Integrating organizational learning with high-performance work system and entrepreneurial orientation: a moderated mediation framework

This study proposes a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between organizational learning and firm performance. We argue that entrepreneurial orientation mediates the positive effect of organizational learning on firm performance. Furthermore, the relationship between organizational learning and entrepreneurial orientation is strengthened when firms employ a higher level of high-performance work system. Hypotheses are supported by data from 181 firms operating in the manufacturing and service industries in China. Statistical results further reveal that a high-performance work system has different moderating effects on exploitative learning and exploratory learning. This research extends our understanding of organizational learning theory, entrepreneurship and human resource management literature by cross-fertilizing constructs in these fields with empirical evidence.     

Entrepreneurial Orientation,Dynamic Capabilities and International Performance

In order to be able to seize the opportunities that a dynamic operating environment opens up, entrepreneurial firms have to reconfigure their existing asset base and processes. This study explores the effect of an entrepreneurial orientation and a firm's reconfiguring capabilities on international performance by using survey data from 217 manufacturing and service organizations. Our findings indicate that a firm's entrepreneurial orientation and reconfiguring capabilities have an effect on its international performance and provide empirical support for the dynamic capability view of the firm. Entrepreneurial behavior combined with organizational reconfiguring capabilities constitutes a potential source of competitive advantage.     

Behavioral Ethics: A Critique and a Proposal

The interaction between static and dynamic facets in organizational ambidexterity produces “change” energy for the organization. The purpose of the research therefore is to examine the predicting role of organizational ambidexterity for entrepreneurial orientation and idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). The moderating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the effect of organizational ambidexterity on entrepreneurial orientation was also investigated. The cross-sectional data for SEM-based analysis were garnered from 427 supervisor-subordinate dyads from software companies in Vietnam business setting. The research findings confirmed the positive relationship between organizational ambidexterity and entrepreneurial orientation, which was moderated by CSR. Entrepreneurial orientation was also found as a strong predictor of i-deals.     

Entrepreneurial capacities as antecedents of business performance in Brazilian firms

We investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial capacities and firm performance. More specifically, we investigate the effects of radical innovation and learning orientation on business performance. We test the effects of entrepreneurial orientation on learning orientation and radical innovation. The results suggest that radical product innovation and companies' orientation to learn have a positive effect on organizational performance. Additionally, we find that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences a firm's capability to learn and innovate. Our findings also show a direct effect of learning orientation on radical innovation, which means that companies with a higher proclivity to learn are more likely to create products and processes, representing a major departure from the state of current knowledge. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High performance work systems and corporate performance: the influence of entrepreneurial orientation and organizational learning

This study investigates the functioning mechanisms of how high performance work systems (HPWS) affect organizational performance. We propose that (HPWS) can positively affect organizational performance through the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation. An organization with high performance work systems can perform better if it enjoys high level of organizational learning. We design and administer a survey questionnaire to high-level executives or founders of companies from manufacturing and service industries and receive 176 valid responses. The results of the empirical data indicate that the relationship between high performance work systems and corporate performance is more positive when organizational learning is stronger. Entrepreneurial orientation partially mediates the relationship between high performance work systems and organizational performance. This study opens new research avenues by extending and incorporating explanations and predictions of HPWS and entrepreneurial orientation, two areas that largely have been considered independently of each other. Implications for practice and directions for future research are provided.     

High performance work systems and corporate performance: the influence of entrepreneurial orientation and organizational learning

This study investigates the functioning mechanisms of how high performance work systems (HPWS) affect organizational performance. We propose that (HPWS) can positively affect organizational performance through the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation. An organization with high performance work systems can perform better if it enjoys high level of organizational learning. We design and administer a survey questionnaire to high-level executives or founders of companies from manufacturing and service industries and receive 176 valid responses. The results of the empirical data indicate that the relationship between high performance work systems and corporate performance is more positive when organizational learning is stronger. Entrepreneurial orientation partially mediates the relationship between high performance work systems and organizational performance. This study opens new research avenues by extending and incorporating explanations and predictions of HPWS and entrepreneurial orientation, two areas that largely have been considered independently of each other. Implications for practice and directions for future research are provided.     

The performance effect of network and managerial capabilities of entrepreneurial firms

Building on the organizational capabilities view, this study explores the impact of network and managerial capabilities on the performance of entrepreneurial firms in the architecture and real estate sector. We apply an extended organizational capabilities model by integrating Porter’s value chain model and Grant’s hierarchy of organizational capabilities. Starting from differences in entrepreneurial orientation between architecture and real estate development firms, we argue that under higher environmental uncertainty, network capabilities are more important for the performance of architecture firms whereas managerial capabilities are more important for the performance of real estate development firms. Employing data from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, the research results support the hypotheses. This study integrates Porter’s value chain concept and the organizational capabilities model and delivers a contribution to the organizational capability theory. In addition, it contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by showing that network capabilities are more important for creating competitive advantage in entrepreneurial firms than in other firms.     

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Performance of Chinese High-Tech Firms： The Mediating Role of Organizational Learning and Moderating Role of Firm Life Cycle

The evidence about how entrepreneurial orientation （EO） affects firms＇ performance remains inconclusive. This study joins the research by incorporating organizational learning （OL） as a micro-macro link and by extending empirical work to the largely underexplored context of Chinese high-tech industries. Results from a survey of 252 Chinese high-tech firms demonstrate： （1） entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to firm performance; （2） organizational learning is also positively related to firm performance; （3） organizational learning partly mediates the positive impact of entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance; and （4） high-tech companies in the start-up and growth stage are likely to demonstrate stronger linkages in the EO-OL-performance relationship than in mature stage, which shows that the EO-OL-performance relationship is moderated by firms＇ life cycle.     

从创业导向到跨国创业导向:一个文献综述

中国企业的国际化战略,已逐渐聚焦于"在全球范围创造新的价值",其实质正是一种跨国创业行为,传统的围绕动机、阶段、模式展开的国际化理论已不足以解释及指导中国企业的国际化实践。本文从"创业导向的定义和维度"、创业导向维度和组织绩效的测度方法,创业导向与组织绩效的关系、"跨国创业导向"等四方面对国内外相关研究进行了综述。并指出现有跨国创业导向研究存在"套用封闭环境下的创业导向研究框架"、"未区分不同规模、不同发展阶段国际化企业的跨国创业导向差异"、"对时滞因素和前因变量等缺乏关注"等不足之处。     

创业意愿如何转化为创业行为？——基于行动-状态导向作用的研究

创业意愿转化为创业行为才具有重要的现实意义。文章以大学生为对象，在理论研究的基础上，构建行动-状态导向调节创业意愿与创业行为关系的理论模型，运用滚雪球式非随机便利抽样法进行间隔1年时间的两个阶段调查，通过分层回归分析法等进行数据分析和假设检验。研究发现，创业意愿对创业行为具有显著正向预测作用，行动导向的“脱离”“主动”和“持续”维度分别强化创业意愿与创业行为的正向关系；而状态导向的“执着”“犹豫”和“短暂”维度分别弱化创业意愿与创业行为的正向关系。研究结果表明，在个人具有行动导向时创业意愿更能转化为创业行为，行动导向这种个人特质为创业意愿转化为创业行为提供了充分条件。以此为基础，对公共部门和大学生个人提出了策略建议。     

Ethics-focused dynamic capabilities: a small business perspective

Our analysis of survey data of US small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) explores (1) whether firms have ‘dynamic’ capabilities that change their ethics-focused operational capabilities; (2) what effects those dynamic capabilities have on both ethical and competitive performance; and, (3) whether those effects are contingent on a firm’s entrepreneurial characteristics. Our survey reveals that about a quarter of SMEs self-report high levels of these ethics-focused dynamic capabilities. We use hierarchical OLS to analyze the survey data to find that the general effect of these capabilities is positive on an SME’s ethical performance, and that the performance effects are contingent on an SME’s degree of entrepreneurial orientation and sensitivity to changes in the business context. The main implication is that the extent of heterogeneity in types, roles, and performance effects of ‘higher-than-operations-level’ capabilities is likely underestimated in current dynamic capabilities theory and application.     

Organizational Ambidexterity and Innovation Performance: The Moderating Effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation

The influence of organizational ambidexterity on innovation and the growth of enterprises has gradually become an important research topic in the field of strategic management and organization theory. This paper builds up a theoretical framework of the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and innovation performance with regards to corporate entrepreneurship orientation. We select 175 companies from high and new technology industries in China’s three large cities, Beijing, Tianjin and Dalian, as samples to carry out an empirical test. We find that the balance and complement of organizational ambidexterity are positively correlated with the innovation performance of enterprises; a corporate entrepreneurial orientation has a significantly moderating effect on the relationship between the balance dimension of organizational ambidexterity and innovation performance, yet it has no significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between the combined dimension of organizational ambidexterity and innovation performance.     

The Interface between Organizational Learning Capability,Entrepreneurial Orientation,and SME Growth

This paper investigates the interface between organizational learning capability, entrepreneurial orientation (EO), and small business performance. It reports on the findings from 350 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in North Cyprus operating in the services and retailing sectors. The findings indicate a positive relationship between EO and sales and market share growth, but not between EO and employment growth. There is also a positive relationship between organizational learning capability and EO. This paper contributes to the small business management literature by providing a holistic analysis of the interface between organizational learning capability, EO, and growth.     

Market Orientation and Organizational Learning Capabilities

The platform of contemporary marketing thought is founded upon the marketing concept. While there has been much debate about the precise nature of this concept, related discussion concerning its manifestation, in the form of a firm's market orientation, has developed to suggest that it is a feature exhibited by organizations possessing superior skills in understanding and satisfying customer needs. Despite the favourable externalities likely to accrue to an organization that is market oriented, it has been claimed that for a firm to achieve its full potential to learn about the marketplace, instilling a market orientation is only a first principle. While market orientation provides the norms for responding to the marketplace, this needs to be complemented by appropriate mechanisms and processes for higher-order learning to occur. This article examines such a conceptual argument and empirically investigates the relationship between two key constructs: market orientation and organizational learning capabilities. Data were generated from a survey of medium and large industrial firms and five dimensions of organizational learning capability items are tested against two different groups of firms in terms of their degree of market orientation. As contrasted with low market orientation firms, organizations characterized by high levels of market orientation perceived greater organizational learning capability with regard to the dimensions of strategic awareness, operational flexibility, strategic development processes and managerial skills. Discussion is given to these findings and implications are drawn for business executives and future research.     

创业导向、组织学习对国际创业企业动态能力影响研究综述

自Teece提出动态能力以来,对于企业保持持续竞争优势的源泉一直成为学者们关注的话题,学者们从不同视角对动态能力进行了剖析,本文基于组织学习的视角对相关的国际创业企业动态能力文献进行梳理,进一步剖析组织学习与国际创业企业动态能力的关系,在此基础上,我们将国际创业企业动态能力、组织学习和创业导向结合在一起,提出了动态能力与组织学习、创业导向间的关系的研究框架.     

Technology Change and Dynamic Entrepreneurial Capabilities

The paper examines how a small entrepreneurial firm can achieve successful product innovation and technology change by substituting the traditional drivers for innovation with higher order organizational capabilities. In particular, we introduce the concept of dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities defined as higher order capabilities peculiar to small and medium‐sized enterprises. We used a longitudinal case study to investigate a complex and discontinuous technology innovation undertaken by Vetromed. Our findings clarify the role of dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities in enacting, developing, refining, and deploying three substantive entrepreneurial capabilities: distributed entrepreneurial insight, entrepreneurial heuristics, and entrepreneurial flexibility.     

Strategic Capabilities and Performance in Women‐Owned Businesses in Mexico

The dire economic situation in Mexico, with its high rate of unemployment, makes it necessary for many women to find some form of economic activity to provide income for their families. Although such conditions could encourage the creation of new firms, the results of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2006 Report show a gap between the number of women involved in nascent and young entrepreneurship initiatives and the number who owns established firms. This gap may indicate that the firms created need to improve their competitiveness and their ability to survive. The model proposed adopts the resource‐based view of the firm as a theoretical framework from which to study how entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and learning orientation, as well as the interactions between them, influence the achievement of competitive advantage and superior performance in businesses owned by women. Our investigation analyzes businesses established and managed by women in Mexico and registered with the Asociación Mexicana de Mujeres Empresarias A.C. (Mexican Association of Business Women) and the Red de Empresarias del Instituto Nacional de Mujeres (Women Entrepreneurs Network of the National Women's Institute). To gather the information needed, the study used a questionnaire as a measuring instrument. The results are based on the 90 complete answers received from the questionnaires distributed. The results show that all of relationships in our model are positive except the hypothesis that learning orientation mediates in the relationship between market orientation and performance. The results suggest that entrepreneurial orientation reinforces the effect of two capabilities, market orientation and learning orientation, on firm performance. They also reaffirm that the three capabilities assessed may lead an organization to differentiate itself from its competitors by improving its performance. In addition to contributing to the literature on female entrepreneurship, the results have important implications for management. Understanding the relationships between capabilities and the performance of women‐owned businesses in Mexico can permit the identification of areas for improvement to promote the growth and survival of this type of firm.     

Linking two dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation to firm performance: The moderating role of environment and industry life cycle

The term “entrepreneurial orientation” has been used to refer to the strategy-making processes and styles of firms that engage in entrepreneurial activities. A popular model of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) suggests that there are five dimensions of EO—autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness (Lumpkin and Dess 1996). This paper reports on two of those dimensions—proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness. Proactiveness refers to how firms relate to market opportunities by seizing initiative in the marketplace; competitive aggressiveness refers to how firms react to competitive trends and demands that already exist in the marketplace. Despite these distinctions, prior research has tended to equate these two concepts and argued that they have a similar effect on firm performance. This paper investigates how these two approaches are related to each other, how they are related to performance, and how their function differs in the environments in which firms exhibit these approaches to strategy making. These distinctions are important because proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness represent distinctly different avenues to entrepreneurial success.A field study was conducted in which 124 executives from 94 firms were surveyed. These were executives from non-affiliated, non-diversified firms who were actively involved in strategic decision making at the top level of the firm. All firms reporting had at least one respondent who was an owner. Analysis of the data was conducted in two phases. In phase 1, factor analysis was used to examine the distinctions between different dimensions of EO. Proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness emerged as two separate factors indicating that these two strategy-making modes were perceived differently by the executives in the study. In the second phase, the relationship of these two dimensions to performance was analyzed in various contexts. Initial tests found that proactiveness was positively related to performance but competitive aggressiveness tended to be poorly associated with performance.Subsequent tests of the EO-performance relationship indicated that the stage of industry life cycle tended to favor one entrepreneurial orientation over another. The performance of firms in the early stages of industry development was stronger when their strategy making was proactively oriented. In contrast, a competitively aggressive frame of mind was helpful to firms in more mature stages of industry development. These findings were supported by other tests of the business environment. In dynamic environments, characterized by rapid change and uncertainty, proactive firms had higher performance relative to competitively aggressive firms. In hostile environments, where competition is intense and resources are constrained, competitively aggressive firms had stronger performance.The findings suggest that these two different approaches to entrepreneurial decision making may have different effects on firm performance. The differences were particularly apparent in the way firms relate to their external environment. Proactiveness—a response to opportunities—is an appropriate mode for firms in dynamic environments or in growth stage industries where conditions are rapidly changing and opportunities for advancement are numerous. But such environments may not favor the kind of combative posturing typical of competitive aggressiveness. Firms in hostile environments, or in mature industries where competition for customers and resources is intense, are more likely to benefit from competitive aggressiveness—a response to threats. A further implication of this research is that the dimensions of an entrepreneurial orientation, often considered to be positively related to performance under all conditions, may not always be associated with successful outcomes. This study indicates that the dimensions of EO often vary independently rather than covary, suggesting that the extent to which an entrepreneurial approach to strategy making is useful will frequently depend on the organizational or environmental conditions under which such decisions are made.     

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Corruption

Organizational corruption is a wide-spread negative aspect of economic activity, and a seemingly never-ending series of corruption scandals has been made public around the globe. Although research is performed in a broad variety of disciplines, ranging from psychology to management to law, a fully satisfactory explanation for the causes of organizational corruption has not been found. By looking at organizational factors as potential triggers for corruptive behavior, this study draws upon the concept of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Diverse studies have shown that EO, as an antecedent to company performance, has a positive effect. Recent EO literature, however, indicates that EO has not only positive but also negative consequences. In this line of reasoning, this study builds upon principal agent theory and makes a first step in exploring the impact of EO on a negative aspect of business behavior, namely organizational corruption. We gathered survey data and publicly available data from 411 firms, inquiring for both acts of corruption from within the top management team over the last 3 years and the level of entrepreneurial orientation within the organization. Results show diverging effects along the individual dimensions of EO; they point to risk orientation as the dark side of EO, as it significantly increases the likelihood of corrupt behavior in companies. In contrast, innovation orientation, to a certain extent, counterbalances by reducing the likelihood of corrupt behavior.     

How Organizational Culture Influences Innovativeness,Proactiveness, and Risk‐Taking: Fostering Entrepreneurial Orientation in SMEs

The beneficial outcome of a firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has been widely researched, but literature and empirical studies about factors and conditions that foster EO remain scarce. The Competing Values Model is used to investigate the relationships between key dimensions of organizational culture (group, hierarchical, developmental, and rational) and three dimensions of EO in small and medium enterprises. A study of 298 enterprises showed that developmental, group, and rational culture has a strong positive impact on EO, whereas the impact of hierarchical culture is negative. Thus, our results highlight the importance of an external orientation of organizations to foster EO.