Moderating effect of chief executive officer servant leadership on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance

Although entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is widely believed to benefit firms, it is increasingly considered necessary but insufficient for achieving superior firm performance. To better understand the circumstances under which EO is beneficial for firms, we adopt a resource-based perspective to introduce chief executive officer (CEO) servant leadership as a critical moderator of the EO–performance relationship. We validate our predictions using multi-point data from 170 small firms in India. The results reveal that three servant leadership behaviours – altruistic calling, wisdom and emotional healing – strengthen the EO–performance relationship. Furthermore, consistent with systems logic, the performance benefits of EO are found to be greater when the CEO servant leadership is closer to an ‘ideal’ configuration of behaviours. Overall, our findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of CEO leadership behaviours in fully actualising EO’s performance potential, thus illuminating the importance of aligning a firm’s strategic posture with other constructs of interest.