Customer functional value creation through a sustainable entrepreneurial orientation approach

This paper advances a theoretical model to empirically test firms’behaviour regarding sustainable entrepreneurship, enhancingwhat researchers have recently proposed at a solely conceptuallevel; this entails sustainable entrepreneurship being understoodas a discipline that reliably allows organizations to successfullyrespond to sustainable development and market requirements.The authors suggest an integrated approach of dynamic-capabil-ities, S-D logic and product-service system views, which highlightsthe managerial predisposition to adopt a strategic position thatfosters value in use (instead of regular property value), accordingto the current school of thoughts engaged with innovation andsustainable development. In this regard, this paper investigatesstructural influences (direct and indirect) of sustainable entrepre-neurial orientation and customer functional value creation in firmperformance. Hypotheses are tested using the partial leastsquares method on a multisectoral sample of 210 companies ran-domly stratified with proportional allocation. The findings indicatethat a sustainable entrepreneurial orientation not only has a posi-tive and direct relationship with firm performance, but also thatthis relationship improves when it is mediated by customer func-tional value creation. Further research pathways are provided.