Examining Facilitative Configurations of Entrepreneurially Oriented Growth: An Information Processing Perspective
| Author | William J. Wales,Sohrab Soleimanof,Claudine Kearney |
| Date | 01 July 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12217 |
| Published date | 01 July 2018 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 29, 514–533 (2018)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12217
Examining Facilitative Configurations of
Entrepreneurially Oriented Growth: An
Information Processing Perspective
Claudine Kearney, Sohrab Soleimanof1and William J. Wales2
UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science,
UCD Science Centre, Belfield, County Dublin, Ireland, 1Department of Management and Information Systems,
Mississippi State University, 302X McCool Hall, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA, and 2Department of
Management, University at Albany, SUNY, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222, USA
Corresponding author email: claudine.kearney@ucd.ie
This study examines how the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm
growth is shaped by learning orientation in technologically sophisticated environments.
We draw upon an information processing perspective that emphasizes alignment be-
tween information processing demands and support mechanisms. Using data from 116
small to medium-sized enterprises in the Netherlands, we observe that the ability of en-
trepreneurialorientation to drive firm growth greatly depends on the joint consideration of
technological sophistication and learning orientation. Our findings contribute to a better
understanding of how configurations of strategic orientations and environmental consid-
erations work in concert to influence the ecacy of organizational entrepreneurialeorts
dramatically.
Introduction
The construct of entrepreneurial orientation (EO)
has grown from the pioneering work of Miller
(1983), who reasoned that entrepreneurial firms
take more risks and are more proactive in pursuing
innovative opportunities than other firms. For
over three decades, the investigation of the eect
of EO on firm performance has attracted consid-
erable attention within organizational scholarship
(Chaston and Sadler-Smith, 2012; Covin and
Lumpkin, 2011; Hughes, Hughes and Morgan,
2007; Real, Rold´
an and Leal, 2014). Most prior re-
search on EO has been conducted within the vein
of contingency theory and has sought to identify
influential moderating conditions (Rauch et al.,
2009). However, how and why potential moderat-
ing conditions may interact and be productively
Names are in alphabetical order as all authors con-
tributed equally to this research and paper
configured remains a far less charted approach to
understanding the performance of entrepreneurial
organizations (cf. Anderson and Eshima, 2013;
Boso, Story and Cadogan, 2013; Dess, Lumpkin
and Covin, 1997; Drover, Wood and Payne, 2014;
Stam and Elfring, 2008; Wales, 2016; Wiklund
and Shepherd, 2005). This research builds upon
the calls of Covin and Lumpkin (2011), Hughes,
Hughes and Morgan (2007) and Miller (2011) to
incorporate configurational theory, and illustrates
its potential to dramatically improve upon insights
gained from contingency theory.
A configurational approach considers the
alignment amongst key organizational attributes
and environmental characteristics that may aect
established relationships. Configurational models
thus examine how three or more constructs of
interest may interact to predict organizational
outcomes (Anderson and Eshima, 2013; Stam and
Elfring, 2008). This research proposes an infor-
mation processing based theoretical perspective
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
Entrepreneurial Orientation and Firm Growth 515
to understand a key configuration of internal
and external factors within the vital EO−growth
relationship. An information processing view
suggests that organizations benefit from aligning
their informational support mechanisms with the
information needs of strategic decision-makers
(Rogers, Miller and Judge, 1999). One factor that
may intensify the informationprocessing demands
of entrepreneurial firms is environmental techno-
logical sophistication (Covin and Slevin, 1991).
Navigating more sophisticated technological envi-
ronments characterized by more complex and fast
changing technologies will probably increase the
information processing requirements necessary to
keep pace with competitors.
To cope, small to medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) must embrace processes and behaviours
that help manage information and learning as
greater amounts of external information must be
processed to understand and operate within more
technological environments (Hughes et al., 2014;
Zahra and George, 2002). In line with recent prac-
titioner methodologies such as customer discov-
ery which emphasize the criticality of external
knowledge gains for eective opportunity identifi-
cation, evaluation and exploitation (Blank, 2013),
SME information processing influences their or-
ganizational responsiveness as technological envi-
ronments shift, change and evolve (Liao, Welsh
and Stoica, 2003). Information processing is thus
particularly relevantto SMEs within technological
environments which rely on external information
to successfully adapt, innovateand pursue new op-
portunities (Vaghely and Julien, 2010).
In this study we investigate information support
mechanisms from the perspective of strategic
orientations, such as EO and learning orientation
(LO), which may help firms engender and process
information in unique and complementary ways
(Wang, 2008). Building upon an information
processing perspective that firms must process
information at a rate which parallels external
demands (Rogers, Miller and Judge, 1999), we
examine configurations of EO, LO and technolog-
ical sophistication to address the question: how
is the relationship between EO and firm growth
shaped by the (im)balance of organizational infor-
mation processing requirements and supportive
mechanisms?
This study oers several meaningful contribu-
tions to the entrepreneurship and broadermanage-
ment literature. (1) The research demonstrates the
dramatic potential which configurational theory
has to provide insights into the EO−performance
relationships beyond those provided by ap-
proaches based on contingency theory that con-
tinue to dominate the EO literature (Rauch et al.,
2009). (2) The research opens the door to a new
perspective of thinking about organizational con-
figurations within the EO−performance relation-
ship based upon information processing. (3) The
study helps fill a gap regarding our understanding
of technological sophistication as an essential
environmental consideration for entrepreneurially
oriented firms that has received scant attention
over the last quarter-century (Covin and Slevin,
1991; Covin, Prescott and Slevin, 1990; Covin,
Slevin and Covin, 1990). (4) Finally, we examine
LO as a key organizational informational support
mechanism for understanding how firms may
help balance their information processing require-
ments to enable growthecacious entrepreneurial
organizational configurations.
Theoretical framework and research
model
EO has been a central topic of entrepreneur-
ship research for over three decades (Anderson
et al., 2015; Engelen, Neumann and Schmidt,
2016; Hughes, Hughes and Morgan, 2007; Stam
and Elfring, 2008; Wales, 2016). It represents a
firm-level proclivity toward entrepreneurial be-
haviour within established firms and has been es-
tablished as an influential concept at the intersec-
tion of the entrepreneurship and strategy domains
(Ireland et al., 2001; Miller, 1983, 2011). EO cap-
tures the degree to which a firm’s strategic posture
is more entrepreneurial or conservative(Covin and
Lumpkin, 2011). EO may be examined as either
a holistic (Covin and Slevin, 1989; Miller, 2011)
or disaggregated (Hughes and Morgan, 2007;
Lumpkin and Dess, 1996) construct depending on
the research question being investigated (Wales,
2016). Given our objective to examine EO as an
overarching strategic posture, we employ Covin
and Slevin’s (1989) conceptualizationof EO as the
processes, practices and behaviours of firms that
are characterized by the shared variance between
innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness. Em-
ploying this theoretically consistent conceptual-
ization (Miller, 2011), we focus on the growth
© 2017 British Academy of Management.
To continue reading
Request your trial