The main aim of this study was to clarify the current literary inconsistencies regarding the characteristics of entrepreneurial leadership and its impact on sustainability. Additionally, another aim was to establish the framework of entrepreneurial leadership and to highlight the main gaps in the entrepreneurial leadership literature. The entrepreneurial leadership literature started to develop recently as a new leadership style that is required to fulfill the current business changes in the fourth industrial revolution. The researchers conducted a narrative literature review to assess the status of entrepreneurial leadership in academia, literature gaps, and the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on the sustainability performance of organizations. Furthermore, the researchers main aim was to investigate the following research question: is entrepreneurial leadership a fixed or a multidimensional concept that differs based on industry, context, and firm size? Regarding the answer to this question, the current study found that entrepreneurial leadership is a multidimensional concept as it is reflected in different perspectives, which indicates the inconsistency of the characteristics of entrepreneurial leadership claimed in the literature. Research limitations—the current study focused on assessing the literature review status of entrepreneurial leadership. Based on that, this study’s limitation is represented in not focusing on testing entrepreneurial leadership’s impact on sustainability either quantitatively or qualitatively. On the contrary, it contributed by analyzing the status of the entrepreneurial leadership literature. Future studies need to further assess this relationship between both concepts and reach an agreement about the common characteristics of entrepreneurial leadership. Originality/value—the current study contributes to the entrepreneurial leadership literature as it highlighted the existing gaps and the inconsistency in the literature. Additionally, it contributed theoretically by connecting entrepreneurial leadership to the existing literature. Furthermore, empirically, it highlighted the contribution of entrepreneurial leadership by emphasizing the impact of it on organizational sustainable development performance. This study represents a call for scholars to focus more on entrepreneurial leadership given its contribution to organizational performance.

Given the ever-changing world of technological advances, and due to the fact that business entities strive for efficiency and cost reduction, open innovation (OI) has become the focus of academic and scholarly discussions. Furthermore, to increase their competitiveness, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have started implementing OI practices. This study aims to investigate the impact of SMEs’ internal organizational practices on OI and the impact of the latter on SMEs’ business performance. This quantitative study, which was based on gathering insights from SMEs, sought to answer two research questions related to the effects of organizational practices on the adoption and management of OI processes in SMEs and the role of OI in accelerating the business performance of SMEs. The findings revealed that not all SMEs’ internal organizational practices have a positive impact on both OI and SMEs’ business performance. This study is among the earliest studies in the UAE and GCC region to explore the impact of specific internal organizational practices on SME OI adoption and its business performance. The present study contributes theoretically and practically to OI literature and assists SME managers in evaluating their internal organizational practices’ suitability for OI adoption.

Sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship is becoming more widely acknowledged as a mean of addressing social and environmental issues while promoting economic development, though little research has looked at the cognitive processes by which innovation-related thinking translates into sustainability entrepreneurial intention. The relationships between innovative mindset, entrepreneurial mindset, and sustainability entrepreneurial intention among university students are examined in this study. A mediation model is proposed in which innovative mindset positively influences entrepreneurial mindset (H1), entrepreneurial mindset positively influences sustainability entrepreneurial intention (H2), and entrepreneurial mindset mediates the relationship between innovative mindset and sustainability entrepreneurial intention (H3). In total, 163 university students in the United Arab Emirates provided the data, which was then analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). All of the proposed hypotheses are supported by the results. These findings offer preliminary and partial support for a theoretically defined cognitive pathway connecting sustainability entrepreneurial intention, innovative mindset, and entrepreneurial mindset. In particular, the findings indicate a positive correlation between innovation-oriented cognitive abilities and entrepreneurial cognition, which is linked to sustainability-oriented intentions. The low explained variance in sustainability entrepreneurial intention, however, suggests that the model only partially explains the variables influencing SEI. As a result, this study advances a more complex, mechanism-based understanding of one potential cognitive pathway in sustainability entrepreneurship and emphasizes the need for more thorough models that include contextual, motivational, and sustainability-related predictors. Additionally, it provides cautious practical implications for entrepreneurship education, especially when it comes to combining learning that is focused on sustainability with the development of an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset.