SMEs leveraging strategic orientation to achieve firm performance: a mediating role of firm capabilities and competitive advantage

The COVID-19 global pandemic has emerged as a global crisis and has put pressure on small-medium enterprises (SMEs) for their sustenance. Taking firm-level strategic orientation and the resource-based theory (RBV) as its foundation, this present work attempts to observe the association of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm capability (FC) on firm performance (FP). The research work explores the mediating role of FC and competitive advantage (CA). This scholarly work refers to the Rangone (1999) capabilities identified in context to SMEs. The research was carried on 343 SMEs from Delhi. SmartPLS 3 was used for data analysis. The results highlight the importance of leveraging strategic orientation (EO) and FC. Further, the present work confirms the partial mediating role of FC in the relationship of EO and FP; and the partial mediating role of CA in the relationship of EO and FP; FC and FP.