IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i7p3595-d523051.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysis and Assessment of Sustainable Entrepreneurship Practices in Polish Small and Medium Enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Paula Bajdor

    (Faculty of Management, Czestochowa University of Technology, Al. Armii Krajowej 19b, 42-201 Czestochowa, Poland)

  • Ilona Pawełoszek

    (Faculty of Management, Czestochowa University of Technology, Al. Armii Krajowej 19b, 42-201 Czestochowa, Poland)

  • Helena Fidlerova

    (Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Jána Bottu 25, 917-24 Trnava, Slovakia)

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is one of the driving forces behind the development of the national economy. The effect of entrepreneurship in the economic dimension is a business entity, most often a small or medium enterprise. The SME sector plays a significant role in every national economy. Traditionally, people perceived entrepreneurship as a factor measured by the earned profit. Increasing it was the primary goal of enterprises operating on the market. The operating conditions and competitiveness level have meant that enterprises beside economic goals also pursue social and environmental goals. Entrepreneurship is perceived as a determinant of social and ecological development, thus referred to as sustainable entrepreneurship. This article aims to identify and evaluate attitudes towards sustainable entrepreneurship among Polish enterprises. We compare the obtained results with their self-assessment and distinguish different approaches to business activity. The cluster analysis of survey results shows that the Polish SME sector can be divided into five separate groups characterized by a different approach and level of implementation of sustainable development. We also concluded that the Polish enterprises are more focused on social than environmental aspects.

Suggested Citation

  • Paula Bajdor & Ilona Pawełoszek & Helena Fidlerova, 2021. "Analysis and Assessment of Sustainable Entrepreneurship Practices in Polish Small and Medium Enterprises," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-28, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:3595-:d:523051
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3595/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/7/3595/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hockerts, Kai & Wüstenhagen, Rolf, 2010. "Greening Goliaths versus emerging Davids -- Theorizing about the role of incumbents and new entrants in sustainable entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 481-492, September.
    2. David Williamson & Gary Lynch-Wood & John Ramsay, 2006. "Drivers of Environmental Behaviour in Manufacturing SMEs and the Implications for CSR," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 317-330, September.
    3. Hassan Nor-Aishah & Noor Hazlina Ahmad & Ramayah Thurasamy, 2020. "Entrepreneurial Leadership and Sustainable Performance of Manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia: The Contingent Role of Entrepreneurial Bricolage," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-21, April.
    4. Seyed Meysam Zolfaghari Ejlal Manesh & Alex Rialp-Criado, 2019. "International ecopreneurs: The case of eco-entrepreneurial new ventures in the renewable energy industry," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 103-126, March.
    5. Sascha Kraus & Janina Burtscher & Thomas Niemand & Norat Roig-Tierno & Pasi Syrjä, 2017. "Configurational Paths to Social Performance in SMEs: The Interplay of Innovation, Sustainability, Resources and Achievement Motivation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-17, October.
    6. Ghadah Alarifi & Paul Robson & Endrit Kromidha, 2019. "The Manifestation of Entrepreneurial Orientation in the Social Entrepreneurship Context," Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 307-327, September.
    7. Rosalinde J.A. Klein Woolthuis, 2010. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship in the Dutch Construction Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-19, February.
    8. James Austin & Howard Stevenson & Jane Wei–Skillern, 2006. "Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship: Same, Different, or Both?," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 30(1), pages 1-22, January.
    9. Gholamhossein Hosseininia & Ali Ramezani, 2016. "Factors Influencing Sustainable Entrepreneurship in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Iran: A Case Study of Food Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-20, October.
    10. Pedro Soto-Acosta & Diana-Maria Cismaru & Elena-Mădălina Vătămănescu & Raluca Silvia Ciochină, 2016. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship in SMEs: A Business Performance Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-12, April.
    11. Cohen, Boyd & Winn, Monika I., 2007. "Market imperfections, opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 29-49, January.
    12. Peter W. Moroz & Kevin Hindle, 2012. "Entrepreneurship as a Process: Toward Harmonizing Multiple Perspectives," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 36(4), pages 781-818, July.
    13. Holger Patzelt & Dean A. Shepherd, 2011. "Recognizing Opportunities for Sustainable Development," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 35(4), pages 631-652, July.
    14. Hall, Jeremy K. & Daneke, Gregory A. & Lenox, Michael J., 2010. "Sustainable development and entrepreneurship: Past contributions and future directions," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 439-448, September.
    15. Andrea Revell & David Stokes & Hsin Chen, 2010. "Small businesses and the environment: turning over a new leaf?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(5), pages 273-288, July.
    16. Sebastian Kot, 2018. "Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Small and Medium Enterprises," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-19, April.
    17. Enno Masurel, 2007. "Why SMEs invest in environmental measures: sustainability evidence from small and medium‐sized printing firms," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 190-201, March.
    18. Stefan Schaltegger & Marcus Wagner, 2011. "Sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation: categories and interactions," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 222-237, May.
    19. Chang Soo Sung & Joo Y. Park, 2018. "Sustainability Orientation and Entrepreneurship Orientation: Is There a Tradeoff Relationship between Them?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-14, February.
    20. Mª Del Mar Ramos-González & Mercedes Rubio-Andrés & Miguel Ángel Sastre-Castillo, 2017. "Building Corporate Reputation through Sustainable Entrepreneurship: The Mediating Effect of Ethical Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-19, September.
    21. Eduard-Gabriel Ceptureanu & Sebastian-Ion Ceptureanu & Mihai Cristian Orzan & Ovidiu Niculae Bordean & Violeta Radulescu, 2017. "Empirical Study on Sustainable Opportunities Recognition. A Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Joinery Industry Analysis Using Augmented Sustainable Development Process Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-36, September.
    22. Graham Hubbard, 2009. "Measuring organizational performance: beyond the triple bottom line," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 177-191, March.
    23. Gilberto Santos & Manuel Rebelo & Siria Barros & Martinha Pereira, 2012. "Certification and Integration of Environment with Quality and Safety - A Path to Sustained Success," Chapters, in: Sime Curkovic (ed.), Sustainable Development - Authoritative and Leading Edge Content for Environmental Management, IntechOpen.
    24. Kuckertz, Andreas & Wagner, Marcus, 2010. "The influence of sustainability orientation on entrepreneurial intentions -- Investigating the role of business experience," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 524-539, September.
    25. William Young & Fiona Tilley, 2006. "Can businesses move beyond efficiency? The shift toward effectiveness and equity in the corporate sustainability debate," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(6), pages 402-415, November.
    26. Pacheco, Desirée F. & Dean, Thomas J. & Payne, David S., 2010. "Escaping the green prison: Entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 464-480, September.
    27. Ana Tur-Porcar & Norat Roig-Tierno & Anna Llorca Mestre, 2018. "Factors Affecting Entrepreneurship and Business Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-12, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Milita Vienažindienė & Vilma Tamulienė & Jurgita Zaleckienė, 2021. "Green Logistics Practices Seeking Development of Sustainability: Evidence from Lithuanian Transportation and Logistics Companies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-18, November.
    2. Ralph Sonntag & Gerard J. Lewis & Andrzej Raszkowski, 2022. "The Importance of Implementing SDGs by Small and Medium Size Enterprises: Evidence from Germany and Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-14, December.
    3. Katarzyna Huk & Mateusz Kurowski, 2021. "The Environmental Aspect in the Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Energy Industry and Sustainable Development of the Economy," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-17, September.
    4. Helena Fidlerová & Augustín Stareček & Natália Vraňaková & Cagri Bulut & Michael Keaney, 2022. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship for Business Opportunity Recognition: Analysis of an Awareness Questionnaire among Organisations," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-15, January.
    5. Katarzyna Huk & Agata GC3rak & Natalia Bajda & Weronika Bednarek, 2021. "Urban transport in the concept of city logistics and sustainable developmen," Zeszyty Naukowe Małopolskiej Wyższej Szkoły Ekonomicznej w Tarnowie / The Malopolska School of Economics in Tarnow Research Papers Collection, Malopolska School of Economics in Tarnow, vol. 51(3), pages 107-125, September.
    6. Patrik Richnák & Helena Fidlerová, 2022. "Impact and Potential of Sustainable Development Goals in Dimension of the Technological Revolution Industry 4.0 within the Analysis of Industrial Enterprises," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-20, May.
    7. Cliff R. Kikawa & Charity Kiconco & Moses Agaba & Dimas Ntirampeba & Amos Ssematimba & Billy M. Kalema, 2022. "Social Media Marketing for Small and Medium Enterprise Performance in Uganda: A Structural Equation Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-20, November.
    8. Nataliia Dotsenko & Dmytro Chumachenko & Igor Chumachenko & Andrii Galkin & Tomasz Lis & Marek Lis, 2021. "Conceptual Framework of Sustainable Management of the Process of Forming a Project Team with Functional Redundancy," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-22, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eduard-Gabriel Ceptureanu & Sebastian-Ion Ceptureanu & Mihai Cristian Orzan & Ovidiu Niculae Bordean & Violeta Radulescu, 2017. "Empirical Study on Sustainable Opportunities Recognition. A Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Joinery Industry Analysis Using Augmented Sustainable Development Process Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-36, September.
    2. Paul Sarango-Lalangui & Jane Lucia S. Santos & Esther Hormiga, 2018. "The Development of Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research Field," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-19, June.
    3. Trin Thananusak, 2019. "Science Mapping of the Knowledge Base on Sustainable Entrepreneurship, 1996–2019," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-20, June.
    4. Nadia A. Abdelmegeed Abdelwahed & Bahadur Ali Soomro & Naimatullah Shah, 2022. "The Role of Environment, Business and Human Behavior towards Entrepreneurial Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-17, February.
    5. Agnieszka Konys, 2019. "Towards Sustainable Entrepreneurship Holistic Construct," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-33, November.
    6. Brunella Arru, 2020. "An integrative model for understanding the sustainable entrepreneurs’ behavioural intentions: an empirical study of the Italian context," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 3519-3576, April.
    7. Pablo Muñoz & Boyd Cohen, 2018. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research: Taking Stock and looking ahead," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 300-322, March.
    8. Denise Fischer & Malte Brettel & René Mauer, 2020. "The Three Dimensions of Sustainability: A Delicate Balancing Act for Entrepreneurs Made More Complex by Stakeholder Expectations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 87-106, April.
    9. Matthew P. Johnson & Stefan Schaltegger, 2020. "Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development: A Review and Multilevel Causal Mechanism Framework," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 44(6), pages 1141-1173, November.
    10. Muñoz, Pablo & Dimov, Dimo, 2015. "The call of the whole in understanding the development of sustainable ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 632-654.
    11. Ana Criado-Gomis & Amparo Cervera-Taulet & Maria-Angeles Iniesta-Bonillo, 2017. "Sustainable Entrepreneurial Orientation: A Business Strategic Approach for Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-20, September.
    12. Matthias Filser & Sascha Kraus & Norat Roig-Tierno & Norbert Kailer & Ulrike Fischer, 2019. "Entrepreneurship as Catalyst for Sustainable Development: Opening the Black Box," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-18, August.
    13. Sascha Kraus & Janina Burtscher & Christine Vallaster & Martin Angerer, 2018. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship Orientation: A Reflection on Status-Quo Research on Factors Facilitating Responsible Managerial Practices," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-21, February.
    14. Progress Choongo & Elco Van Burg & Leo J. Paas & Enno Masurel, 2016. "Factors Influencing the Identification of Sustainable Opportunities by SMEs: Empirical Evidence from Zambia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-24, January.
    15. Chang Soo Sung & Joo Y. Park, 2018. "Sustainability Orientation and Entrepreneurship Orientation: Is There a Tradeoff Relationship between Them?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-14, February.
    16. Régis Y. Chenavaz & Alexandra Couston & Stéphanie Heichelbech & Isabelle Pignatel & Stanko Dimitrov, 2023. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Entrepreneurial Ventures: A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-30, May.
    17. Aikaterini Argyrou & Nicolas Chevrollier & Andre Nijhof, 2023. "The versatile role of sustainable market entrepreneurs in market transformation: An intervention framework for institutional change," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 259-273, January.
    18. Torbjörn Ljungkvist & Jim Andersén, 2021. "A taxonomy of ecopreneurship in small manufacturing firms: A multidimensional cluster analysis," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 1374-1388, February.
    19. Jonatan Pinkse & Koen Groot, 2015. "Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Corporate Political Activity: Overcoming Market Barriers in the Clean Energy Sector," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 39(3), pages 633-654, May.
    20. Brandon H. Lee & Panayiotis Panikos Georgallis & Jeroen Struben, 2022. "Sustainable entrepreneurship under market uncertainty," Post-Print hal-04325583, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:3595-:d:523051. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.