Crafting sustainable competitiveness: a configural analysis of entrepreneurial interplay

Purpose The study aims to identify the antecedent conditions of the entrepreneurship system in a country to achieve sustainable competitiveness and explain the interplays in the pathways beyond the triple bottom line theory. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with contrarian case analysis on 126 country datasets from the Global Innovation Index (GII) reports and Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index (GSCI) reports for the period from 2013 to 2022. Findings The results show four parallel leverage mechanisms leading to high sustainable competitiveness, where research and development, knowledge diffusion, and new business density are the central roles in most cases. Originality/value This model complements and helps to amplify the understanding of sustainability theories and the fsQCA with contrarian case analysis on panel data, which was not tested or employed earlier on entrepreneurship and sustainable competitiveness.