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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic factors and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) across genders. The study also highlights the impact of cognitive and motivational factors on the EO in Saudi Arabia.

This is a quantitative analysis based on the Adult Population Survey of 2016 conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor among a sample of 4,053 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The results showed significant differences in most EO dimensions between genders. It was found that EO is positively related to gender, with more women intending to start a venture than men in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Self-efficacy, motivation and social welfare motivational factors for EO are positively associated with the gender of the respondents.

This paper illustrates the urgency to establish programs that support self-efficacy, motivation and social welfare to promote entrepreneurship among women in the Kingdom.

The study highlights the impact of cognitive and motivational factors on EO among females in Saudi Arabia.

This project aims to examine how entrepreneurial orientation and succession planning among Palestinian family businesses positively affects their associated growth potential, considering the mediating role of innovation and the moderation effect of geographic location. Leveraging ethnic entrepreneurship theory, the authors compare these types of enterprises in the USA with their counterparts in Palestine.

This cross-sectional quantitative research analyzes data collected from October through December 2022. 180 Palestinian family-owned firms completed a survey; 90 companies were located in Palestine, while the other 90 were in the USA. Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted using Smart-PLS4. The interrelations of the conceptual framework were examined via path analysis and bootstrapping techniques.

The authors found a statistically significant positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation on Palestinian family business growth; the authors’ results concurrently indicated succession planning did not affect growth within the authors’ selected population. The authors also discovered innovation mediates the relationship between orientation and growth, and business location appears to moderate this relationship. The authors’ research indicates geography appears to favor Palestinian family-owned companies in the USA, where the authors found opportunity-driven immigrant entrepreneurs benefit from the structured business systems in a highly-developed country.

Given the current situation in Palestine, it is essential to understand the potential contribution that Palestinian family-owned businesses globally can make to reconstruct the country’s local economy. The next few years will be critical in figuring out how innovative thinking can boost the region’s recovery and increase Palestinian-based family companies’ ability to engage in sustainable entrepreneurship with reinvestment support from its diaspora. Therefore, it is important to have research that identifies factors that could improve these businesses’ continued performance and growth potential. This study also aids in further understanding the defining characteristics of Palestinian-owned family firms, enhancing general theories related to entrepreneurship among ethnic and diasporic groups.

The study explores the relationship between the breadth of external pressures facing leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the entrepreneurial stance they adopt for their firm, that is, entrepreneurial orientation (EO).

Blending attention theory with EO literature, we argue that increasing breadth of external pressures will challenge leaders' attentions with implications for how they seek innovation, risk-taking and bold acts. We highlight an inflection point after which a negative relationship between the breadth of external pressure and EO will turn positive. We use data from a survey of 125 small-sized wineries in France to test this and capture a range of 15 external pressures on entrepreneurs.

The main tests and additional robustness tests provide support. It is the breadth of external pressures – as opposed to intensity of any one specific form of pressure – that plays a fundamental role in shaping leaders' adoption of EO in small enterprises over and above internal characteristics.

While the results may be context-dependent, they provide support for an attention-based view of entrepreneurial responses by leaders of SMEs under pressure.

SME leaders and entrepreneurs should be aware of how their attention is challenged by breadth of pressures from external sources, as this can influence the EO they adopt for their SME.

This nonlinear perspective on external pressures influencing the EO of small firms has not been taken in the EO literature to date, despite some recent work that considers only a small range of external pressures.

Recent high-profile ethical scandals in start-up organizations have made people wonder whether entrepreneurship may cultivate a work environment with less emphasis on ethics. This study examined a psychological process about how an organization’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO) can affect its treatment of probationary employees, a vulnerable yet understudied group of workers.

The authors recruited 241 participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk. They answered an online survey about their experiences as probationary employees.

This study found that job feedback and meaning moderated the relationship between EO and ethical climate, such that this relationship was statistically significant and positive only among participants who reported high levels of feedback and job meaning. Ethical climate, in turn, was found to be related to a reduction in workplace incivility experienced by probationary employees. The indirect effect of EO on incivility via ethical climate was contingent on job feedback and meaning.

This study extends the discussion on the entrepreneurial context, adds to EO literature with findings on its indirect effect on nonfinancial performance and reinforces institutional theory through job characteristics’ moderating roles. However, a methodological limitation is conducting a cross-sectional single-source survey due to limited access to firms and probationary employees, considering the hidden population involved.

This study found no evidence of probationary employee exploitation in high EO organizations. Job seekers should embrace probationary work at start-ups. Entrepreneurial leaders should balance being proactive, innovative and caring toward employees.

It is debatable whether entrepreneurship leads to unethical organizational conduct. By studying a vulnerable group of employees, the authors discovered that EO, when paired with favorable job design factors, can create a more ethical workplace where temporary talents are treated with dignity and respect.

This study aims to explore the role of digital technologies in tourism entrepreneurship. In particular, the main objective of this research is to examine the relationships among proactiveness, innovativeness, digitalization, and firm performance and growth in the hotel industry.

The data for this investigation were collected from 110 one- or two-star hotels that were operating in Poland during the time of this research. This study employs PLS-SEM to analyze the relationships among the examined variables.

The results show that digitalization has a significantly positive impact on a hotel’s performance. Moreover, digitalization mediates the impact of entrepreneurial behaviors on performance. In particular, digitization is a full mediator for the impact of proactiveness on firm growth and innovation on market performance. Additionally, there is a partial complementary mediation effect of digitalization in the case of impact of innovativeness on firm growth; digitization is not a mediator for the impact of proactiveness on firm growth.

Previous studies have not captured the relationships among entrepreneurship, digitalization, and performance; this study helps to fill the gap and examine these associations in the hospitality industry. The outcome of this study provides valuable insights for hoteliers for understanding the role (and importance) of digitalization in the context of proactiveness and innovativeness.

This study examines the relationship between strategic entrepreneurial behaviors (SEBs) and the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in an emerging market context. The authors expand upon prior work in this area by building and testing a model that assesses the moderating effect of CEOs’ narcissism and Machiavellianism on the relationship between SEBs and SME performance.

To test the authors’ theoretical model, the authors use the results of a larger data collection project in Russia to create a national random sample of 372 Russian SMEs that were approached between August and November 2019.

The authors found support for the positive relationship between SEBs and SME performance. Additionally, the authors found that CEO narcissism and Machiavellianism strengthen the relationship between SEBs and firm performance.

This study is an important step toward enriching the understanding of the role of CEO personality traits in shaping the efficiency of entrepreneurial behavior at the firm level. Extending previous research, the authors show that SEBs have a positive effect on firm performance in an emerging market context. Additionally, the authors contribute insight about how personality characteristics of CEOs, specifically narcissism and Machiavellianism, influence the relationship between entrepreneurial behavior and firm performance. Finally, the authors’ research contributes to the development of strategic leadership theory: the results offer insight to scholars regarding the potentially beneficial attributes of otherwise “dark” leaders.

This article explores the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), governance and geographic location on the performance of Palestinian family-owned businesses.

This quantitative study uses data collected in the fall of 2022 from 180 Palestinian-owned family companies – 90 were located in Palestine and the other 90 were located in the USA. Using R software, multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the relationships between the constructs that formed the study's conceptual framework.

The results indicate that (1) the risk-taking, innovation and proactiveness dimensions of EO have a significant positive impact on the performance of Palestinian family-owned businesses; (2) Governance moderates the EO dimensions of risk-taking and proactiveness on the performance of Palestinian family-owned companies and (3) geographic location does not moderate the relationship between the EO and performance of Palestinian-owned family businesses.

The current intensified conflict in Palestine warrants exploring the role Palestinian family-owned businesses worldwide can play in rebuilding the local economies of Gaza and the West Bank. The following years will be crucial in determining how proactive risk-taking and innovation will support regional recovery and augment the entrepreneurial and reinvestment capacity of diasporic and home country-based Palestinian family-owned firms. Thus, our study into factors that might enhance these businesses' performance and growth potential is pertinent. A further contribution of this study is new insight into the particularities of Palestinian family-owned businesses, augmenting general theories associated with ethnic and diasporic entrepreneurship.

Previous research has indicated that entrepreneurial marketing (EM) positively influences small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) performance. While most studies have examined the relationship in a stable environment, EMs’ effectiveness during environmental instability remains uncertain. Therefore, the study aims to investigate the influence of EM on Indian manufacturing-based SMEs’ performance during the COVID-19-induced environmental instability. Additionally, it explores the mediating role of innovative performance in the relationship between EM and SME performance.

The data were collected by distributing a structured survey questionnaire to 302 owners/managers of SMEs. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The result indicates that EM significantly impacts both innovation and SME performance. Furthermore, the innovative performance partially mediates the link between EM and SME performance. The findings suggest that even within severely affected sectors (manufacturing) during the pandemic, SMEs can achieve growth and innovation through effective EM practices.

This study validates the theoretical notion that EM remains effective even in unpredictable environments such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings offer valuable insights for SMEs seeking innovative strategies to enhance their performance, particularly those in emerging economies.

Prior studies have relied on a single layer of abstraction to analyze the impact of EM. The present study is the first to extend standard construct (EM) conceptualization. Furthermore, it evaluated the efficiency of EM in situations characterized by instability, which is rare in the EM and SME literature.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are fundamental to the socioeconomic development of a country or region. They directly contribute to increasing employment generation and improving income distribution. Despite the importance of SMEs, there are still opportunities for developing works that support and guide SMEs to use digital technologies, especially to digitalize their customer service. Therefore, this work aims to propose drivers containing recommendations for developing and improving the digitalization of customer service in SMEs.

This work uses a qualitative approach to systematize the main SMEs' characteristics and identify the boosting elements of the digitalization of customer service in the scientific literature. To this end, the authors conducted a content analysis of the most influential empirical and theoretical articles on the theme published from 2016 to 2021 in the Scopus database.

This work identified 38 boosting elements of the digitalization of customer service based on the scientific literature. These elements were grouped into six drivers for developing and improving the digitalization of customer service. The drivers contain recommendations that were adapted for SMEs according to their characteristics and based on the experience of the authors of this work.

This work contributes to promoting socioeconomic development, providing important solutions for managers and owners of SMEs to improve their customer service. The proposed drivers support and encourage the use of digital technologies for developing and improving customer service, overcoming the challenges of digitalization in these companies. Thus, SMEs will be able to increase the satisfaction of their customers and improve their competitiveness.

While previous research has demonstrated the positive effects of digital business strategies on operational efficiency, financial performance and value creation, little is known about how such strategies influence innovation performance. To address the gap, this paper aims to investigate the impact of a firm’s digital business strategy on its innovation performance.

Drawing on the dynamic capability view, this study examines the mechanism through which a digital business strategy affects innovation performance. Data were collected from 215 firms in China and analyzed using multiple regression and structural equation modeling.

The empirical analysis reveals that a firm’s digital business strategy has positive impacts on both product and process innovation performance. These impacts are partially mediated by knowledge-based dynamic capability. Additionally, a firm’s digital business strategy interacts positively with its entrepreneurial orientation in facilitating knowledge-based dynamic capability. Moreover, market turbulence enhances the strength of this interaction effect. Therefore, entrepreneurial-oriented firms operating in turbulent markets can benefit more from digital business strategies to enhance their knowledge-based dynamic capabilities and consequently improve their innovation performance.

This study contributes to the understanding of how a firm’s digital business strategy interacts with entrepreneurial orientation in turbulent markets to shape knowledge-based dynamic capability, which in turn enhances the firm’s innovation performance.