A CONCEPTUAL APPROACH OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION WITHIN SMALL BUSINESS CONTEXT

Abstract

There is abundant literature about 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 role in their strategic formulation. The paper attempts to identify the main attributes of the EO concept and its determinants within small business context. EO consists of three components: Innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking by strategic leaders in these firms. An innovative small business wilI 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 re-think 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 blending 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.