Entrepreneurial orientation and its effect on sustainability decision tradeoffs

We examined the entrepreneurial orientation and sustainability orientation, a persistent and conflicting duality, of sustainable entrepreneurs and their evaluation of competing priorities in sustainability decision making.

We conducted an exploratory, mixed-method study of 24 sustainable fashion firms and collected data through structured surveys and rich in-depth interviews. Through our inductive and deductive analysis, we derive three sustainability decision making profiles (singular, flexible and holistic) with distinct prioritization logic (nested, ordered and aligned, respectively). We find different configurations of entrepreneurial orientation correspond to the sustainability decision making profiles. We extend the literature by showing how the reflexivity of entrepreneurial orientation interacts with sustainability orientation.