There is an abundant literature about the individual entrepreneurship (entrepreneurs) and about corporate entrepreneurship within organizations, but little is written about a related concept like Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) in small businesses, and also, about how to describe its usefulness for their strategic formulation.The paper attempts to identify main attributes of the EO concept, and its determinants within small business context. It clearly appears that EO consists of three components: Innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness of strategic leaders in these firms. An innovative small business will not be an entrepreneurial if it does not take risks or is not sufficiently proactive towards competitors and environment. After describing the emergence of this concept, the paper shows the importance of the EO as a valid strategic orientation for small businesses when they rethink their strategic analyses with Opportunity-based and Resource-based views. Adopting such orientation seems to reflect a needed conciliation between other strategic orientations (market-, technology- and stakeholder orientations) and altogether a mixing of them. Finally, the paper concludes with proposing some implications for future research to deepen the study (conceptually and empirically) of the EO within small business context.

A Conceptual Approach of the Entrepreneurial Orientation Within the Small Business Context

This paper analyses entrepreneurial orientation as a composite formed of innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking. The empirical data for this study were gathered from a survey sent to hotel manag...

Innovativeness as a determinant of entrepreneurial orientation: analysis of the hotel sector

The expression that “Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity” (Michael Porter), encapsulates the importance of entrepreneurial strategy, which has been linked to firm growth, particularly through its dimensions of innovation and risk. Firm growth will increase its size, which in turn may affect the entrepreneurial strategy; a research area that has been under-studied. This research contributes to the literature by exploring the relationship between firm size and the entrepreneurial strategy. Findings support the hypothesis that in larger firms the owners pursue a strategy that tends to be higher in innovation but with reduced risk, while in smaller firms the owners pursue a strategy that is higher in risk but lower in innovation. Additionally, it was found that the firms’ Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) is moderated by the organizational size; which supports the notion of bi-directional relationship between EO and organization attributes

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Entrepreneurial strategy: The relationship between firm size and levels of innovation and risk in small businesses

Work integration social enterprises (WISEs) exist to fight poverty and social exclusion. They offer support and guidance to those at risk of exclusion to help these individuals join the labour mark...

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The determinants of social sustainability in work integration social enterprises: the effect of entrepreneurship

The objective of this research is to investigate the combinations of internal and external factors that lead cluster companies to innovate. The study follows a complex causality approach using Qual...

Explaining technological innovation of the clustered firms: Internal and relational factors

How entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as a strategy manifests into entrepreneurial behaviors like innovation, is an important research topic but not well understood. There is a gap in the examination of EO and entrepreneurial behavioral outcomes. Since mediators exist (see Rauch, Wiklund, Lumpkin, & Frese, 2009; Wales, 2016; Wales, Patel, Parida, & Kreiser, 2013) additional research is needed to uncover these potential relationships. Research suggests that management controls systems (MCS) may serve as a mediator between strategy and innovation outcomes. There is, however, conflicting evidence regarding the impact and use of management control systems (MCS) in the small firm context. As such, we examine the relationship between an individual-level measure of EO (IEO) and innovation level and explore the mediating role of financial and nonfinancial MCS on that relationship. Results suggest that nonfinancial MCS partially mediate the relationship between IEO and innovation, while financial MCS do not.

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Amy McMilan

Papers

Do management control systems stifle innovation in small firms? A mediation approach