Construct · 6 names · 10 citations
Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.
● jangle · two scales, one name, contested Nearest construct by meaningintrapreneurshipcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to entrepreneurial orientation is intrapreneurship.
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A firm that engages in product-market innovation, undertakes somewhat risky ventures, and is first to come up with proactive innovations, beating competitors to the punch, Miller's 1983 description, which became the construct's definition once the field noticed it. Miller was studying which correlates of entrepreneurship hold in simple, planning, and organic firms, and treated the three behaviours as one syndrome: a firm that scores high on one but not the others is, by his account, not entrepreneurial. He built the items from earlier work with Friesen; nobody yet called it an orientation. Everything on this map either keeps his three-in-one or breaks it.[1]
A firm's strategic posture on a continuum from conservative to entrepreneurial, measured by nine semantic-differential items on innovation, risk-taking, and proactiveness and averaged into one score. Covin and Slevin fixed the instrument in 1989 in a study of 161 small firms and found the posture paid off in hostile environments and not in benign ones. The scale treats the three dimensions as reflecting one underlying disposition, so a firm cannot be high on one and low on another without being moderate overall. It is the most used instrument in the field, and the unidimensional assumption is the point of dispute with the next meaning.[2][3]
The processes, practices, and decision-making activities that lead to new entry, characterized by five dimensions (autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness) that may vary independently. Lumpkin and Dess's 1996 paper added two dimensions to Miller's three, split proactiveness from aggressiveness, and argued that an entrepreneurial orientation is a profile rather than a level: a firm may be proactive without being aggressive, and the fit of each dimension with performance depends on environment and structure. Hughes and Morgan measured the five separately in 2007 and found only proactiveness and innovativeness helped young firms, with risk taking harmful. What differs is the dimensionality, and it changes what a score means.[4][5]
The same posture, carried across borders in two meanings: the Covin and Slevin scale translated and tested for equivalence in other countries, which Knight did in 1997 with French and English versions, and a firm's entrepreneurial behaviour directed at foreign markets, which the born-global literature treats as the driver of early internationalization. Covin and Miller's 2014 review found the two uses run together under one label, that most studies use a Miller-style unidimensional measure, and that the international version is usually the domestic scale with an item or two about export. What differs is the target of the behaviour and the question of measurement invariance, which the field mostly asserts rather than tests.[6][7]
A person's disposition toward innovativeness, risk taking, and proactiveness, measured with ten items adapted from the firm-level scales and validated on university students. Bolton and Lane published the instrument in 2012 for entrepreneurship educators who wanted to assess and track students; competitive aggressiveness and autonomy did not survive their factor analysis. The construct keeps the firm-level names and drops the firm: the referent is a self-description of one person with no product-market behaviour to rate. Firm-level findings about performance are routinely cited to motivate it, and the level shift is where the citation breaks.[8]
Not entrepreneurial orientation, but the construct it is most often merged with. Kohli and Jaworski defined market orientation in 1990 as the organization-wide generation of market intelligence, its dissemination, and responsiveness to it; Narver and Slater, the same year, as a culture of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination, and found it predicted profitability. Both are about listening to the market; entrepreneurial orientation is about acting ahead of it, with risk. The two correlate, are both called strategic orientations, and are regularly pooled in a single orientation index or treated as substitutes, which erases a real difference between responsiveness and initiative.[9][10]
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