ENTRE-U: An entrepreneurial orientation scale for universities

The development of a new scale, ENTRE-U, that measures the entrepreneurial orientation of university departments is described. Governments, industry, and funding organizations challenge universities to become more "entrepreneurial", often in the context of increasing the commercialization outcomes of publicly funded research. The extant literature on corporate entrepreneurial orientation (EO) suggests this orientation is beneficial when organizations face dynamic or hostile environments. However, the EO concept and related empirical research focus on firms in competitive markets. Little is known about the nature of EO in other organizational contexts. ENTRE-U was developed to facilitate empirical research on EO within public universities. Interviews and a follow-up focus group with faculty members from departments in computer science, health science, and engineering at Canadian Universities elicited items for the new scale. A survey of university department heads provided data for statistical development of the scale. ENTRE-U consists of four dimensions – research mobilization, unconventionality, industry collaboration, and perception of university policies – that successfully predict department involvement in commercialization activities. Implications of the findings and opportunities for research using the ENTRE-U scale are discussed.     

A hierarchical perspective of the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation

This study examines the hierarchical relationship between the three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO): proactiveness, innovativeness, and risk-taking. Information Processing Theory and Strategic Choice Theory were utilized to investigate the roles of both industrial munificence and opportunity perceptions in the formation of firm-level EO. Data collected from 227 organizations in four countries suggests that innovative and risk-taking behaviors are fundamentally driven by proactiveness and the perceived availability of opportunities in an industry. As such, proactiveness appears to be the leading and primary factor in encouraging and enabling the other dimensions of EO. The research and managerial implications of these findings are also discussed.     

Modelling the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation,organizational integration,and programme performance in local sustainability

Empirical analyses testing the impacts of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) remain lacking in public sector research despite strong normative expectations for public managers to foster a culture of innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness, and accountability in their organizations. Drawing data from a nationwide survey of the US local governments, this research uses structural equation modelling to examine relationships between EO, organizational integration processes, and performance in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) programme. The study finds that EO positively influences programme performance, but does so indirectly by enhancing knowledge sharing, interorganizational collaboration, and performance information use. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

What are the antecedents of women’s entrepreneurial orientation?

This study seeks to identify the antecedents of women’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and exploring what possible relationships that may exist between them. The research focuses on women entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs in a quantitative perspective whose methodology consisted of the collection of primary data through a survey distributed to women in Portugal. After structural equation modelling was applied, the results suggested that recognition of opportunities influences EO. This influence is expressed both directly and indirectly through training in management and entrepreneurial skills. These findings led to the conclusion that policies promoting training for community members, in general, need to be rethought and policies need to emphasise training in management that enhances entrepreneurial skills, thereby increasing the proliferation of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship education and training should be promoted from basic education onwards in order to develop entrepreneurial skills from an early age. Prior to this study, the relationships between opportunity recognition, management training and entrepreneurial skills have never been studied in relation to women.     

Behavioural Orientations of Non‐Profit Boards as a Factor in Entrepreneurial Performance: Does Governance Matter?

Relatively little is understood about factors triggering entrepreneurial behaviour within organizations not driven by profit motives. Governance plays an important role in non‐profits, particularly boards of directors. Integrating resource‐based theory and entrepreneurial orientation research, we examine the influence of non‐profit boards as strategic resources shaping the organization's entrepreneurial orientation and performance. In particular, we focus on the non‐profit board's underlying behavioural orientations, or the extent to which the board is strategic, activist, conservative, and cohesive. Findings from a cross‐sectional survey on arts and culture organizations demonstrate that three of these behavioural orientations impact levels of entrepreneurship occurring within non‐profits. Higher levels of entrepreneurship affect social performance, but not financial performance.     

‘Who Knows What?’ in New Venture Teams: Transactive Memory Systems as a Micro‐Foundation of Entrepreneurial Orientation

The increasing importance of entrepreneurial behaviour has led scholars to embrace the idea that an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is an important predictor of firm performance. While EO occupies a central position in strategic entrepreneurship research, scholars have yet to explore its origins in new ventures. Drawing on the knowledge‐based and cognitive views, we theorize that a new venture team's transactive memory system is a cognitive mechanism that spurs the development of an EO. In a field study of high‐tech new ventures in China, we examined the relationship between venture teams’ transactive memory systems (representing the distribution, integration, and utilization of the teams’ knowledge) and EO and the moderating influence of team‐, firm‐, and environment‐level factors. We found that the transactive memory system of a new venture team enhanced their EO and that this relationship was positively influenced by intra‐team trust, the structural organicity of a venture, and environmental dynamism. Our findings provide novel insights into the micro‐foundations of TMS in developing an EO in new ventures.     

Sustainable development in small and medium enterprises: The role of entrepreneurial orientation in supply chain management

Organizations are under increased pressure to improve their sustainable performance through the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have lagged behind larger corporations due to a number of factors. Chief among these factors is the lack of resources and capabilities. In this study, we investigate whether entrepreneurial orientation as a distinctive firm-level resource contributes to the successful implementation of GSCM practices within SMEs. We use primary data obtained from 316 manufacturing SMEs and analyze the data by using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Our findings show four equifinal configurations of GSCM practices and the components of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) that lead to high environmental performance. Two practices, “eco-design” and “internal environmental management”, are present in all configurations, with the latter being the single core condition. The components of EO are present in all the configurations. Three distinct configurations lead to the simultaneous achievement of high environmental performance and high economic performance. Some noticeable differences appear in these configurations: “internal environmental management” is no longer a core condition, instead external practices (“green purchasing,” “cooperation with customers including environmental requirements,” and “investment recovery”) and “risk-taking” become core conditions. We exptrapolate our findings into a set of propositions that expand theory on the link between entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable performance. Our study provides insights for managers who seek to infuse entrepreneurial thoughts and actions into their green supply chain initiatives.     

Gender and entrepreneurial orientation: a multi-country study

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate the role of gender and culture in entrepreneurial orientation (EO) among students in the selected nations. EO dimensions are important variables in the study of organizational performance. We adopted Lumpkin and Dess’ EO dimensions. We statistically analyzed the collected data from 389 university students in the US (96), Korea (114), Fiji (80), and Malaysia (99). The results showed significant differences in most EO dimensions between genders and among the nations. Thus, it is important that customized approaches based on gender and unique cultural context are needed for developing EO among college students.     

Human resource management practices and corporate entrepreneurship: an empirical assessment from the USA

In this article, the relationship between human resource management and corporate entrepreneurship is assessed. The underlying nature of entrepreneurship is examined and the core dimensions of an entrepreneurial orientation are identified. Based on current classification schemes of HRM-related practices, an assessment is made of practices that facilitate rather than constrain entrepreneurial behaviour, and research hypotheses are generated. Results are reported of a cross-sectional survey of firms in which these hypotheses are tested. Conclusions and implications are drawn for managers, and suggestions are made for further research.     

Fostering green product innovation through green entrepreneurial orientation: The roles of employee green creativity,green role identity,and organizational transactive memory system

Developing new green products is critical to an organization's achievement of sustainable goals as well as competitive advantage. This study aims to unravel the mechanisms through which organizations with green entrepreneurial orientation (green EO) can foster green product innovation. The dataset for testing these mechanisms was garnered from employees and managers who worked in manufacturing firms based in an Asia-Pacific market. Through a multilevel analysis of the data, the study revealed the positive nexus between organizational green EO and green product innovation. The results of the study further lent credence to employee green creativity as a mediation path for such a relationship. Furthermore, employee green role identity and organizational transactive memory system were found to fortify the linkage between green EO and employee green creativity. These results suggest to organizations how to optimally translate their green entrepreneurial strategy into new green products that met customer preferences and societal expectations.     

Commitment to Sustainability in Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: The Influence of Strategic Orientations and Management Values

Ecosystem degradation and social sustainability have become important issues in the corporate sphere during the last few decades. However, research discussing corporate social responsibility and related concepts has often focused on larger companies, sometimes neglecting the specifics of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between two common strategic orientations, market orientation (MO) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), in relation to sustainability commitment, sustainability practices and management values in SMEs. Questionnaire responses from 450 Swedish SMEs were analyzed, confirming the influence of MO, EO and sustainability practices on commitment to sustainability, implying that firms committed to sustainability see both market and entrepreneurial advantages of sustainability. The results also show that different parts of MO and EO differ in importance for commitment to sustainability among SMEs. Implications concern the importance for firms and policymakers to work with sustainability issues using both internal and external perspectives. © 2015 The Authors. Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Entrepreneurial orientation in sports entrepreneurship - a mixed methods analysis of professional soccer clubs in the German-speaking countries

In recent years, sports entrepreneurship has emerged as a promising discipline in the field of sports management research. However, the research field is still fragmented. This study gives an overview of sports entrepreneurship and coopetition research and is the first work analyzing EO and performance in professional sports. First, quantitative results about EO, organizational performance and coopetition of 22 professional soccer clubs were obtained. Following the mixed method approach, the data was then extended by qualitative expert interviews. Entrepreneurial orientation had a significant positive relationship with both financial and sporting performance of professional soccer clubs in German-speaking countries during the 2017/18 season. We suggest coopetition as a promising strategy for professional soccer clubs to succeed. Hence, our study fosters the concept of sports entrepreneurship and offers evidence that entrepreneurial orientation is a well-suited managerial approach to enhance organizational performance in professional soccer.

     

Small agricultural businesses' performance—What is the role of dynamic capabilities,entrepreneurial orientation,and environmental sustainability commitment?

The role that the resources and capabilities of agricultural entrepreneurs play on both environmental performance (EP) and financial performance (FP) is still unclear. This study analyzes how small farms enhance EP and FP in an inland Portuguese region through the relationship between dynamic capabilities (DCs), entrepreneurial orientation (EO), and environmental sustainability commitment (ESC). Based on a sample of 160 fresh fruit farms and applying a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), our study concludes that EO and ESC influence EP and FP positively. Hence, farms can achieve competitive advantage through mitigating their profound impacts on the environment as proposed by the natural resource-based view (NRBV). Farms are also improving DCs, but farmers respond to the higher environmental requirements of agricultural markets primarily through research and development (R&D) capabilities and not through marketing capabilities. Having as theoretical supports the NRBV and the DCs, our study contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which entrepreneurs enhance EP and FP in sectors with high environmental impacts such as agriculture. The findings suggest that entrepreneurship training projects may enable farmers to approach food security as a market opportunity and not only as rules they must follow.     

Extending the link between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intention: a moderated mediation model

This study extended the research on the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intention by developing a moderated mediation model. This model posits that the link between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intention is mediated by attitudes toward entrepreneurship and planned entrepreneurial control, and that these mediation processes are further moderated by subjective norms. Based on a sample of 308 valid responses, regression analysis yielded two noteworthy results. First, entrepreneurial self-efficacy positively affects intention through attitudes toward entrepreneurship and planned entrepreneurial control. Second, the direct effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on intention decreases as subjective norms increase. By contrast, the indirect intention effects of entrepreneurial self-efficacy through attitudes toward entrepreneurship and planned entrepreneurial control increase as subjective norms increase. In addition, the results indicated that subjective norms positively affect entrepreneurial intention. These findings indicated that the model advances the use of the theory of planned behavior and can be used to define a person as an entrepreneur.     

Linking entrepreneurial and market orientation to the SME’s performance growth: the moderating role of entrepreneurial experience and networks

Entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation (EO and MO, respectively) have received extensive research attention in the past several decades. Although scholars widely agree that both MO and EO are critical to firms’ performances, a better understanding is still needed about how market and entrepreneurial orientation develop over time as well as their relative impact on the growth of the SME’s performance. This study does not consider MO and EO as generic resources that always positively influence firms’ performances; instead, it tries to explore contingent elements, such as social and business networks and accumulated entrepreneurial experience. The hypotheses were tested on 191 small and medium-sized electronic firms located in an Italian geographical cluster during two periods: 2005 and 2016. This study suggests that SMEs, which develop social networks, may enjoy considerable advantages from entrepreneurial and market orientation, improving their performance benefits. Moreover, our results show that previous entrepreneurial experience, when specific, can reinforce the impact of entrepreneurial and market orientation on firms’ performance growth. This analysis makes several important contributions to the management literature on the strategic orientation of firms, the entrepreneurial experience and network development.

     

The behavioural gap between entrepreneurial SME’s and high growth: evidence from Canada

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) describes a firm’s attitude towards entrepreneurial activity; however, it does not measure the specific behaviors likely to contribute to high growth. This research applies the resource-based and dynamic capabilities views to propose a mediation model between EO and high growth. The theoretical framework is drawn from the strategic management and entrepreneurship literature. Competing models are tested against a sample of Canadian SMEs to validate the proposed explanation for the presence of high-growth firms among the population. The study finds that the relationship between EO and high growth is perfectly mediated by innovation performance, a behavioral measure of innovation. This research contributes to firm growth theory while providing further insight into the drivers of high growth useful to policy makers endeavoring to stimulate, and overcome barriers to, entrepreneurship and innovation. Determining the factors associated with firm growth can have implications for management as well as policy. If a firm’s goal is to grow it must be able to focus its limited resources using a strategy appropriate for growth.

     

Systematic literature review on entrepreneurial orientation in nonprofit organizations – Far more than business-like behavior

While entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) is often considered as another business-like behavior, the present systematic literature review changes this perspective by revealing that the construct refers to several specific third sector organizations' qualities and leverages financial and mission goals simultaneously. EO as a strategic posture of organizations is already well established in management and strategy literature whereas corresponding insights in NPOs are indeed expanded, but fragmented. To develop this research stream, a systematic literature review was conducted, that analyses the results of 76 studies about EO in NPOs. Besides describing current findings, this paper generates a comprehensive overview of applied constructs, drivers influencing EO, and goals promoted by this strategic posture. The context-specific modification of the construct leads to the presumption that EO does not predominantly target business-like initiatives, but holds a lot of potential meeting NPO's core challenges, such as the fulfillment of various stakeholders' expectations or diverse resources acquisition. The discussion elaborates to what extent EO serves as a viable alternative to highly discussed third sector developments of business approximation.     

Can entrepreneurial orientation improve sustainable development through leveraging internal lean practices?

This study aims to examine the mediating role of internal lean practices (ILPs) on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and triple bottom line performance (i.e. environmental, social, and operational performance). We examine Chile, which represents a vibrant economy and one of the world's most productive entrepreneurship ecosystems but with a history of socio‐economic inequalities and strong profit‐driven pressures to overextract natural resources. The study is based on a questionnaire related to manufacturing sent to 112 companies in Chile. The proposed relationships are analysed through structural equation modelling. The results indicate that ILPs fully mediate the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on environmental performance and social performance and partially mediates the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on operational performance. Our study extends the literature by explaining that entrepreneurial orientation builds and strengthens ILPs for creating triple bottom line competitive advantage.     

Drivers of entrepreneurial aspirations at the country level: the role of start-up motivations and social security

This paper investigates whether various start-up motivations and a country’s level of social security can explain the prevalence of entrepreneurial aspirations. For entrepreneurial aspirations and motivations we use country-level data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) for the year 2005. We distinguish between the necessity motive, independence motive and increase wealth motive and between aspirations in terms of innovativeness, job growth and export orientation. Our findings indicate that social security negatively affects a country’s supply of ambitious entrepreneurship. Our results also suggest that entrepreneurial aspirations in terms of job growth and export relate positively to the increase wealth motive.     

TMT conflict,organizational structure,and entrepreneurial orientation: An attention-based view

Drawing on the attention-based view, this study investigates the linkage of top management team (TMT) conflict to entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the moderating effect of organizational structure in terms of formalization and centralization on the linkage. It finds that TMT cognitive conflict is positively related to EO, while affective conflict is negatively related to it. Furthermore, formalization positively moderates the linkage of TMT cognitive conflict to EO, while negatively moderates the negative linkage of TMT affective conflict to EO. Moreover, centralization does not significantly moderate the linkage of either TMT cognitive or affective conflict to EO. This study enriches our knowledge of the antecedents of EO, improves our understanding of the value of TMT conflict by distinguishing between TMT cognitive conflict and affective conflict, and introduces a novel insight—the attention-based view—to elaborate the TMT conflict-EO linkage.