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Intrapreneurs are those employees who identify and pursue opportunities in a firm. By pursuing these opportunities with new products, services or processes, intrapreneurial employees may influence the strategic direction of the firm, a process called intrapreneurial strategy-making. Little consideration has been given to how small firms may use this process to improve performance. To this end this paper describes the results of an empirical study conducted with 454 small firms. Analysis of the data indicates that intrapreneurial strategy-making has a significant positive relationship with firm performance, depending on the size of the firm, its organizational structure and the dynamism of the environment. It further shows that differentiation strategies may mediate this relationship.

Corporate crime affects the stability of the international financial system and the business world system has made considerable efforts to fight all aspects of corporate crimes. Fraud and white-collar crime has increased considerably over the recent years and this trend is expected to continue.

This chapter defines corporate crime and its categories as well as considering the ways in which such crime occurs. This is set within the context of other failures such as Enron.

These crimes are considered in the context of ethical behaviour but it is reported that the various measures taken to dissuade these crimes at various levels just have not seems to reduce such crime.

In many respects this chapter introduces the contexts and acts as preparation for the other chapters in the book and so is not exhaustive in scope.

Since not all fraud and abuse is discovered and reported, the cost of fraud to businesses is hard to be estimated.

The chapter discusses the context in which corporate crime occurs.

Purpose – The role that network competence, environmental hostility and knowledge intensiveness of the industry have on the propensity of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to internationalise is examined.

Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses are developed, based on earlier literature on the subject. Subsequently, binary logistic regression modelling using SPSS software is applied to test the hypotheses on a sample of 224 Finnish SMEs representing five industries, two of which are characterised by knowledge intensiveness and three of which are from less knowledge-intensive ones.

Findings – The propensity of SMEs to internationalise depends on both their level of network competence and their lack of perceived environmental hostility. Knowledge intensiveness of the industry is found to moderate the effect that network competence has on the internationalisation propensity.

Research limitations/implications – The present study indicates that possessing higher levels of network competence helps domestic SMEs in their efforts to turn international, and that its beneficial effect is especially important for small firms in industries characterised by high knowledge intensity. Possible limitations of the study are the small cultural context and inclusion of firms from only five industries.

Originality/value – This study is the first linking measurable network competence to internationalisation decisions of SMEs, while also including environmental and industry considerations. It also provides further evidence for the importance of networks in SME internationalisation theory, but indicates that it is not only the business networks themselves but also the competence in developing and maintaining those networks that help SMEs internationalise.

This chapter reviews the methods available to hospitality and tourism researchers to perform moderation analysis with continuous variables in partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), with the objective of enhancing understanding and encouraging the use of these techniques in future papers. The product term method is presented first, followed by an empirical example/application in the context of hospitality and tourism. Two extensions, namely the two-stage approach that can help cope with formative and higher-order constructs, and the orthogonalizing approach that can help generate more accurate results and overcome multicollinearity among tourism variables in the presence of a continuous moderator variable, are then presented and discussed. The chapter concludes by presenting guidelines and recommendations for improving the use of interaction effects in analyses of tourism variables, as well as highlighting ongoing developments in both the product term method and PLS-SEM software.

Sports clubs are one of the most important elements in the sports systems of today’s societies. In the field of sport, a sports club aims, among other things, to make the sport more affordable and accessible to all, showing the organizational characteristics of companies, but with a much broader social mission. The aim of this chapter is to characterise sports clubs as potentially favorable environments for sports entrepreneurship, making questions about their nature and purposes. Aspects such as the hybridization of organizations, the progressive professionalisation of their members, the use of the entrepreneurial spirit as an instrument to facilitate the achievement of the organisation’s objectives or the need to seek alternative sources of funding to traditional public aid are discussed in the context of increasingly hostile and competitive environments, where social organizations must seek out resources in a similar way to companies.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to study how dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (competitive aggressiveness, proactiveness and risk taking) affect international performance in competitive and technology-intensive international environments.

Methodology/approach – To address the research questions, structural equation modelling is applied to Finnish survey data (N=271).

Findings – Our findings reveal that the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation are differentially related to international performance, and that their effect is contingent on moderating variables.

Research limitations – One limitation is the use of cross-sectional data as it limits the possibility of drawing strong conclusions from the development of the relationships between the different constructs. Also the fact that the study was conducted in a single-country setting is a limitation.

Practical implications – Results indicate that entrepreneurial behaviour is of importance for international business managers. However, results imply that prior to striving for proactive behaviour, competitive aggressiveness and venturesome risk taking managers should study their international market environments carefully and truly understand the nature of these turbulent markets, as in many occasions strong emphasis on entrepreneurial behaviour did not contribute positively to the international performance indicators, such as increasing sales and profits.

Originality/value of the chapter – Present study extends the works of Zahra and Garvis (2000), Lumpkin and Dess (2001) and Wiklund and Shepherd (2005), for example, by (a) applying entrepreneurial orientation on international business, (b) examining the effects of different dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation on a firm's international performance and (c) extending the research of the role of moderating effects on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

Changes in the environment, including increased environmental complexity, require military supply units to employ a more adaptive strategy in order to enhance military agility. We extend the Lumpkin and Dess (1996) model and develop propositions that explore the interrelationships between/amongst entrepreneurial orientation (EO); opportunity recognition, evaluation and exploitation; environmental and organizational factors; and organizational performance. We propose that the innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking dimensions of EO are of primary importance in identifying adaptive solutions and that these relationships are moderated by environmental factors. The autonomy and competitive aggressiveness dimensions of EO are important in implementing solutions as adaptive strategies, especially in a military context, and these relationships are moderated by organizational factors. This chapter extends existing theory developed primarily for the civilian sector to the military. Military organizations are more rigid hierarchical structures, and have different measures of performance. At an applied level, this research provides insights for military commanders that can potentially enhance agility and adaptability.

Zahra and Covin (1995, p. 46) report that “the current interest in corporate entrepreneurship arises from its potential usefulness as a means for renewing established organizations and increasing their ability to compete in their chosen markets.” In addition, a number of researchers support a contention made by Schollhamer (1982, p. 82), that “corporate entrepreneurship is a key element for gaining competitive advantage and consequently greater financial strength” (Covin & Slevin, 1991; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Zahra & Covin, 1995). Interestingly, however, other researchers argue that corporate entrepreneurship can be risky and may be detrimental to a firm’s short-term financial performance (Burgelman & Scales, 1986; Fast, 1981).