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To most people, money is a motivator, which is robustly true for salespeople. A high love of money attitude predicts university students’ poor academic performance in a business course and cheating in laboratory experiments and multiple panel studies, but money (income) itself does not predict dishonesty. Extrinsic reward undermines intrinsic motivation. Very little research has incorporated the grit construct in the sales literature and explored the relationship between grit and the love of money. Further, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset may also impact salespeople’s job performance. This study aims to explore a brand-new theoretical structural equation model (SEM) and investigate the relationships between individual characteristics (growth and fixed mindsets and grit orientation) and job performance directly and indirectly through a mediator – salespeople’s love of money attitude.

This study uses Qualtrics and collects data from 330 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople across several industries in the USA. This study uses a formative SEM model to test this study’s hypotheses.

First, there are significant correlations among grit, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, revealing no construct duplication or redundancy. Second, both a growth mindset and grit indirectly enhance job performance through the love of money attitude – a mediator, offering a brand-new discovery. Third, counter-intuitively, a growth mindset and grit do not directly improve job performance. Fourth, grit is significantly and negatively related to the love of money attitude, adding a new twist to this study’s theoretical model. Fifth, a fixed mindset undermines job performance directly but is unrelated to the love of money. Overall, B2B salespeople’s love of money attitude (employee demand) undermines sales personnel’s self-reported job performance (organization demand) in the organization and employee’s supply and demand exchange relationship.

The findings reveal that a growth mindset, a fixed mindset and grit contribute differently to sales personnel’s love of money attitude and job performance in this study’s theoretical model. The love of money serves as a mediator. A commonly accepted belief is that money is a motivator. Money (income) itself and the love of money attitude are two separate constructs. This study’s novel discoveries provide the essential missing monetary-aspirations-to-job-performance link in the literature – ardent monetary aspiration undermines self-reported job performance. This study offers inspiration to help decision-makers make happy, healthy and wealthy decisions and improve performance.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of environmental dynamism on different EO dimensions in family firms. The authors also examine the moderating role of national culture (uncertainty avoidance and in-group collectivism) and the level of family control and influence in fostering/hindering this relationship.

A survey was conducted among 1,143 family firms from twenty-eight countries. The authors developed and tested hypotheses through a fixed-effects regression analysis.

The findings suggest that environmental dynamism has a positive effect on all three EO dimensions. Analysis reveals a positive moderating role of family control and influence and negative moderating roles of in-group collectivism and uncertainty avoidance.

The findings imply that family firm managers should carefully interpret the influence of their national culture on family firm behavior. More specifically, family firms in dynamic environments should consider the importance of the national culture in which they are embedded. Those operating in high uncertainty avoidant and highly collectivist cultures should take proactive steps to cultivate a corporate entrepreneurial culture. On the other hand, the family should not undermine the effect of its control and influence. In dynamic environments, family control and influence may be a competitive advantage in reinforcing entrepreneurial orientation.

The study contributes to the literature on EO in family firms by expanding the previous research on the antecedents of EO and examining moderation effects of culture and family control and influence across a broad multi-country sample. In contrast with the common findings regarding the effect of family logic on EO, the study shows the strengthening role of family control and influence in the relationship between environmental dynamism and EO. The authors show that culture as an informal institution may also play a critical role in hindering/strengthening the relationship between environmental dynamism and EO.