Different organizational perspectives surrounding social enterprises (SEs) have burgeoned over the past few years. However, integrating financial sustainability with social value remains a “black box” with respect to entrepreneurial strategic decision-making (SDM). Drawing from decision theories and the proactivity perspective of personality-based SDM literature, we investigate the impact of synoptic (rationalistic) and incremental (adaptive) process models, and moderate these approaches with the entrepreneur’s proactive personality traits on SEs’ financial and social performance. Our results show that when a rational and intuitive SDM develops in conjunction, financial performance improves. In contrast, a departure from rationality in favor of incremental decision-making processes advances only the social performance of SEs. A proactive entrepreneurial personality positively moderates strategic cognitions in improving SEs’ both financial and social objectives. On the other hand, when proactivity moderates rationality, the financial performance of SEs declines.

Business models (BMs) are extensively studied by academics and practitioners alike. Yet, there is still no consensus for the term’s precise interpretation, dimensions, and idiosyncratic features. Considering that the BM literature is constantly evolving and nowadays firms commercialize ideas and technologies through their BMs more than ever, this shortcoming poses a major challenge to both the academic and business community. In this vein, scholars have made concerted efforts to offer several literature reviews. Nonetheless, in the methodological front most of them rely on fragmented suggestions without clear guiding frameworks. At the conceptual level, a majority of these contributions is disproportionally oriented toward digital-driven business model innovation. In view of the steady increase in BMs’ importance within the academic and organizational milieu, we aim to revisit the literature and provide a multi-method review; with the overall scope to accommodate the diverse research objectives pertinent in the extant research and trace a future roadmap. Our combination of systematic literature review (SLR) analysis with bibliometric elements assessed 174 peer-reviewed publications and concluded in four – partly overlapping – research streams: (1) business model concept, (2) business model design, (3) business model innovation, and (4) business model portfolios. Suggestions for future research endeavors in each one of these streams are further discussed.

Purpose: We investigate the association between business model diversification (BMD), i.e. the concurrent operation of multiple business models (BMs), and accounting-based firm performance, measured by return on sales. Design/methodology/approach: We employed a survey-based research design to construct a unique data set of 328 U.K. firms, drawn from the Bureau Van Dijk FAME database. We approach BMD via the nature of relatedness and assess its performance effects by considering the interplay between a firm's re-deployment and co-deployment costs with expected BMD benefits. We analyzed the data in R, using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Findings: Our findings reveal complex curvilinear implications of BMD on performance: performance declines at low and high BMD levels and increases when the extent of BMD is moderate. We, thus, find support for a nonlinear, horizontal S-shaped relationship. Research limitations/implications: Corporate entrepreneurs and top decision makers may benefit from recognizing an optimal extent of BMD; at extreme, or very low levels, BMD produces negative performance outcomes. To further extend profitability, our results suggest that executives may consider ways to handle the co-deployment costs associated with high BMD levels in their portfolios (where the positive synergy effects are relatively diminished). Originality/value: We advance recent work investigating the concurrent operation of multiple BMs in organizations that has begun to conduct large-scale examinations. Our study represents one of the very few attempts to examine the nature of the relationship between the overall degree of BMD and performance variations.

Entrepreneurial endeavors are pivotal to development and growth. Therefore, it is critical to recognize and prioritize the need for building new, sustainable businesses that will create and offer products and services aligned with the interests of diverse stakeholders. Considering that the success of early-stage firms is shaped by both internal factors and external conditions, the aim of this study is to examine the prospects for sustainability of entrepreneurial start-ups by assessing how their strategic ecosystem influences market performance, a key metric of their capacity to successfully compete and survive. To identify performance precursors, we surveyed the founders of 108 new ventures regarding a broad range of internal determinants—including strategic factors, human resources, networking with external partners, pre-entry funding choices, and board profiles—while controlling for external influences. Our findings suggest that the performance differentials across these firms can be largely attributed to their human assets, strategic foundation, and board heterogeneity, as reflected in gender diversity in decision boards and the number of founders. Service start-ups and those that have been found in urban centers were also associated with better performance compared to manufacturing new ventures and those located in a country’s periphery. In the opposite direction, funding choices and established partnership-based networks were not related to successful market penetration. Likewise, the impact of start-ups’ industry growth, the rate of technology obsoletion, as well as several other macro-environmental influences show limited impact.

This study examines how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that operate multiple business models (BMs) can configure their BM portfolios to achieve superior financial performance. Building on the idea that BM portfolios combine distinct value-creation logics, we focus on four portfolio-level design themes, namely, novelty, efficiency, lock-in, and complementarities, and theorize that some configurations generate synergies while overly complex portfolios create managerial burdens that harm performance. Using survey and archival data from 107 UK software SMEs and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach, we identify equifinal configurations associated with high performance. Results show that novelty is a central ingredient of high-performing portfolios and that novelty and efficiency can coexist synergistically when pursued across different BMs. In contrast, portfolios that attempt to combine all four design themes are not associated with high performance, consistent with the view that excessive portfolio complexity imposes attention and coordination costs in resource-constrained firms. The findings shift the lens from optimizing a single BM to designing a coherent BM portfolio and offer actionable guidance to SME leaders on how to prioritize novelty while selectively adding efficiency-oriented designs.

Entrepreneurial endeavours are pivotal to development and growth. It is critical then to recognize and prioritize the need of building new, sustainable businesses that will create and offer products and services aligned with the interests of diverse stakeholders. This research studies the impact of the strategic ecosystem of entrepreneurial start-ups on their market performance. To identify performance precursors, we surveyed the founders of 108 new ventures regarding a broad range of determinants; including strategic factors, human resources, networking with external partners, pre-entry funding choices, and board profiles. Our findings suggest that the performance differentials across these firms can be largely attributed to their human assets, strategic foundation, and board heterogeneity as reflected in gender diversity in decision boards and the number of founders. Service start-ups, and those that have been founded in urban crowded areas were also associated with better performance compared to manufacturing new ventures and those located in a country’s periphery. In an opposite direction, funding choices and established partnership-based networks were not related to market success. Likewise, the impact of start-ups’ industry growth, the rate of technology obsoletion, as well as several macro-environmental influences appears to have a limited effect on performance.