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

Felipe Hernández-Perlines,Manuel Ibarra Cisneros

doi:10.3390/su10062037

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%.

Highlights

In many countries family firms are the most relevant form of enterprise [1,2,3,4] because of their capacity to generate both wealth and employment [5,6,7]
Among the topics that arouse the interest of researchers of family firms, we identify entrepreneurial orientation [13,14,15,16], corporate social responsibility [17,18,19], and the environment [20,21,22]
One of the most relevant contributions of this work centers on sustainable entrepreneurial orientation, which we define as a higher-order concept that entails the integration of entrepreneurial orientation and corporate social responsibility

Summary

Introduction

In many countries family firms are the most relevant form of enterprise [1,2,3,4] because of their capacity to generate both wealth and employment [5,6,7]. In this work we will analyze the moderating role of the environment in the effect of sustainable entrepreneurial orientation on the international performance of family firms. One of the most relevant contributions of this work centers on sustainable entrepreneurial orientation, which we define as a higher-order concept (third order) that entails the integration of entrepreneurial orientation and corporate social responsibility. We resort to an integrating concept of sustainable entrepreneurial orientation according to the proposal put forward by Criado-Gomis et al [29], which considers entrepreneurial orientation and corporate social responsibility as primary categories of such a higher-order concept. Entrepreneurial orientation and corporate social responsibility are considered in one same higher-order composite; this being one of the contributions

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion