What Drives Impact Scaling? The Roles of Resources, Innovation Performance, and Sustainability Orientation
基于97家波兰影响力初创企业的调查数据，研究了知识资源、创新绩效和可持续导向如何共同影响影响力的规模化，发现可持续导向在资源与创新、创新与规模化之间扮演矛盾角色。
ABSTRACT The literature on sustainable entrepreneurship calls for a deeper understanding of how to scale impact, particularly as large‐scale solutions are essential to addressing today's grand challenges. Drawing on self‐collected survey data from 97 Polish impact startups, this paper investigates the roles of resource availability, innovation performance, and sustainability orientation in scaling impact. Building on the resource‐ and knowledge‐based view and threat rigidity theory, we propose a moderated mediation model and empirically demonstrate positive effects of knowledge resources on innovation performance, which subsequently enhances impact scaling. Interestingly, a startup's sustainability orientation is found to play an ambivalent role in the resource–innovation–scaling relationship. While it negatively moderates the link between knowledge resources and innovation performance, a positive effect emerges in the innovation–scaling connection. This paradox suggests that the more sustainability entrepreneurs face trade‐offs related to sustainability, the less willing they are to invest in innovation. Our findings hold important implications for both researchers and practitioners.