چکیده :
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a backbone role in the global economy; however, the success of SMEs has huge connotations for sustainable economic, social, and environmental development. In this vein, governments, policymakers, and researchers have shown particular interests in seeking new strategic pathways to ensure the survival and growth of SMEs in a highly changing and challenging environment. To this end, strategic orientations have been predominantly associated with the achievement of firm performance. Strategic orientations refer to the strategic actions and/or behaviors that a firm implements in the pursuit of performance, however, extant research has identified different categories/styles of strategic orientations such as entrepreneurial orientation (EO), market orientation (MO), and sustainability orientation (SO), among many others. The existing literature has predominantly examined the direct influences of a single orientation in isolation. Recent advances have confirmed that multiple orientations may complement each other in producing the synergetic performance effects; therefore, investigating the effects of a single orientation may provide incomplete results. However, placing a particular emphasis on sustainability orientation (SO), this study utilizes a multiphase sequential mixed-method research design to address the unanswered question; how and when SMEs’ sustainability orientation relates to firm performance?
The main research question was further divided into four sub-questions and each sub-question was addressed in a separate phase. The systematic meta-analytic review of sustainability orientation research was conducted in the first phase, which resulted in the identification of the conceptions, measurements, evolutions, contents, and contributions of SO as well as highlighted the avenues of research that were examined in the consequent phases. The second phase of this research involved exploratory multiple case studies to investigate the awareness of sustainability
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concept among SMEs and to investigate their emphasis on strategic orientation(s) (individually or jointly). The findings of the qualitative study (phase 2) resulted in crafting a configurational typology, i.e., Entrepreneurial Responsible Orientation (ERO,) in the context of SMEs, that, if implemented, leads to the sustainable performance of the firms particularly, and sustainable development of the country, generally. The findings of the exploratory multiple case study are then investigated in the third phase (quantitative study) examining the direct as well as the interaction effects of multiple strategic orientations (i.e., EO, MO, SO) on firm performance. The final phase of this study employed the configurational analysis, by utilizing the fsQCA, which resulted in the identification of the best configurations/pathways leading to SMEs’ economic, social, and environmental performance. This study offers several contributions to theory, besides; it also has huge implications for practice, policy, and society.