Digital Future Orientation, Digital Capability, Ecosystem Openness, Innovation Intensity, and International Orientation as Correlates of Sustainable Business Model Orientation and Digital–Sustainability Alignment: Evidence from Slovenia

Digitalisation and sustainability are increasingly expected to reinforce one another, yet firm-level evidence does not justify treating their convergence as automatic. This study examines how digital future orientation, current digital capability, open ecosystem orientation, innovation intensity, and international orientation are associated with sustainable business model orientation (SBMO) among entrepreneurial and technology- and knowledge-intensive firms in Slovenia. A secondary analysis evaluates digital–sustainability alignment as a derived co-presence indicator rather than an independent latent construct. The study uses a 2025 organisational survey with 110 firms in the core sample and a common regression sample of 103 firms. OLS with HC3 standard errors is retained as a transparent benchmark; fractional-logit and ordered-logit models with Huber–White robust standard errors address the bounded, discrete, and zero-heavy outcome. Model 1 estimates focal associations, Model 2 adds firm-profile controls, and post-estimation contrasts test the comparative hypotheses. Open ecosystem orientation is the most stable result: it is positively associated with SBMO across all three model families, more strongly associated than internal innovation intensity, and positive across four alignment definitions. Digital future orientation is consistently positive but less precisely estimated, whereas current digital capability is not independently positively associated with SBMO. The evidence therefore supports a bounded open-systems interpretation: boundary-spanning ecosystem engagement and strategic direction are more closely associated with sustainability entering the business-model agenda than digital readiness alone, while alignment remains a derived co-presence property.