Where do Entrepreneurial Orientations Come From? An Investigation on their Social Origin

Abstract

This paper explores the origin of entrepreneurial orientations (EO) from an organizational embeddedness perspective. It examines the impacts of firms’ network embeddedness such as structural, positional and relational on three dimensions of EO, namely, risk-taking, proactiveness and innovativeness. After a brief review of the EO construct and social network theory, we derive a set of testable propositions that relate embeddedness properties such as centrality, structural holes, direct/indirect ties, and network density, to the magnitude of three key EO dimensions. We argue that each dimension may vary independently with each other and has its own formation mechanism, which entails rich implications for entrepreneurial network research.

Citation

Yang, H. and Dess, G.G. (2007), "Where do Entrepreneurial Orientations Come From? An Investigation on their Social Origin", Lumpkin, G.T. and Katz, J.A. (Ed.) Entrepreneurial Strategic Processes (Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 223-247. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1074-7540(07)10009-X