In developing economies, women entrepreneurs play a vital role in advancing inclusive growth, yet their financial and digital capabilities often remain constrained by gendered barriers. This study investigates how financial literacy evolves into a gender-sensitive capability that drives digital marketing adoption and entrepreneurial sustainability among women-led SMEs in Indonesia. Guided by the Theory of Reasoned Action, the Technology Acceptance Model, the Knowledge-Based View, and Feminist Entrepreneurship Theory, this study employs a qualitative design involving 75 participants—45 women entrepreneurs and 30 supporting stakeholders. Using an iterative, spiral-oriented analytical approach, thematic insights were integrated with theoretical interpretation to uncover patterns of financial–digital capability development. Findings reveal that women’s financial literacy operates as both a cognitive and behavioral capability, fostering digital trust, informed decision-making, and business resilience. The study introduces the Gendered Financial Literacy Capability Model (G-FLCM), a novel inductively constructed framework that explicates how financial cognition is transformed into digital engagement and sustainable entrepreneurship. By articulating this gendered capability mechanism—absent from prior financial capability or feminist digital entrepreneurship models—the G-FLCM advances theoretical integration across behavioral, technological, and feminist perspectives while offering practical pathways for strengthening inclusive financial–digital ecosystems in emerging economies. Full article

This study investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities shape sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies. Focusing on knowledge management (KM) as a mediator, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as a moderator, and government policy support (GPS) as an enabler, the research draws upon the Knowledge-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Institutional Theory. Using data from Saudi Arabian SMEs operating within the Vision 2030 agenda, the structural model demonstrates that AI primarily influences sustainability when firms possess robust KM systems capable of translating digital insights into actionable practices. Both EO and GPS strengthen the conversion of knowledge into sustainable outcomes, where EO fosters innovation and proactivity, and GPS provides essential resources and legitimacy. Nevertheless, excessive reliance on policy incentives may divert firms toward compliance rather than substantive transformation. Conceptually, this paper situates KM at the core of sustainability transformation, with policy support shaping the institutional context. The findings offer actionable guidance for SME managers and policymakers seeking to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through strategic engagement with AI and KM. Full article

The banking sector faces increasing pressure to balance financial performance with sustainability goals amid ongoing digital transformation, regulatory reform, and societal expectations for ethical responsibility. Entrepreneurial leadership has emerged as a pivotal approach for addressing these challenges; however, the behavioral and contextual mechanisms through which it shapes sustainability remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on Social Learning Theory (SLT), this study investigates how and when entrepreneurial leadership enhances sustainable bank performance through the mediating role of employee creativity and the moderating influence of an innovation-oriented climate. A two-wave multi-source survey was conducted among 459 employees and managers from Turkish banks, and the hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling to ensure robust empirical validation. The results indicate that entrepreneurial leadership significantly fosters employee creativity, which serves as a critical behavioral mechanism linking leadership behaviors to sustainability-oriented outcomes. Moreover, an innovation-oriented climate strengthens both the direct effect of entrepreneurial leadership on creativity and its indirect effect on sustainable bank performance, emphasizing the contextual importance of supportive organizational environments. Theoretically, this study extends the leadership and sustainability literature by illustrating how learning and behavioral modeling processes translate leadership vision into sustainable performance. Practically, it offers actionable guidance for bank executives to develop innovation-oriented climates, empower employees’ creative engagement, and design incentive systems that align leadership behavior with sustainability imperatives, thereby enhancing resilience and long-term competitiveness. Full article

Sustainability is a goal for modern organizations since every organization aims to be in operation for the number of years needed to achieve profitability and even diversify for continuous survival. To achieve sustainability, firms need to understand and adopt the triple bottom line of sustainability, which is the economy, the environment, and society. This research draws on information processing theory and uses complementary insights from stakeholder theory to examine the significance of information sharing in organizational operations towards the holistic achievement of organizational goals. Primary data was obtained from 236 companies out of 255 surveyed from four (4) regions in Ghana operating in five (5) industries, which were mining, extraction, manufacturing, distribution, and service provision. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 25) and Mplus version 7.4 were used to conduct the analysis. The results revealed that information sharing is positively related to sustainability. Additionally, resilience partially positively mediates the relationship between information sharing and sustainability. However, the use of technological tools did not strengthen the positive relationship between information sharing and supply chain resilience. Similarly, entrepreneurial orientation did not moderate the positive relationship between supply chain resilience and sustainability. This study emphasizes the important role of supply chain resilience in explaining how sustainability can be achieved through the timely sharing of information. Furthermore, constant efforts by organizations to train employees to embrace the use of technological tools to enhance sustainability are highly recommended. It was concluded that managers can implement a range of policies for insightful actions geared towards collaboration and improved environmental/social/economic performance across supply chains. Full article

In response to escalating environmental concerns and regulatory demands, this study investigates how circular economy entrepreneurship contributes to sustainability-oriented business performance, with a focus on the mediating role of cleaner production and the moderating role of green government subsidies. Drawing on institutional theory, the research examines how institutional pressures shape firms’ adoption of sustainable practices within the Turkish manufacturing sector. A quantitative design was employed, using stratified random sampling to collect data from 383 firms across various industries. Structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the proposed relationships. The results reveal that circular economy entrepreneurship positively influences sustainability performance, primarily through the mediating effect of cleaner production practices. Furthermore, green government subsidies strengthen the impact of circular economy entrepreneurship on both cleaner production and sustainability outcomes, underscoring the importance of policy support in enhancing the effectiveness of eco-entrepreneurial initiatives. Practically, this study provides actionable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to integrate sustainability into strategic planning, technological investment, and regulatory design. By aligning entrepreneurial innovation with institutional incentives, firms can simultaneously achieve environmental responsibility and long-term competitive advantage. Full article

Purpose: This research aims to explore the impact of sustainable entrepreneurial intentions on business performance within small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. It investigates how sustainable entrepreneurship mediates this relationship and examines the moderating roles of behavioral intention and environmental sustainability orientation. Method: The study utilized a quantitative approach, collecting data from 239 employees working across various SMEs in China through a structured survey. The measurement scales were adopted from established research to ensure reliability and validity. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed using Stata-SEM for data analysis, allowing for a comprehensive examination of direct, indirect, and moderating effects. Findings: The results indicate that sustainable entrepreneurial intentions significantly influence business performance, with sustainable entrepreneurship serving as a crucial mediator in this relationship. Behavioral intentions and environmental sustainability orientation were found to significantly moderate the impact of sustainable entrepreneurial intentions on business performance. These findings highlight the importance of integrating sustainability practices and personal commitment into business strategies. Originality/Implications: This research contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding of sustainable entrepreneurship by providing empirical evidence on the mediating and moderating effects within SMEs. It offers actionable insights for entrepreneurs, managers, and policymakers to enhance business performance through strategic sustainability efforts. The study also suggests avenues for future research to further explore these dynamics across different contexts. Full article

Green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO) is defined as organizations’ entrepreneurial efforts to integrate ecologically sustainable practices and values to undertake sustainable decisions and actions to improve their environmental performance. Though recent research has shown how important GEO is for attaining sustainability in a company setting, there is a limited understanding on the factors that determine GEO and how and when it affects a firm’s performance. Additionally, it draws attention to unexplored areas of the mediating and moderating factors that affect the connections between GEO and its outcomes. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) of the GEO to synthesize empirical findings about how it is investigated in the literature during the period 2014–2024. The PRISMA method is used in this study to evaluate relevant GEO research, and SLR matrix utilized for analyzing the GEO literature in peer-reviewed English publications. A comprehensive evaluation of theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues pertaining to conceptual approaches, antecedents, dynamics, and results of GEO was conducted on 59 studies. This study contributes several findings to the entrepreneurship literature. These research findings give implications for both theory and practice. Within a theoretical framework, this study provides a comprehensive viewpoint on GEO research and creates novel insights for further research, enhancing the extant theories in the GEO literature. In practice, this study facilitates the perceptions of eco-conscious entrepreneurs, managers and experts, and other stakeholders of the organizations regarding developing an appropriate GEO by understanding the antecedents and outcomes of it for successful organizations and the ways to use and improve them probably. Full article

Higher education institutions play important roles in the community. Unfortunately, measuring the accomplishment of HEIs in developing communities is challenging. Most HEI contributions to the community are merely a formality and moral obligation. This study’s identified gap is the absence of integration of community development activities into HEIs, which would boost their impact on environmental sustainability. This study intends to investigate how institutions that support entrepreneurial-oriented community development affect students’ learning and impact society. This study employs an action research approach to develop long-term actionable knowledge. This approach employed a case study from the Rural Community Development Program, a community empowerment program based on institutionalized entrepreneurship practices (formal courses in the curriculum) from ABC University (a pseudonym). The RCDP allows the HEI to interact with society through a dual simultaneous cycle which allow knowledge transfer, social value transfer, and business development with its partners. This model allows more than 100 groups of students at ABC University to be more focused in developing community. On the theoretical side, the RCDP contributes by encouraging the role of social entrepreneurship courses which provides a more significant impact through practice-based lectures while also significantly impacting rural communities’ business knowledge in developing their micro enterprises. Full article

Knowledge and skill acquisition is a driver to the socioeconomic growth of a country, yet economic challenges, rapid urbanization, and migration have contributed to youth unemployment in Ghana. The introduction of auto-rickshaws in 2015 has increased access coverage to transportation, augmented existing public transportation, and created avenues for both operators’ and mechanics’ employment through co-ordinated skill development actions to empower youth-in-entrepreneurship. However, these have not been fully utilized and developed by the Government. The study seeks to identify basic needs of auto-rickshaw mechanics in establishing a sustainable repair and maintenance enterprise, identify challenges confronting auto-rickshaw mechanics, and analyze activities of the youth who repair, maintain, and service auto-rickshaws within the formal and informal sectors for sustainable enterprises. The study is underpinned by both resource-based and human capital theories: education and apprenticeship bothers on human capital theory, while entrepreneurial experience, shop space, business duration, and so on projects the resource-based theory. Questionnaires were administered to 237 auto-rickshaw mechanics and interviews were conducted for some selected auto-rickshaw mechanics to investigate challenges in the business in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area through a clustered and systematic sampling technique. Data analyzed using SPSS v.26 indicated a very youthful auto-rickshaw mechanic population with low educational level that operates without licensed garages. About 68.8% of the mechanics possessed some form of apprenticeship training, though they are not specific to auto-rickshaw repair and maintenance. Further, 71.7% auto-rickshaw mechanics do not keep records of their activities and there is a general lack of entrepreneurial skills among them. Lack of financial support from financial institutions was found to be a major challenge. The binary logistic regression model retained and confirmed six out of the seven predictors, including sex, age, education, marital status, duration of repairs and/or maintenance, shop space, tools and equipment, and mechanical training, as significant contributing factors to entrepreneurship training offered to enterprises within the Kumasi metropolis. The study recommends the urgent need to upgrade the technical and entrepreneurial skills of auto-rickshaw mechanics through the establishment of targeted and result-oriented training centers for better efficiency. The authors further recommend financial institutions to consider giving financial support to auto-rickshaw mechanics to help sustain their businesses. Full article

Companies are confronted with increasingly demanding environments, including globalization, technologization, intergenerationality, and crises such as the coronavirus pandemic. To accept uncertainties as a challenge and to recognize opportunities for development, well-educated and resilient founders are needed who can foster innovation and sustainable development within society and the economy. The majority of today’s entrepreneurs have an academic background. Hence, institutions for higher education need to provide comprehensive educational offerings and support initiatives to train and sensitize future entrepreneurs. Therefore, since 2013, agile teaching formats have been developed in our project at a Bavarian university of applied sciences. In two stages, we founded a limited company for hands-on experimentation with entrepreneurship and also conceptualized an elective course and an annual founders’ night. Based on a theoretical model and continuous teaching evaluations, we adjusted the individual modules to suit the target group. The objective is to promote the acquisition of key competencies and exert a positive influence on the startup quotient in the region. There are six startups by students who can be traced back to our project. This indicates that a target-group-oriented educational program encourages motivation and awareness of entrepreneurial thinking and action among students. Full article

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at harnessing economic complexity for sustainable and inclusive economic growth by calling for a decade of joint action. In this paper, we show how the action-oriented collaborative culture of complex and competitive economic ecosystems in places outside the major population centers may generate significant positive external effects for society and the environment at large. We illustrate this by means of two small case studies in Switzerland, a country with a federal system that enables decentralized economic development. The first case study investigates the economic ecosystem of the small town Monthey to show how productive migrants and embedded multinational companies increase the knowledge and know-how of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The successful collaboration of insiders and outsiders accounts for the internal economic complexity that makes the region innovative and competitive. The second case study highlights the importance of the federalist system by showing how the canton of Solothurn succeeded in nurturing globally competitive export-oriented SMEs. We conclude that the success of these inclusive economic ecosystems in unexpected places may only be understood in the specific geographical, historical and political context, as well as the general openness of these regions toward entrepreneurial migrants and global business. The importance of local social capital makes it hard to replicate such success stories. Nevertheless, they indicate that the global knowledge economy may not just pose a threat, but also offer great opportunities for productive regions beyond the major global high-tech clusters of economic complexity. Full article

In most countries, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in driving sustainable economic growth and job creation; hence, the need to investigate factors (e.g., entrepreneurial factors) that influence SMEs’ sustainable growth (SMESG). This study provides an insight into entrepreneurs’ abilities (EAs) that affect SMESG in Côte d’Ivoire (a middle-income economy located in the West African region) and an assessment of the extent to which entrepreneurial orientation (EO) influences the EA–SMESG relationship. By using data from 320 Ivorian SMEs, the results of hypothesis testing confirm an association between SMESG and each EA dimension (creativity, risk control, relationship, and opportunity detection ability), learning ability excepted. As for the moderating effect of EO, the innovativeness in entrepreneurship positively and significantly regulates the EA–SMESG relationship; proactiveness positively regulates the relationship between almost all EA dimensions and SMESG; and risk tendency regulates the relationship EA–SMESG for creativity and risk-control ability. Based on major findings, management implications are formulated in relation to promoting SMEs’ sustainable growth. For example, in light of the impact of EA on SMESG, development actors can increase the efficiency of Ivorian SMEs through actions aiming at strengthening the abilities of entrepreneurs and managers. Full article

We examine the relationships between entrepreneurs’ values, beliefs and orientations with their firms’ engagement in sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial actions, using a sample of 352 newly established businesses from two Asian countries (Bangladesh and Iran). Our results reveal a dual role of entrepreneurs’ values, beliefs and orientations when taking sustainability-oriented actions. We confirm that individual differences in the set of values, beliefs and orientations can foster or hinder the sustainability-oriented actions across organizations. Our paper contributes to the growing literature of sustainable entrepreneurship, by providing answers for recent calls for better understanding which entrepreneurial ventures engage more in sustainability-oriented actions. Full article

This study examines how an entrepreneurial orientation moderates the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on family firm performance. Analysis of 174 family firms was conducted using second-generation, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 3.2.6. A survey of family firms and compliant sustainability reports, made under the rules of the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) for these firms yielded the empirical data. This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, the analysis shows that GRI reports offer a suitable way for analyzing CSR because the proposed measures are reliable and valid. Second, CSR actions by family firms exert a substantial positive influence on these firms’ performance. Third, entrepreneurial orientation is a good predictor of the success of family firms, positively influencing their performance. Fourth, entrepreneurial orientation positively moderates the effect of CSR on family firm performance, enhancing this effect. Full article