Srikalimah Srikalimah, Ludi Wishnu Wardana, Diana Ambarwati, Ustadus Sholihin, Rizky Arief Shobirin, Nuraidya Fajariah, Agus Wibowo
SMEs as an organization to succeed and to be sustainable must have the most essential and strategic capital, namely creativity, competitive advantage, and intellectual capital. This study aims to explore how creativity and intellectual capital determines SMEs’ sustainability as well as examine the emerging role of competitive advantage in supporting this relationship. A quantitative method was applied to gain a better understanding of the relationship between variables undergoing Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS). This study collected data from 123 SMEs in East Java of Indonesia using an online survey. The approach adopted in this study is a convenience random sampling method, which is widely used in entrepreneurship and SMEs’ sustainability research. The findings showed that intellectual capital positively affects both competitive advantage and SMEs’ sustainability. Additionally, the result of this study confirms a robust relationship between intellectual capital and SMEs’ sustainability. However, partially, creativity failed in explaining SMEs’ sustainability. Furthermore, this study confirmed that competitive advantage has successfully mediated both the influence of creativity and intellectual capital to SMEs’ sustainability. Although this research only involved participants in East Java, this study can be the first step for relevant research of SMEs’ sustainability, in particular, in Indonesia. © Copyright: The Author(s) This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Department of Accounting, Faculty of Economics, Universitas Islam Kadiri, Jln. Sersan Suharmadji No. 38 Manisrenggo Jawa Timur, Kota Kediri, 64128, Indonesia; Department of Business and Management Education, Faculty of Economics, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia; Department of Management, Faculty of Economics, Universitas Islam Kadiri, Indonesia; Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Islam Kadiri, Indonesia; Department of Economics Education, Faculty of Economics, Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Indonesia
