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Innovation and
Self-counciousness competence as environmental
driver of innovation and commitment

environmental commitment in
higher education students
Marian Buil Fabreg
a Received 2 March 2020
Revised 1 July 2020
Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 23 August 2020
Escola Superior en Ciències Socials i de l’Empresa Tecnocampus, Accepted 7 September 2020

Pompeu Fabra University, Mataro, Spain

Núria Masferrer and Josep Patau
Escola Superior en Ciències Socials i de l’Empresa Tecnocampus,
Pompeu Fabra University, Matar
o, Spain, and
Albert-P. Mir
o Pérez
ESERP Business School and Law, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this research is to analyse the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and
innovation commitment and entrepreneurial skills and environmental commitment as drivers of awareness on
sustainable development of higher education students.
Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 1,318 business and management students out of the
3,535 students of Tecnocampus Pompeu Fabra University in Spain during the 2017-2018 academic year
was selected to conduct a survey regarding their entrepreneurial skills and sustainability commitment,
resulting in a total number of responses of 515. A structural equation model is proposed to contrast the
hypothesis.
Findings – The statistical analysis showed the existence of a positive relation between the entrepreneurial
skill of self-consciousness, innovation and environmental commitment to foster sustainability and sustainable
development. It is one of the few studies related to the self-conciousness competence of the entrepreneurial
skills which found, as a novelty, that the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness is the skill with the greater
impact on innovation and environmental commitment.
Research limitations/implications – The limitations of the study are that it is based on a sample of
students taking entrepreneurship courses at a specific Spanish University that is not representative of all
entrepreneurs in all universities.
Practical implications – The research proposes including entrepreneurial skills programmes in higher
education and research programmes as a way to assure commitment to innovation and environmental
sustainability.
Originality/value – Promoting entrepreneurial skills among higher education students could act as
drivers for sustainable development.
Keywords Entrepreneurial skills, Sustainable development, Sustainability,
Sustainable development goals, Innovation commitment, Environmental commitment
Paper type Research paper
International Journal of
Sustainability in Higher Education
The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their contributions. © Emerald Publishing Limited
1467-6370
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest. DOI 10.1108/IJSHE-03-2020-0083
IJSHE Introduction
Many economic studies show that innovative entrepreneurship is essential for economic
growth. This is important to reach and generate relational skills, which are the basis of the
processes of emergence and development of local innovation systems (Löfsten and Lindelöf,
2002; Cooke et al., 2004; Asheim and Coenen, 2005; Asheim and Gertler, 2005; Acs et al., 2006;
Lööf and Broström, 2008; Yang et al., 2009; Autio et al., 2014; Mason and Brown, 2014; Stam
and Spigel, 2016; Guerrero et al., 2016; Audretsch, 2018; Trequattrini et al., 2018).
Entrepreneurs need more than competence to succeed in the entrepreneurial process of
business creation. Many studies (Lazear, 2005; Tang et al., 2012; Kucel et al., 2016) have
focused on that perspective, but it is also important to analyse the entrepreneurial skills of
entrepreneurs regarding commitment to innovation and sustainability and therefore to
sustainable development (SD).
Higher education (HE) institutions have an important role on SD. Research on SD in HE
is focused on the commitment and implementation of SD (Leal Filho, 2010; Leal Filho, 2011;
Lozano et al., 2015; Leal et al., 2015), research on SD (AdoBment et al., 2014) and the
definition of competences for SD (Barth et al., 2007; Lambrechts et al., 2013) . It also focuses
on the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) (Leal et al., 2015; Storey
et al., 2017), among others.
SD focused in part on the environmental damages collected in the 2030 United Nations
Agenda on SDGs. This focus should be introduced in university studies and research
programmes (Leal Filho, 2015). HE institutions contribute to the SDGs focusing on a quality
education (Goal 4) (Ferguson and Roofe, 2020). This issue is important to empower students
on environmental issues and actions to be taken to help SD. Some authors state that
developing entrepreneurial skills in students is a good method to make them more conscious
about environmental goals (Buil-Fabreg
a, 2019). Further research on the relations between
entrepreneurial skills and other factors which help to SD is needed (Lans et al., 2014; Wyness
and Jones, 2019; Vuorio et al., 2018; Hermann and Bossle, 2020).
This paper aims to find a relation between entrepreneurial skills, innovation and
sustainability commitment to consider entrepreneurial skills as drivers for SD and to give advice
to HE institutions and stakeholders to foster entrepreneurship based on sustainability concerns.
This article makes several contributions. First, the research analyses the impact of
entrepreneurial skills on environmental sustainability and commitment to innovation of HE
students, finding, as a novelty, that the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness is the skill
with the greater impact on innovation and environmental commitment. This finding reinforces
the idea of teaching entrepreneurial skills to students to make them more conscious of
environmental issues. The environmental concern is part of the SD strategy and it is present in
some SDGs. Second, entrepreneurship is analysed at the individual level through a survey of
HE students who are taking entrepreneurial courses to be future entrepreneurs and who are
acting as change makers for SD. Third, a relationship between entrepreneurial skills and a
commitment to innovation is found to be less important than the relation between
entrepreneurial skills and environmental commitment. Finally, the research provides useful
information for HE institutions to reinforce entrepreneurial skills and a commitment to
innovation and sustainability to promote the creation of sustainable organisations.
The paper is organised as follows. A description of the literature review on the
relationship between entrepreneurial skills and innovation and entrepreneurial skills and
sustainability is presented. It follows the methodology used in the research, the description
of the data and the empirical study. Next, the paper presents the statistical analysis and
results. Finally, it makes conclusions and recommendations for future research lines and
addresses the limitations of the study.
Literature review Innovation and
Entrepreneurial skills and innovation commitment environmental
The literature review has been done using Web of Science database and searching for the
terms “entrepreneurial skills, innovation commitment and environmental commitment”.
commitment
Entrepreneurial skills are necessary competencies for entrepreneurs to have success in
entrepreneurial projects (Lazear, 2005). Studying entrepreneurship at the individual level
means studying the set of entrepreneurial skills that entrepreneurs possess to make their
businesses successful and sustainable in the long term. Tang et al. (2012) defined three
categories of entrepreneurial skills. The first is alertness or the capability to detect business
opportunities where others are not able to. The second is creativity, which is the ability to
come up with innovative solutions for business opportunities. The third and last
entrepreneurial skill is self-consciousness or the capacity to continually evaluate one’s own
and others’ ideas while searching for improvements.
The current socio-economic reality essentially treats innovation as a determining factor
in the consolidation of business competitiveness. Traditionally, competitiveness was
considered to be reflected in the capacity to attract companies, capital and work (Porter,
1985). Porter suggests that a new economy of competition will emerge and highlights the
value of innovation as a basis for sustained corporate growth and SD.
This is the reason why an environment of maximum competitiveness, such as that where
companies interact, is necessary to understand the processes that determine the patterns of
innovation and adaptive structural change. Likewise, the innovation variable allows us to
adequately detail the economic performance of organisations and the confluence in
opportunities generated by the market (Miles and Snow., 1978).
Schumpeter made the first definition of innovation in the late 1920s (Hansen and
Wakonen, 1997) and emphasised a novel aspect. There is a wide range of literature that
defines and analyses innovation (Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 1998; Zahra and George,
2002; Leal-Rodríguez et al., 2014). Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan (1998) conceptualise it as
“the adoption of an idea or a new behaviour in an organization” (Damanpour and
Gopalakrishnan, 1998, p. 3). This process generates new knowledge to obtain new products,
services or processes that usually generate innovation outcomes (Leal-Rodríguez et al.,
2014).
Nonetheless, Damanpour (1991) talks about two different types of innovation: one refers
to technological innovations, and the other refers to administrative innovations. The first
includes new technologies, products and services, which in turn is divided into product and
process innovation (Napolitano, 1991). The second comprises new policies or ways of
organisation. However, in recent decades, a new concept has been examined in innovation: it
is focused on human aspects (Prajogo and Ahmed, 2006), that is, at the individual level.
Schaltegger and Wagner (2011) worked on the categories and interactions of sustainable
entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation while considering the relationship between
both topics under a sustainable perspective. In this sense, one could consider the need to
generate a transformation of the industry as a necessary element for the sustainable
entrepreneur (Schaltegger and Wagner, 2008). To measure the impact of innovation on
business performance, the authors will use the doctrines that approach the concept of
innovation through resources, knowledge and the recombination of these within the company
as processes oriented towards the generation of innovation and which in turn allow for a more
efficient approach to the concept of entrepreneurship (Rangus and Slavec, 2017).
The aspect of innovation has been widely and extensively treated in the scientific
literature, under different approaches and aspects that, as a whole, only reflect the
complexity of the concept that companies face when developing competitive
IJSHE advantages through innovation and measurement capacity (Tohidi and Jabbari, 2012;
Schot and Steinmueller, 2018). The meaning of this concept has been growing in
complexity and detail, articulated through innovation understood as a series of
processes, means, products and companies, as expressed in the third edition of the Oslo
Manual of 2005 (OECD, 2005).
Although, once the traditional list of the concept of innovation is made, there are the
product and process concepts, two concepts can still be included, such as marketing
innovation and organisational innovation. However, the literature covering organisational
innovation is still far removed from the analysis of technological innovations (Battisti and
Iona, 2009), and therefore, with a deficiency in understanding the effects derived from it
(Damanpour et al., 2009). However, the debate on organisational innovation has pointed to
the existence of benefits associated with its implementation in companies, both because of
the direct impact of these practices on business performance and because of joint adoption
with technological innovations (Sapprasert and Clausen, 2012).
Thus, this research is framed in the context of organisational innovativeness; that is, it
embarks on the analysis of the hypothesis that raises the existence of a causal
interrelationship between people and the organisational context with respect to successful
innovation (Prajogo and Ahmed, 2006; Zien and Buckler, 1997). Innovation has been
considered essential for both companies and employees and a “key source for competitive
advantage” (Prajogo and Ahmed, 2006).
However, there are clear consequences in all individual decisions because of the recent
international economic crisis. This circumstance has shown the need for promoting certain
key “skills in future entrepreneurs to create enterprises that are capable of producing added
value, generating employment and remaining solvent or growing in a competitive and
highly volatile environment” (Buil et al., 2016).
The authors could not find research on the relationship between entrepreneurial skills
and innovation commitment. Some articles consider entrepreneurial innovation as a single
skill (Autio et al., 2014).
Edwards-Schachter et al. (2015) consider creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship as a
meta-competence.
It should be noted that since the work of Schumpeter (1934, 1950), the relationship
between entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprises has generated a wide debate in the
literature (Sahut and Peris-Ortiz, 2014). Although, the convergence in the conclusions is
evident and analogous to innovation as a catalyst for economic development, and directly
associated with an essential characteristic of entrepreneurship and claims “entrepreneurship
involves more than the [. . .] process of discovering opportunities for profit. It also involves
coming up with a business idea about how to recombine resources to exploit those
opportunities” (Shane, 2012, pp. 17–18).
Under this prism, entrepreneurial skills are considered to generate new opportunities in
the process of creation, discovery and generation of opportunities, as well as the analytical
capacity of individuals (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Sahut and Peris-Ortiz, 2014). This
combination clearly allows for innovative capacity through the correct use of the variables
described (Hayton, 2006; Sahut and Peris-Ortiz, 2014).
However, it is obvious that the reality associated with these variables is associated with
the cognitive learning of the individual who is associated with cause – effect learning
(Jonassen, 2009). This is why the development of entrepreneurial skills is associated not only
with the educational concept (Bagur-Femenías et al., 2020), but also with the learning that
takes place in the workplace (Hoidn and Kärkkäinen, 2014).
 Therefore, no articles analysing the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and Innovation and
innovation commitment at the micro-level could be found by the authors. For this reason, the environmental
following hypotheses is proposed:
commitment
H1. Self-consciousness and entrepreneurial skills have a direct and positive effect on
innovation commitment.

Entrepreneurial skills and environmental commitment

The literature on entrepreneurial skills has defined and studied the skills of alertness or
opportunity recognition and creativity, but there is a lack of research on the third skill of
self-consciousness, which was proposed by Tang et al. (2012). A review of papers on the
database Web of Science has been done using the keywords “self-conciousness commitment
of entrepreneurial skills and environmental commitment”. Two papers were found on that
searching: Auzoult et al. (2016) and Buil et al. (2016). Auzoult et al. (2016) is in the field of
psychology. The authors found private self-consciousness has a direct relation on
entrepreneurial intention. Buil et al. (2016) demonstrate that the configuration of
entrepreneurial skills is the competence of alertness followed by self-consciousness.
Furthermore, the study confirms there is a relation between entrepreneurial skills and the
social and environmental commitment of entrepreneurs, with the social commitment being
greater than the environmental commitment. This suggests that having entrepreneurial
skills helps build socially and environmentally responsible management.
Acquiring and developing these entrepreneurial skills make entrepreneurs or people who
possess them more aware of changes in the market and allows them to adapt to
uncertainties faster than other managers without those capabilities (Alonso-Almeida et al.,
2017; Buil-Fabregà et al., 2017). To be more alert to the environment makes entrepreneurs
more innovative and makes their businesses more sustainable.
Sustainability goals require a managerial model focused not only on economic objectives
but also on social and environmental ones (Larson, 2000; Kyrö, 2001; Strothotte and
Wüstenhagen, 2005; Cohen and Winn, 2012; Cohen et al., 2008a, 2018b; Van Passel et al.,
2009; Bagur-Femenías et al., 2013; Alonso-Almeida et al., 2015). It is important that
entrepreneurs be focused not only on economic benefits but also on social and
environmental sustainability criteria to include them in their business strategy.
Alonso-Almeida et al. (2017) studied the relationship of the individual dynamic
capabilities of managers to the social and environmental sustainability commitment of
them. The results show that individual dynamic capabilities have an impact on social and
environmental commitment, and they help adaptation to uncertainty in markets. Moreover,
the authors state that the environmental and social commitment of managers also impacts
stakeholder engagement.
The need to consider the success of the interaction with the environment as an essential
pillar is part of the new attitudes of economic actors, consumers, companies and
governments (Fraj et al., 2014). This attitude is framed in innovative behaviours that
improve the final action avoiding a greater impact on the environment (Delmas et al., 2011)
without avoiding business success (Clarkson et al., 2011). In this case, the implementation of
the proactive environmental strategy (PES) has been considered standing out as “[. . .]
learning orientation allows firms to create an applicable knowledge that can reduce
uncertainty in environmental decision-making (Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Moreover,
innovativeness provides the organization with the required experience for generating the
new ideas, products and operational modifications that PES requires” (Fraj et al., 2014,
p. 31). This is why innovation as a whole becomes a fundamental pillar of environmental
IJSHE strategies (Yang et al., 2018). In this sense, it is important to provide the company with
greater innovative capacity to generate and focus on PES (Yang et al., 2018; Cord
on-Lagares
et al., 2018).
However, because the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness in not deeply studied and
because there are some studies that focus on the relation between entrepreneurial skills and social
commitment rather than environmental commitment, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H2. Self-consciousness as an entrepreneurial skill has a direct relation to environmental

commitment of sustainability.
The following model (Figure 1) analyses the supposed relationship between the
entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness and innovation commitment on the one hand and
innovation commitment and environmental commitment on the other hand.

Methods
The methodology proposed to test the hypothesis is a structural equation modelling (SEM).
SEM is a commonly used methodology in social sciences for testing hypothesis in models
similar to the one presented in the paper by Hooper et al. (2008). This method allows finding
direct relations between the variables of the model while analysing the impact between the
constructs. Other works on entrepreneurship education and SD used SEM (Lourenço et al.,
2012). The following section will explain the sample and the methodological process.

Sample and data collection

A sample of 1,318 students taking entrepreneurship subjects out of the 3,535 students of
Tecnocampus Pompeu Fabra University in Spain during the 2017–2018 academic year was
selected, obtaining 515 answers. The selection was done to conduct a survey regarding their
entrepreneurial skills and sustainability commitment to test the proposed model. The
survey was conducted from January to March 2018.

Figure 1.
Model to be
contrasted
Tecnocampus Pompeu Fabra University is focused in business, engineering and health Innovation and
studies. Furthermore, it is well known as having compulsory academic entrepreneurship environmental
courses in all the studies the university offers (Fabregà, 2018).
The selection of the sample was done following some previous studies (Emanuel and
commitment
Adams, 2011; Lambrechts et al., 2013; Kucel et al., 2016; Molderez and Fonseca, 2018) which a
selected samples of HE students because they are considered future change actors to provide
better conditions for SD. Moreover, other authors stated HE students of the business field of
study are considered to work in professional careers on management (Kucel et al., 2016; Buil-
Fabreg
a et al., 2016). Thus, they are studying to become future managers (Kucel et al., 2016)
who could participate in sustainability transformations (Cohen et al., 2018a, 2018b).
From this point of view, the authors considered only the students who had taken or were taking
courses on entrepreneurship which implies a business knowledge. The total amount of students
with this characteristics was 1,318 students out of the 3,535 total number of students at
Tecnocampus. The authors presented the objective of the research to the board of directors at
university and they got the institutional implication they need to carry out the present research
among the faculty students. Then, a formal presentation to university professors was carried out to
explain the objective of the research and to give instructions to conduct the survey in their classes.
Using an exploratory study technique based on previous researches (Thompson and
Ramsey, 1995; Yin-Fah et al., 2010), a survey on entrepreneurial skills and sustainability
commitment was conducted to Tecnocampus selected students.
The profile of the sample was based on age, gender, the survey-taker’s course of studies,
their current classes, the field of knowledge of the studies carried out, the sector of the
company/activity in which the student works and how many companies the student has
worked for over the past 10 years. The results are shown in Table 1.

Measures
Table 2 shows the three constructs from the proposed model to be contrasted. These
constructs are composed of a set of variables regarding entrepreneurs’ competencies and
their commitments to innovation and environmental issues. All of them are derived from the
previous literature as follows:

Variable N = 515

Age: Percentage <25: 93.98%

25 # 45: 6.02%
Number of companies worked with
None 11.07%
1 35.34%
2 23.30%
Between 3 and 5 25.05%
More than 5 5.24%
Gender
Male 54.56%
Female 45.44%
Field of study
Arts and Humanities 2.33%
Sciences 4.47%
Health 0.58% Table 1.
Social and Legal Sciences 84.27% Profile of survey
Engineering and Architecture 7.77% respondents
IJSHE Code Definition

CONC1 I see potential new business opportunities as very natural for me

CONC2 I am alert and I am sensitive towards profitable opportunities
CONC3 I have hunches for potential opportunities
CONC4 I have an extraordinary ability to smell profitable opportunities
CONC5 I have a gift for counting high-value opportunities, apart from low-value opportunities
ENV1 I do not understand a business without a sustainable environmental approach
ENV2 Employees should be trained and motivated to promote positive environmental initiatives
ENV3 I believe in environmental marketing
ENV4 Any company should quantify environmental savings and costs
INNO1 I always attempt to stay on the leading edge of new technology
Table 2. INNO2 I am constantly thinking of the next generation of technology
Constructs and INNO3 I evaluate the importance of the rate of change in processes, techniques and technology in a job
variables INNO4 I evaluate the importance of the level of disruption of new products

(1) Self-consciousness (CONC): The ability to detect potential business opportunities and
distinguish whether they can be profitable or not. It was defined by Tang et al. (2012)
and has been used in other studies, such as Buil et al. (2016) and Kucel et al. (2016).
(2) Innovation perception (INNO): Attempting to stay on the leading edge of new
technology to evaluate the importance of the rate of change in processes,
techniques and technology in a job and the level of disruption of new product, at
the individual level, is based on the work of Prajogo and Ahmed (2006).
(3) Environmental commitment (ENV COMM): Sensitise the entrepreneurial and
student community to promote environmental initiatives applied in the business
world by quantifying the cost–benefit ratio. It has been defined in surveys of
Alonso-Almeida et al. (2017) and Alonso-Almeida et al. (2015).

The statistical analysis has two parts. First, with the objective of determining the
dimensions of the model, factor analysis of the variables in the survey was performed.
Second, using a structural equations model, the validity of the model is tested.
These two parts are further explained in the following sections.

Factor analysis
To perform the statistical study, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is used, taking into
account that the sample has more than 300 observations which meet the requirements for
this analysis as previous authors recommend (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001). It also allows
us to group variables that correlate strongly with each other and those whose correlations
with the variables of other groupings are smaller.
First, the variables to be studied were selected as representative of the dimensions of the
model. To avoid distorting the model, variables that take a value less than 0.5 are excluded
(Loiacono et al., 2002). As a result of this process, three dimensions that grouped the
analysed variables were obtained.
Second, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out for each selected dimension
to decompose each construct, obtaining a model of 13 factors and three dimensions and
eliminating those factors that did not meet the threshold value of 0.7 that the model requires
(Carmines and Zeller, 1979). The Cronbach’s alpha method is used to ratify the dimensions
that proved to exceed the minimum requirement of 0.7 (Carmines and Zeller, 1979).
 Third, the dimensions had been analysed by a study of the consistency, reliability and Innovation and
convergent validity. The results of the factor analysis are shown in Table 3. CFA for self- environmental
conciousness and innovation constructs is more than 0.8 in all variables and from 0.772 to 0.833
for the variables of the construct environmental commitment. In all cases, the CFA exceeds the
commitment
0.7 established as a minimum requirement by the literature (Carmines and Zeller, 1979).
The internal consistency exceeded 0.6 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988) in the three constructs
tested, 0.913 for self-conciousness, 0.911 for innovation commitment and 0.863 for
environmental commitment. The average variance extracted (AVE) exceeded 0.5 in the three
dimensions, 0.6764, 0.7202 and 0.863, respectively. Finally, the validity of convergence was
confirmed based on Fornell and Larcker (1981). The results are shown in Table 3.
The last step of the discriminant validity analysis shown in Table 4 confirms the
correlation of each construct with its described dimensions and not with the dimensions
described in other constructs. Correlation is significant at 0.01 level. Correlation between
innovation commitment and self-conciousness is 0.324 and between innovation and
environmental commitment is 0.330. Moreover, correlation between self-conciousness and
environmental commitment is 0.087, which indicates a significance at the 0.05 level.

Contrast of the model

The final discriminant validity analysis demonstrated in all cases that each construction
was more related to its own dimensions than to the dimensions of the other constructions.
This is shown in Table 4.
Using EQS 6.1 software (Multivariate Software, Inc., Temple City, CA, USA) and
following the minimum indications required in Schermelleh-Engel et al. (2003), in which it

Dimension Code CFA Internal consistency and reliability statistics

Consciousness CONC1 0.821 Cronbach’s alpha: 0.880

CONC2 0.817 Composite reliability: 0.913
CONC3 0.817 AVE: 0.6764
CONC4 0.841
CONC5 0.816
Innovation INNO1 0.821 Cronbach’s alpha: 0.869
INNO2 0.861 Composite reliability: 0.911
INNO3 0.865 AVE: 0.7202
INNO4 0.847
Environmental ENV1 0.772 Cronbach’s alpha: 0.788
ENV2 0.833 Composite reliability: 0.863 Table 3.
ENV3 0.725 AVE: 0.6123 Factor analysis of the
ENV4 0.796 dimensions

CONC INNO ENV

CONC 0.8225
INNO 0.324** 0.7825
ENV 0.087*** 0.330** 0.8487

Notes: *Square root of AVE in the diagonal; **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (bilateral); Table 4.
***correlation is significant at the 0.05 level Discriminant validity
IJSHE proposes that it is sufficient to have three statistics within its recommended values to test
the robustness of the model used, it is observed that our model meets the minimum
requirement.
Table 5 shows how the model exceeds the standards set by the scientific literature indicated.
Figure 2 represents the statistical result of the hypothesis proposed in the model after the
application of the methodology.
The results in the figure show the relation between self-conciousness and environmental
commitment (0.382*) is greater than the relation between self-conciousness and innovation
commitment (0.113*).

Results and discussion

The two hypotheses proposed in the research are confirmed by the statistical analysis. H1 is
the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness, which has a direct relation to innovation
commitment. One novelty is that this research is one of the few studies focusing on the
impact of the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness as a driver of innovation. The
majority of studies on entrepreneurial skills consider the entrepreneurial skills of alertness

Assessment item Values Ideal value

x (Chi-squared)*
2
246,264 534,161
x 2/df (normed Chi-squared) 3,909 52,887 <3
GFI 0.926 0.892 >0.8
AGFI 0.894 0.854 >0.8
CFI (comparative fit index) 0.976 878 >0.9
RMSEA (root mean square error of approx.) 0.077 0.094 <0.06
Table 5.
Main statistics Note: *Satorra–Bentler-scaled Chi-square

Figure 2.
Standardised solution
of the causal model
and creativity as the basis for generating new business ideas. Another new feature of the Innovation and
result is that the entrepreneurial skills of self-consciousness and innovation are treated as environmental
different variables, contrary to previous studies which consider them as a whole (Edwards-
commitment
Schachter et al., 2015).
The results show that the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness based on the
evaluation of business opportunities by entrepreneurs makes them more committed to
innovate in their daily routines and future jobs. Such innovations will arrive in the market
and improve conditions for SD. One possible explanation is that observing the environment
and detecting profitable opportunities could bring more value to the place they decide to
settle. Furthermore, the implementation of the organisational model in terms of its
innovations means a significant improvement in the use of the results of technological
innovation. This circumstance favours the development of positive synergies, as well as the
continuous transfer of knowledge and technical advances between the different product
families. This entails an organisational improvement with a positive impact on the
coordination of the different activities they perform in the firm, identifying which are the
competitive advantages, and directing the efforts towards the development and
maintenance of business competitiveness. Finally, it is worth noting how the introduction of
organisational innovation is associated with a reduction in costs (Sapprest and Clausen,
2012). Likewise, an association between the workplace and organisational innovation allows
the results of technological innovations to be used in a coherent manner.
Moreover, H2 is the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness, which has a direct
relation with the environmental commitment of entrepreneurs. This result is aligned with
the new model of management more committed to social and environment aspects rather
than only economic aspects (Alonso-Almeida et al., 2015; Larson, 2000; Kyrö, 2001;
Strothotte and Wüstenhagen, 2005; Cohen and Winn, 2012; Cohen et al., 2008a, 2008b;
Koellinger, 2008). The novelty of this result is that it highlights the importance of
environmental commitment over the social and economic commitments in the design of the
business sustainability strategy. One possible explanation is that entrepreneurs’ self-
consciousness makes them more aware of those issues concerning environmental damage,
as there are high fines defined in environmental policies for businesses. The greater
importance and increasing initiatives on corporate social responsibility and the
entrepreneurial trend of green entrepreneurship follows this idea. Moreover, practically, all
of the chapters of Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 are about environmental sustainability, and the
UN2030 Agenda on SDGs includes some challenges concerning environmental issues.
Recent research on SD is paying attention on how to educate for SD giving a holistic
approach to SD concept integrating the three dimensions of the term: environment, society
and economy (Sinakou et al., 2018). However, there are few studies trying to connect
pedagogical approaches used in HE neither how students develop sustainability
competences (Lozano et al., 2019). Flipped classroom approach should consider students’
effective learning that facilitates critical thinking (Critz and Wright, 2013) and, most
importantly, improves student participation (Wilson, 2014), both inside and outside the
class. Buil et al. (2019a) conducted a survey using 154 students taught by flipped classroom
methodology to analyse if it helps them to learn SD. The results show the active and
reflexive learning from flipped classroom methodology are the ones which make students to
be more committed to SD. Moreover, Buil et al. (2019b) demonstrate teaching entrepreneurial
skills through the real practical cases in the local community increases their commitment to
sustainability awareness.
IJSHE To summarise the results, the entrepreneurial skill of self-consciousness impacts the
innovation and environmental commitment of entrepreneurs, with the greater impact
coming from the environmental commitment rather than the innovation commitment. The
environmental and innovation commitment of entrepreneurs is crucial in developing better
solutions to SD.

Conclusions
This research makes several conclusions and recommendations to academia, business and
policymakers.
First, following Goal number 4 of UN2030 on SDGs and quality education, there is a need
to keep focusing on education for SD. This education is about learning holistically from the
new challenges facing markets, economies, cultures and the Earth. The fundamental
principles for university sustainability are reorienting education towards SD, increasing
public awareness of environmental issues and promoting environmental training among
educators (Declaration Rio, 1992). For these, it is required to change systems using adequate
teaching and learning methods to promote skills, values and knowledge related to SD
requirements (ESD Section, 2007).
One recommendation in this line is to promote more training in entrepreneurial skills. In
any innovative process, there are external variables that cannot be controlled by the
entrepreneurs that influence the processes, but there is a series of skills that have a huge
impact on the result. These entrepreneurial skills, according to Koellinger (2008), are geared
towards the opportunity and achievement of specific goals, tolerance for ambiguity,
pressure and uncertainty, perseverance, integrity and trust, optimism, energy and ability to
work hard. The objective would be to stimulate the development of these skills to encourage
entrepreneurship at the individual level while facing unpredictable future challenges, which
contributes to SD. Another recommendation is to encourage students who could be future
entrepreneurs to promote personal growth focused using more personalised training on
values and aimed at fostering leadership and communication skills, which allows them to
lead and interact with work groups and develop the necessary skills to obtain and manage
resources efficiently. All these actions, together with the intellectual characteristics of
students and the factors of personal motivation, would create an adequate individual profile
to face future challenges with greater guarantees to be more sustainable in the long term.
Second, promoting entrepreneurial skills among students could help them to be more
committed to innovation and environmental sustainability. This focus will contribute to SD,
as it will to solutions from the current pressure exerted increasingly by consumers. Moreover,
it encourages good environmental and social behaviour that affects companies so that they
can develop an environmental commitment regarding societal needs. In addition, promoting
entrepreneurial skills can include them in a global strategy contributing to a new more
sustainable model of management incorporating the economic, social and environmental
issues demanded by society (Crals and Vereeck, 2005). According to Crals and Vereeck
(2005), the social aspect of sustainable entrepreneurship has to do with the social and ethical
behaviour of companies, such as in the management of human resources, human rights, child
labour, gender, discrimination, participation of workers in company profits and corruption.
The environment implies clean products, eco-efficiency, sustainable technological
development and eco-design. This social aspect of sustainable entrepreneurship fits with the
objectives of the SDGs for a better world.
Third, following Mason and Brown’s (2014) holistic approach focusing on
entrepreneurial actors, the resource providers and entrepreneurial connectors within the
ecosystem and the entrepreneurial environment of the ecosystem have to contribute to SD.
Therefore, this research proposes a cultural transformation as an attitude of life, where the Innovation and
environment is included as a great opportunity to generate sustainability, wealth and environmental
development. Finding a balance between economic, social and environmental objectives and
commitment
including them in the problem-based solutions of societal needs is crucial to generating SD.
This work proposes some future research directions. The conclusions show evidence of
continuing research on SD not only in the published number of scientific papers but also in a
community that shares and learns from different practices in HE institutions. It could also
be interesting to study how entrepreneurial skills could influence other factors related to SD.
Another research line could be segmenting the samples into sub-sections, for example, by
gender, age, work or field of study, which would allow observation if there were significant
differences within the sample itself. Moreover, the relation between entrepreneurial skills
and other variables helps SD in general and the UN2030 SDGs, specifically.
Nevertheless, the present research has some limitations. One is that the sample is
representative of people taking entrepreneurial courses with the idea of creating a business,
and the results could vary with other samples. Another limitation is that the survey was
conducted in a Spanish university, and it is not representative of all entrepreneurs in all
universities. Similar studies should be conducted on different sectors in other countries to
compare the results.

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About the authors

Marian Buil-Fabreg
a, PhD, is a Full Professor of Entrepreneurship based on Sustainable Business
Models at Escola Superior en Ciències Socials i de l’Empresa Tecnocampus, Universitat Pompeu
Fabra, Spain. Her field of research is competences to foster sustainable development mainly in higher
education. She uses structural equation modelling to test the relations between competences and
social and environmental commitment. Marian Buil Fabreg
a is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: mbuil@tecnocampus.cat
Núria Masferrer, PhD, is a Full Professor of Statistics and Management at Escola Superior en
Ciències Socials i de l’Empresa Tecnocampus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. Her research lines
are entrepreneurial skills, sustainability and cooperativism.
Josep Patau, PhD, is a Full Professor of of Accounting at Escola Superior en Ciències Socials i de
l’Empresa Tecnocampus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. His research lines are accounting and
management.
Albert-P. Mir
o Pérez, PhD, is a Full Professor of Economics at ESERP Business School and Law,
Spain. His research lines are economics, tourism and sustainable development.

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