Driving New Venture Sustainability: A Study Based on Configuration Theory and Resource Orchestration Theory

Abstract

New ventures often face the challenge of resource scarcity, and how to overcome the resource constraint problem and improve new venture sustainability has been a long-standing concern of scholars and practitioners. Most existing studies have explored the impact on the financial performance of new ventures of a single factor, and few studies have focused on the impact of the configuration effect of multiple factors on new venture sustainability. In this paper, based on the configuration theory and resource orchestration theory, we use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with a sample of 189 entrepreneurs to explore the mechanisms driving the configuration effects of multiple factors of entrepreneurial decision-making logic, resource bundling, and environmental uncertainty on new venture sustainability. The empirical results show that the paths to achieve high new venture sustainability are diverse and equivalent, and effectuation is a core antecedent condition in all paths. There are four conditional configurations of the drivers of high sustainability in new ventures, including dual-logic resource integration, market-driven resource integration, means–resource innovation in emerging markets, and resource-rich or resource-creating integration under dual logic.