Founder's birth order and triple bottom line in B2B SMEs

Abstract

Leveraging upper-echelon and post-traumatic childhood experience theories, this study analyses the influence of CEOs' birth order in the family on firms' triple bottom line management. Conducting our study in the B2B market and SME context during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assert that the eldest sibling tends to adopt more prosocial behavior than younger siblings. When first-born individuals become entrepreneurs, their values get reflected in the firm's organizational culture and the strategic choices they make as CEOs. We further suggest a mediating mechanism of a sustainable marketing orientation for sibling birth order and triple bottom line management and a moderating role of CEO childhood trauma experience. Childhood trauma experience moderates the mediating effect of sustainable marketing orientation, i.e., a moderated mediating mechanism. Heeding calls for research in marketing to become more interdisciplinary, we leverage the family science and upper echelon theories to expand the B2B marketing literature.