Green entrepreneurial leadership, and performance of entrepreneurial firms: does green product innovation mediates?

Asad, Muzaffar et al. Article Green entrepreneurial leadership, and performance of entrepreneurial firms: does green product innovation mediates? Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Asad, Muzaffar et al. (2024) : Green entrepreneurial leadership, and performance of entrepreneurial firms: does green product innovation mediates?, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 11, Iss. 1, pp. 1-16, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2355685 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/326295 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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Muzaffar Asad, Mohammed Ali Bait Ali Sulaiman, Ali Mohsin Salim Ba Awain, Malek Alsoud, Zafrul Allam & Muhammad Uzair Asif To cite this article: Muzaffar Asad, Mohammed Ali Bait Ali Sulaiman, Ali Mohsin Salim Ba Awain, Malek Alsoud, Zafrul Allam & Muhammad Uzair Asif (2024) Green entrepreneurial leadership, and performance of entrepreneurial firms: does green product innovation mediates?, Cogent Business & Management, 11:1, 2355685, DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2024.2355685 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2355685 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 04 Jun 2024. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 4074 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 47 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=oabm20 ManageMent | ReseaRch aRticle Cogent Business & ManageMent 2024, VoL. 11, no. 1, 2355685 Green entrepreneurial leadership, and performance of entrepreneurial firms: does green product innovation mediates? Muzaffar asada , Mohammed ali Bait ali sulaimanb , ali Mohsin salim Ba awainc , Malek alsoudd , Zafrul allame and Muhammad Uzair asiff aDepartment of entrepreneurship, Business school, tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico; bDepartment of Marketing and entrepreneurship, College of Commerce and Business administration, Dhofar university, salalah, sultanate of oman; csupply Chain Management, university of technology and applied science, salalah, sultanate of oman; dal-ahliyya amman university, amman, Jordan; eDepartment of Management and Marketing, College of Business, university of Bahrain, Zallaq Kingdom of Bahrain; fschool of Business Management, university utara Malaysia, sintok, Malaysia ABSTRACT Purpose: green practices recently gained attention for performance whereas financial and market performance has hardly been addressed by the researchers. Based on dynamic capability theory and resource-based view, we hypothesized that green entrepreneurial orientation and green transformational leadership have a significant impact over green product innovation as well as overall performance. Methodology: the researchers collected data from 384 entrepreneurial firms using adopted questionnaires. the analysis has been made by applying structural equation modelling using a bootstrapping sample of 5000 with the help of sMaRt Pls 3. Findings: the study results revealed that green entrepreneurial orientation and green transformational leadership have a significant impact over performance. Moreover, intervening effect of green product innovation is significant between green entrepreneurial orientation and performance of entrepreneurial firms, where green product innovation failed to mediate between green transformational leadership and performance of entrepreneurial firms. Research Limitations:the sample was collected from limited cities and only from one developing country where the consumers do not have an elevated level of awareness for environmental concerns. IMPACT STATEMENT the current research titled ‘green entrepreneurial leadership and Performance of entrepreneurial Firms: Does green Product innovation Mediates?’ emphasized on green entrepreneurship and transformational leadership for promoting green product innovation to boost the performance of sMes. Using a structural equation modelling the research not only confirmed the importance of green practices but also recommends that such practices significantly boost performance. the findings of the study are vital for the business people, and also for the policy makers to provide incentives to the sMes that are following green practices, to promote economic growth and bring sustainability, via competing in the global market in line with the sustainable Development goals (sDgs). 1. Introduction in current industrialized era environmental concerns have become a challenge to economic growth, enterprises have also recognized the importance of human health is vital for their success in the market (hassan etal., 2019). governing bodies and researchers are proactive towards environmental degradation and are thriving their best to adopt environment practices (ilyas et al., 2020). authors in the field of sustainable practices argued that green entrepreneurial Orientation (geO) instead of entrepreneurial © 2024 the author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis group CONTACT Muzaffar asad muzaffar[email protected] entrepreneurship, tecnologico de Monterrey, Business school, 45222, Mexico https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2024.2355685 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 24 May 2023 Revised 25 april 2024 accepted 11 May 2024 KEYWORDS green entrepreneurial orientation; green transformational leadership; green product innovation; performance of entrepreneurial firms; sustainability REVIEWING EDITOR Maria garcia-haro, University of castilla-la Mancha: Universidad de castilla-la Mancha, spain SUBJECTS environmental Psychology; environmental economics; Business, Management and accounting 2 M. asaD etal. orientation, has now become important for achieving performance of entrepreneurial firms and lessening ecological influences (Muangmee et al., 2021). geO is acting in such a way that while pursuing the potential opportunities, economic along with ecological aspects are catered by producing environment friendly products (li et al., 2021; Khan et al., 2019). in past researchers have addressed green entrepreneurship, but with respect to environmental performance (Farinelli et al., 2011; shafique et al., 2021; Ullah et al., 2021; Zafar et al., 2021), and the influence of geO over performance has remained unaddressed. Recently, green practices were considered to have a positive effect over performance (agyabeng-Mensah et al., 2020; saeed et al., 2018), however, some researchers have also contradicted and claimed a negative influence of geO over performance (shrivastava & tamvada, 2019). even some refuted and argued that green entrepreneurship is not appropriate for benefits of entrepreneurial firms (Wright etal., 2007; Kreiser et al., 2013). therefore, keeping the controversial findings about geO in the existing literature, it is believed that some external information which is hardly taken into consideration by the researchers i.e. green product innovation, should be addressed. to address the issues in the performance literature, by taking the theoretical support of dynamic capability view, we re-examined geO from the perspectives of ordinary capabilities and dynamic capabilities collectively (teece, 2014). Dynamic capabilities cover understanding the environment and acting accordingly whereas ordinary capabilities look over ordinary functional areas. Dynamic capabilities are advanced level competencies which are required to create, coordinate, and execute ordinary capabilities successfully (teece etal., 1997). hence, vigorous competences are learning and supporting experimentation for developing new innovative products by upgrading the available systems (teece, 2016; Jiang et al., 2018). enterprises adopting geO may gain several benefits from different perspectives. initially, geO pay significant importance to environmental concerns, and therefore, focus on producing green products (lin & chen, 2018). secondly, leaders following geO pat attention towards the health and safety issues of the consumers as well as employees (niciejewska & Kiriliuk, 2020; Qalati et al., 2022). similarly, geO enables enterprises to boost their earnings by three different modes. Firstly, energy and saving through innovative processes (stucki, 2019; stucki et al., 2018; Fadhel et al., 2022). secondly, becoming pioneer and achieving first mover advantage because of proactive strategies (Pacheco et al., 2010). thirdly, by investing substantial amounts in resources the green projects which create good will (Moeller et al., 2005; Woldesenbet et al., 2012), geO may improve overall performance of entrepreneurial firms. to participate in geO, leadership must play a significant role, and in this situation green transformational leadership (gtl) is also considered particularly important. current research targeted the impacts of green product innovation between geO, gtl, and performance (singh etal., 2020). gtl helps process of acquiring, recognizing, absorbing, and transferring organizational activities intro environment friendly activities through green product innovation (Zhao & huang, 2022). similarly, enterprises adopting geO succeed in developing competitive edge by leveraging internal information of enterprises to develop new knowledge which may act as foundation for green product innovation (Pratono et al., 2019; sher etal., 2019; Muangmee et al., 2021). hence, we propose that geO and gtl influence green product innovation which ultimately cause improvement in performance of entrepreneurial firms. current research focused Pakistan for several obvious reasons. geO may help in developing an economically sustainable Pakistan and may also provide long term benefits (asad etal., 2023). even though, public concerns for environmental issues are increasing, yet entrepreneurial firms in Pakistan are not talking care they way they should reduce environmental degradation through entrepreneurial actions. and even if some entrepreneurial firms are catering to the concern, it has hardly been addressed by the researchers. the issue arises the question that why the practitioners are not adopting green practices, likewise, why the researchers and academicians are not paying attention towards green transformational leadership, green entrepreneurial orientation, and green product innovation. Moreover, the literature over the entrepreneurial firms in Pakistan is scarce which calls for research over the performance of entrepreneurial firms especially regarding green entrepreneurial orientation, green transformational leadership, and green product innovation. in addition to that, the controversial findings of the researchers in the relationship between green entrepreneurial orientation, green transformational leadership, and cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 3 performance arises the need to conduct research in understanding the root cause because of which the findings are inconsistent. therefore, current research is an effort to analyze the mediation effect of green product innovation between geO along with gtl and performance by using the theoretical support of RBV and Dct. the theories are supported and enriched by conducting a mediation analysis of green product innovation between geO, gtl, and performance. in the rest of the paper, initially theoretical support and framework have been addressed and afterwards hypothesis development has been debated. afterwards, methodology applied to evaluate the hypothesis has been mentioned followed by analysis and discussion. at the end conclusions and limitations of the study are mentioned. 2.Theoretical foundations and hypothesis development now a days with the increasing concern for environment importance of green practices in continuously increasing which calls for the synergetic collaboration of resources based and dynamic capability views (Wu, 2010). Dynamic capability theory (Dct) explains the ability of the enterprises to adopt, change, and innovate the products in an improved way which is liked by the consumers and difficult for the competitors to follow (hasegan et al., 2018; Zahid et al., 2022; asad et al., 2023). From the propositions of Dynamic capability theory (Dct), this study propose that geO has a strong and momentous impact over performance. the dynamic capability view is based on developing and carrying information through the employees which helps develop the green innovation which is needed of the consumers in the existing informative era (cao etal., 2019). Dynamic capabilities of enterprises are extraordinary capabilities which are linked with innovation required for the implementation of green product innovation (lütjen et al., 2019). Dynamic capabilities are the repetitive procedures of experimentation for innovation based on market opportunities (gupta etal., 2020). in the current world green products are in high demand. enterprises are striving their level best to address the concerns of consumers regarding green products which motivates entrepreneurial firms to get involved in green product innovation. geO being the part of dynamic capabilities view which is an extension of resource-based view along with gtl helps enterprises to go for green product innovation which can generate superior performance. likewise, from the Resource Based View (RBV), we proposed that gtl is a major source for the enterprises and has a strong impact over performance of entrepreneurial firms (Barney, 1991). Resources are the key when utilized properly are helpful in gaining superior performance of entrepreneurial firms (hamdoun, 2020). green product innovation requires organizational resources to be deployed with an intention to preserve environment (andersén, 2021). in the past literature both the constructs green entrepreneurial orientation and green transformational leader are used independently, similarly, dynamic capabilities and resource based view are supposed to be independent of each other (hasegan et al., 2018; cao et al., 2019; hamdoun, 2020). green practices especially geO and gtl both are considered important for the large enterprises in the developed countries (teece, 2014; teece, 2016; Jiang et al., 2018), however, entrepreneurial firms in the developing countries have hardly succeed in getting attention by the researchers towards implementation of geO and gtO. Furthermore, green product innovation is mostly considered as an act of large enterprises only, but it is crucially important for the entrepreneurial firms as well. Furthermore, it is expected that these relationships are also influenced by green product innovation. therefore, considering this gap in understanding the synergetic influence of geO as well as gtl for developing green products, the researchers propose the following research framework using theoretical lenses of RBV and Dct along with the support of contingency theory: theoretical framework drawn in Figure 1 shows the model utilized to evaluate the direct impact of geO and gtl on performance of entrepreneurial firms. through the framework the mediating role of green product innovation between geO and performance of entrepreneurial firms as well as gtl and performance of entrepreneurial firms has also been analyzed by the researchers. the model is based on the combined effect of the two theories, and it is assumed that independently both the theories are having some shortcomings due to which the literature has shown some inconsistencies. Furthermore, the introduction of green product innovation is a major theoretical contribution buy the support of the two 4 M. asaD etal. theories the framework has been drawn. thus, the findings of the research are expected to strengthen both Dct and RBV by adding the mediation effect of green product innovation with the theoretical support of contingency theory to enhance the impact of geO and gtl over performance of entrepreneurial firms. 2.1. Green entrepreneurial orientation the concept of green entrepreneurship started back in 1960’s with the recognition of environmental degradation in developed countries due to mass level industrialization and it was then identified that green entrepreneurship is the solution towards sustainability (Khalil et al., 2018), and performance of entrepreneurial firms is certainly linked with the same (Farinelli et al., 2011). Based on Dct, enterprises following geO are capable of synergizing resources to develop unfamiliar environment friendly products, meanwhile, designers may also consider the ease of reusing, recycling, or recovery before starting a manufacturing activity (Jiang et al., 2018). Furthermore, recycling of material mostly used for production of innovative products or during the delivery process (lotfi etal., 2018) leads to positive image of enterprises regarding corporate social responsibility. in addition to that, introduction of eco-friendly procedures may function as a good marketing toll and may help in avoiding any kind of penalty by the government (nguyen et al., 2020). Majority of the studies that have been conducted over geO or green entrepreneurship mainly focused environmental performance or the external environment including consumers that motivates enterprises to get involved in green entrepreneurial practices (silajdžić et al., 2015; lin & chen, 2018; salem et al., 2023). likewise, studies that have considered green activities as a source of performance have ignored the importance of geO (lin & niu, 2018) particularly for performance of entrepreneurial firms. While evaluating the results of geO it has been observed that green entrepreneurship concurrently encourage financial as well as environmental gains, like exploiting market opportunities in such a way that environment is nor disturbed and this act is used as a marketing toll by the enterprises to further exploit market by their environment friendly practices (azzone & noci, 1998; allen & Malin, 2008; De Bruin & lewis, 2016; Demirel et al., 2019). the term geO is mostly discussed in the context of europe and scholars as well as entrepreneurs in developing countries have hardly paid any attention over green practices due to which they are lacking in competition in the foreign markets. For example, De Bruin and lewis (2016) highlighted multiple reasons that promote or hinders green entrepreneurship. this shows that there is a significant contextual gap for the developing countries. Furthermore, majority of the researchers conducted research on green entrepreneurship for identifying its impacts over environment (Keogh & Polonsky, 1998; schaper, 2002; allen & Malin, 2008). thus, by following prior studies in the domain of green entrepreneurship the current study considered geO as a predilection to engage in suitable opportunities which along with environmental benefits will also give fruitful results for business activities financially (Dean & McMullen, 2007; schaltegger et al., 2016; Demirel et al., 2019). in keeping the consistency with the prior studies geO is reflected in green innovation, market pro-activeness, and risk-taking behaviors in the operations of the entrepreneurial firms as supported by the dynamic capability theory. Dynamic capability theory focuses over the dynamic Figure 1. theoretical framework. cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 5 capabilities of the firm which give the firm a motivation and confidence to innovate and experiment. likewise, green entrepreneurial orientation calls for green experimentation not only in the products but also in the processes, however, green product innovation is purely developing a product which is environmentally friendly. therefore, while understanding the significance of geO and gap for its impact over performance of entrepreneurial firms, this study proposes that: ha1: green entrepreneurial orientation has a significant impact over performance of entrepreneurial firms. 2.2. Green transformational leadership literature over transformational leadership and performance is abundant (Maqbool et al., 2017; endang & Rahardja, 2018), however, limited studies have been conducted over gtl and performance of entrepreneurial firms (singh et al., 2020). likewise, studies on the impact of transformational leadership over performance of entrepreneurial firms mediated by innovation are limited (garcía-Morales et al., 2012), but green product innovation as a mediator between gtl and performance of entrepreneurial firms has hardly been studied especially with regard to developing countries. Whereas such a link become pertinent when the entrepreneurial firms intend for green product innovation for gaining sustainable and superior performance. For the purpose of current study gtl is considered as such a leadership behavior (asad et al., 2021; allam etal., 2022), which focuses on communicating an unclouded vision, inspiration, and motivation to the employees for the fulfillment of organizational objectives (Mittal & Dhar, 2016). green transformational leaders allow experimentation (singh et al., 2021) and convince their human resource to gain latest knowledge (le & lei, 2018) which is compulsory for gaining superior performance. literature in the past also suggested to conduct further research over influence of gtl and performance of entrepreneurial firms by adding the most suitable intervening variable between the relationship (chang, 2011; Para-gonzález etal., 2018; le & lei, 2019). in addition, leadership acts as a major resource for the enterprises as proposed by RBV. considering the pressure from different stakeholders for pursuing environmental management authors suggested green transformational leader as a key resource for addressing the issue to sustain performance of entrepreneurial firms (Mittal & Dhar, 2016; singh et al., 2020; Kusi et al., 2021). hence, it would be right to propose the following hypothesis: ha2: green transformational leadership has a significant impact over performance of entrepreneurial firms. 2.3. Green product innovation in the modern world, consumers are aware of environmental concerns and enterprises cannot ignore the pressure of consumer for the same (chu et al., 2018). to succeed in the pressurized environment, enterprises adopt green entrepreneurial practices with the support of gtl. however, considering the prior literature, where it is suggested to add the intervening variables to further strengthening the proposition of RBV and Dct, green product innovation is considered to play a significant mediating role (chang, 2011; garcía-Morales et al., 2012; chen et al., 2016; Wang, 2019; Muangmee et al., 2021). green innovation is an extremely broad construct which covers new product development, new process adoption, innovative marketing tactics, and likewise (li et al., 2021). innovation is dependent upon the culture of the enterprise (Wang, 2019). and culture is developed by the leadership (le & lei, 2019), thus, if the leadership is deviated towards green practices they will adopt geO (silajdžić etal., 2015), they will apply gtl which will promote green product innovation (Jiang et al., 2018; le & lei, 2019). enterprises that engage in green innovation are more sustainable and performs better as compared to their rival enterprises, because of environmental concerns they attract more customers. similarly, organizational culture and organizational policies have the capability to convert innovation into green innovation (singh et al., 2020). therefore, enterprises create competitive advantage by getting involved in green product innovation by developing a culture in the organization for adopting environment friendly practices (Wang, 2019). enterprises that are entrepreneurial in nature and are tilted towards green practices, always invest their resources over green product innovation which gives them superior performance of entrepreneurial firms (Jiang et al., 2018; Majali et al., 2022). 6 M. asaD etal. at the same time, prior literature has concentrated over the impact of gtl for promoting green product innovation which can give superior performance to entrepreneurial firms (Kusi et al., 2021; Khan etal., 2021) supported by RBV, where as dynamic capability theory support green entrepreneurial orientation, however there was gap in the literature where the two theories are combined for using a single framework in the context of a developing country. transformational leaders develop competencies in their employees and develop their capabilities through shared decision-making processes. collective decision making and competency development, these two characteristics of the transformational leaders help enterprises to achieve their targeted goals for green product innovation, as well as organizational performance. considering the above discussion and addressing the important mediating effect of green product innovation, the following two hypotheses have been proposed: ha3: green product innovation mediates green entrepreneurial orientation and performance of entrepreneurial firms. ha4: green product innovation mediates between gtl and performance of entrepreneurial firms. 3. Methodology For evaluating the hypothesis, the researchers followed a quantitative research methodology. Primarily, 800 firms were chosen from the list provided by the sialkot chamber of commerce and industry as well as Karachi chamber of commerce and industry. the reason behind choosing these two cities is that maximum proportion of sMes belong to these two cities and these two cities have a major share in the gDP as well as sMes exports of the country. Furthermore 800 sMes were chosen based on simple random sampling using sPss 25. to be sure that the enterprise is entrepreneurial in nature or not a filter question was set by asking that is your firm having research and development department or not. Only those responses were incorporated in the analysis, where the firms were having research and development departments. the data has been collected from 384 owners and managers of entrepreneurial firms from three different cities of Pakistan. the details of the industries that participated in the survey is mentioned in table 1: For collecting the primary data, the list of sMes was taken from sialkot chamber of commerce and industry. there are almost 16000 sMes registered with sialkot chamber of commerce and industry. the questionnaires were distributed among the owners and managers of entrepreneurial firms from the abovementioned sectors. the respondents were sent with a filter Question to screen out conventional sMes and choosing entrepreneurial firms only. initially, they were informed through emails and telephone calls, upon approval, questionnaires were sent to them. a cover letter was attached with the questionnaires for better understanding of the respondents about the purpose of survey. after two weeks, follow-up calls were given to encourage the respondents and to give any explanation, if required. almost all the respondents responded with in one month during april 2023 to May 2023. completely filled 384 questionnaires showed a response rate of 40% approximately as 620 questionnaires were distributed in total. common method biaseness was analyszed by split halve technique (Podsakoff et al., 2003). For collecting the data instrument was adopted from prior research. a five-point likert scale was used to measure the responses from the owners and managers of entrepreneurial firms. the scale for measuring geO was adopted from asad, Majali, et al.(2023), likewise, scale for gtl was adopted from singh et al. (2020), and finally, scale for measuring performance of entrepreneurial firms was adopted from Table 1. study participants. industries Frequency Percentage sports goods manufacturing 101 26.3 Leather processing 55 14.3 Leather goods manufacturing 45 11.7 surgical instruments manufacturing 39 10.2 electrical goods manufacturing 43 11.2 Cosmetics instruments manufacturing 27 7 textile and apparels 73 19 total 384 100 cOgent BUsiness & ManageMent 7 asad et al. (2021). the items for green product innovation were adopted from singh et al. (2020). Performance of entrepreneurial firms is measured using questionnaires because for firms in developing countries the major issue is informal record keeping therefore, it is better to measure performance of entrepreneurial firms based on perceptual measures of the entrepreneurs (asif et al., 2021). all the adapted items used for measuring the constructs of the study have been mentioned in appendix a. the collected data has been analyzed using sPss initially to ensure that the issue of common method bias does not exists and to 4. Analysis and findings even though we collected the data using pre-developed and pretested questionnaire, still we confirmed the reliability and validity of the collected data because the instrument was used in a different demographical setting. For the same purpose before applying structural equation modeling item loadings, cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, average variance extracted, and discriminant validity have been analyzed. in this research, individual item loadings are assessed initially, to identify and assess any issues with the items taken in the instrument for the collection of the data for study variables. table 2 shows the calculated values of outer loadings. the threshold level for item loadings is 0.7, if the calculated loading value fall below 0.7, it is considered that the item is not reliable. all item loading values range between 0.7 to 0.922 as illustrated in table 2. the calculated values of item loadings in table 2 showed that items having loading values equal to or above 0.700 have been retained in the model and items having loading values below 0.700 were removed from the model for further analysis. none of the items were removed from green product innovation and performance of entrepreneurial firms, however, one item was removed from geO, and two items were removed from gtl. after excluding the items having loading values below 0.7, enough items were retained in the model. as, if less than 10% of the items are removed, the scale’s reliability is unaffected as well as the scale is still can be used with confidence. after outer loadings, the researchers analyzed the calculated values of cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, and average Variance extracted (aVe) to confirm the reliability and validity of the instrument. For cronbach’s alpha the threshold level is 0.7 (henseler etal., 2015), for composite reliability the threshold level is 0.60 (henseler et al., 2009), but values 0.70 and greater are preferred (hair etal., 2013), and Table 2. item loadings. items entrepreneurial orientation green Product innovation green transformational Leadership Performance of entrepreneurial Firms geo1 0.899 geo2 0.869 geo3 0.855 geo4 0.917 geo5 0.802 geo6 0.734 geo8 0.748 geo9 0.867 gPi1 0.700 gPi2 0.834 gPi3 0.879 gPi4 0.835 gPi5 0.870 gtL1 0.772 gtL2 0.755 gtL3 0.922 gtL4 0.871 PeF1 0.828 PeF2 0.79 PeF3 0.771 PeF4 0.819 PeF5 0.753 PeF6 0.827 PeF7 0.815 PeF8 0.783 PeF9 0.758 14 M. asaD etal. Pacheco, D. F., Dean, t. J., & Payne, D. s. (2010). escaping the green prison: entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development. Journal of Business Venturing, 25(5), 464–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jbusvent.2009.07.006 Para-gonzález, l., Jiménez-Jiménez, D., & Martínez-lorente, a. R. 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Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 35(1), 6121–6141. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2022.2047086 Appendix A no items 1 2 3 4 5 Green Entrepreneurial orientation 1our firm favors a strong emphasis on green practices. 2our firm favors a strong emphasis on R&D. 3our firm favors a strong emphasis on technological leadership. 4our firm favors a strong emphasis on innovation. 5When facing uncertainty, we typically adopt a proactive posture. 6When facing uncertainty, we catch potential green opportunities. 7in dealing with competitors, we typically initiate green actions that competitors respond to. 8our firm favors a tendency to be a leader, and always introduce green products, service, or technology first. 9in dealing with competitors, we typically adopt a competitive ‘undo-the competitors’ posture. Green Product Innovation 1My company uses materials that produce least pollution. 2My company uses materials that consumes less energy and resources. 3My company uses materials that to design environment friendly product. 4My company uses materials that are easy to recycle, reuse, and decompose. 5the manufacturing of my company effectively reduces use of raw materials. (Continued) 16 M. asaD etal. no items 1 2 3 4 5 Green Transformational leadership 1active listening and joint agreement on annual learning goals for green activities. 2experimentation and open discussion for green practices between employee and leader. 3transformational leadership articulate a common vision for green processes. 4Leaders never reprimand to employee in public for green initiatives. Performance of Entrepreneurial Firms 1income (net profit) of our firm has increased. 2the number of items sold increased. 3Business and domestic expenses are easily settled. 4output of our firm has increased. 5Customers’ output demand is met (improved service). 6investment of our firm has increased. 7our firm has bought new machine/ equipment. 8total Business worth has decreased. 9our firm has a new full-time staff. Appendix A. Continued.