Abstract
This study explores the role of Buddhist philosophy in Asian entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial orientation and their startup firm's product creativity develop a moderated mediation model, which explains how Buddhist religion enhances a startup business's new product creativity by boosting the founder's entrepreneurial orientation. The moderating effects of religious commitment and stress tolerance are also investigated. Our hypotheses are examined through PROCESS macro on a sample of 331 informants. We collected the empirical data from two Asia Pacific countries where Buddhism culture is prevalent, Thailand and Taiwan; the sample includes Buddhist and non-Buddhist entrepreneurs to explore their behavioral. Notably, the findings reveal that Buddhist entrepreneurs have a higher entrepreneurial orientation than non-Buddhist entrepreneurs; the Buddhism-entrepreneurial orientation relationship is stronger when the entrepreneur has high levels of religious commitment. As predicted, entrepreneurial orientation substantially impacts a startup firm's new product novelty and meaningfulness, especially when the entrepreneurs have higher stress tolerance. Our results point to an interesting discovery of how Eastern Buddhist philosophy determines entrepreneurs' behavioral posture by embracing the beliefs that opportunities do not emerge spontaneously but are created by learning-driven actions, the connotation echoing the Western scholarly view of entrepreneurial bricolage.