Mediating and moderating effects of social networks and business environment on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable competitive advantage among small and medium Malaysian firms in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) with social networks (SNs) as a mediator and the business environment (BE) as a moderator among Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in Cambodia. Using a snowballing sampling methodology, the study gathered data from 103 SMEs to undertake the moderation-mediation analysis. The findings show that SN mediates and BE moderates the association between EO and SCA, demonstrating that entrepreneurs focus on leveraging external resources to compete in the marketplace, especially when embedded in a highly dynamic but hostile BE. The evidence shows that a profound understanding of small business internationalisation and operational factors can assist home and host governments to support better the relocation and functioning of SMEs abroad.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurial orientation
• sustainable competitive advantage
• social networks
• business environment
• SMEs
• Cambodia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The snowball sampling methodology is used typically when the tracing of firms otherwise is impossible, including informal firms where only related or competitors know about their existence (Crouse & Lowe, 2018). This is often the case when these firms appear in no registers. Hence, the firms that appear earlier in the tracing play an important role to introduce the other firms in the sample.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rajah Rasiah

Rajah Rasiah currently is the Professor and Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya. He holds a doctorate in Economics from Cambridge University. He is the 2015 recipient of the Celso Furtado Prize from the World Academy of Sciences for advancing the frontiers of social science (economics) thought. He was conferred the national Distinguished Professorship in Economics by the government of Malaysia in 2017, and awarded the Merdeka Prize in 2018 for Scholastic excellence.

Yin Kuan Ng

Yin Kuan Ng is the PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She holds a master degree in international business from Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Kee Cheok Cheong

Kee Cheok Cheong was the Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya before he passed on in October 2022. He holds a doctorate in econometrics from the London School of Economics. He retired as a senior economist from the World Bank in 2000 before returning to Malaysia.