ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION AND CSR: A DYNAMIC CAPABILITY IN THE CORPORATE PERFORMANCE OF MEXICAN SMES

In the current business context, SMEs play a determining role for most regions. For this reason, more and more companies are adopting business strategies that lead them to maintain and increase their competitiveness. Two of these strategies are Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The purpose of the study is to observe the effects that the EO has on the CSR and on the Corporate Performance (CPERF). In addition, it seeks to determine if the CSR has significant effects on the Corporate Performance, and it has also been proposed to examine the mediating effect that the CSR has between the variable EO and Corporate Performance. The study analyzes a sample of 488 trade and service SMEs from the Northwest region in Mexico. The information was collected through a self-directed survey of the manager of each SME from May to September 2018. For the analysis of the data, the statistical technique PLS-SEM was used (partial least squares structural equation modeling). The results report that EO has a strong significant effect on CSR and also on the Corporate Performance of SMEs. Furthermore, the results have corroborated that CSR is a mediating variable between EO and Corporate Performance. The study contributes to the development of the theory of Dynamic Capabilities and of Stakeholders, corroborating that SMEs that adopt EO and CSR can lead them to the permanent adoption of sustainable entrepreneurship and the improvement of their corporate performance results.