Sustainability Orientation and Sustainable Innovation: Can Organisational Resilience Clarify the Missing Link?

ABSTRACT Although firms that integrate a sustainability orientation (SO) may experience a significant improvement in their resource efficiency, many, particularly small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), still struggle with the complexities of incorporating sustainability into their business models. SMEs, particularly those in resource‐constrained regions, struggle to depend on their sustainability approaches to achieve better sustainable innovation (SI) outcomes. Anchored in the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examines how organisational resilience—conceptualised as a three‐order construct: behaviour, resources and capabilities—clarifies the relationship between SO and SI in SMEs. These relationships are examined using two‐wave time‐lagged data from 232 SMEs. The model was tested using a symmetrical approach (Smart‐PLS) to explain the one‐dimensional effect and an asymmetrical approach (fsQCA) to clarify the different aspects of resilience, whose presence or absence is necessary and sufficient to cause SMEs' SI outcomes. The symmetrical result reveals that resilience resource and capability mediated the relationship between SO and SI. These interaction effects are identified as full mediation, as SO reports a non‐significant effect on SI after the mediation process ( β = 0.016; p > 0.05). With the asymmetrical results, whereas resilience behaviour and SO reported an insignificant relationship in the path analysis, the fsQCA revealed that resilient behaviour had the most significant impact on the configuration analysis, as its presence was required in three of the four generated solutions. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights into how SMEs can leverage resilience to translate sustainability strategies into better innovation outcomes.