Entrepreneurial mindset and family business performance: the United Arab Emirates perspectives

Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial mindsets on the performance of family businesses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study focused on the following entrepreneurial mindset factors: alertness to opportunity, ambiguity tolerance, dispositional optimism and risk-taking propensity. Design/methodology/approach A partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the proposed research model. The gathered data consisted of 321 family businesses that operate in the UAE. Findings Findings showed that only two of the entrepreneurial mindset factors had a significant and positive impact on the firm’s performance, namely, alertness to opportunity and dispositional optimism. Originality/value This paper covers a research gap by reflecting the effect of the entrepreneurial mindset in an unstudied context, such as the UAE. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that measures the effect of the dimensions of the entrepreneurial mindset on the performance of family businesses in the UAE, and as such, it represents an additional value to the literature in this field.