How self-development drives sustainable micro-enterprise performance: The mediating roles of entrepreneurial motivation and innovative work behavior

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractMicroenterprises are crucial for economic development, but face resource shortages and market pressures that make sustainable business performance difficult. The present study seeks to investigate the effect of self-development on micro-enterprise performance in a sustainable manner mediated by necessity-driven entrepreneurship, opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, and innovative work behavior. Data were collected via a quantitative cross-sectional survey among 365 food and beverage micro-entrepreneurs in Greater Jakarta, Indonesia, followed by data analysis through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). SEmpirical findings show that self-development results in a high positive effect on opportunity-driven entrepreneurship (β = 0.675, p < 0.001), whereas the effect on necessity-driven enterprise has been lower than others (β = 0.269, p < 0.001) as well as on innovative work behavior (β = 0.379, p < 0.001). Results show that opportunity-driven entrepreneurship is an important positive predictor of both innovative work behavior (β = 0.394, p < 0.001) and sustainable business performance (β = 0.317, p < 0.001), respectively. Innovative work behavior proved to be the most significant predictor of sustainable business performance (β = 0.518, p < 0.001). However, necessity-driven entrepreneurship does not show a significant influence on innovative work behavior and contributes significantly less to sustainable performance (β = 0.067, p = 0.032). Mediation analysis indicates that opportunity-driven entrepreneurship and innovative work behavior mediate the impact of self-development on sustainable business performance together. Our findings validated the idea that self-development improves sustainable microenterprise performance primarily through being oriented toward motivating opportunities and innovative work behavior.AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Research and Community Service Institute of Universitas Mercu Buana for providing research funding support, which has contributed significantly to the successful completion of this study and the preparation of this article.