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This study enriches the theory of effectuation by discussing the four independent dimensions of effectuation and their relationships with causation. Additionally, we fill the gap in prior literature by showing how entrepreneurial experience moderates the relationship between effectuation and innovativeness of the venture. Our study of 171 practising entrepreneurs regarding their entrepreneurial decision-making logic yielded multiple findings. The authors find that entrepreneurs rely on causation as well as effectuation in their decision-making; the more experienced entrepreneurs are, the more they actually use causation; and entrepreneurial experience moderates the relationship between effectuation and innovativeness of the venture firm.

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.

This chapter discusses proactive leadership by elaborating the meaning of leaders' proactivity, the required competencies of proactive leadership, and the potentially different evaluations of leaders' proactivity by different observers, including leaders themselves, their supervisors, peers, and subordinates. Specifically, based on the goal generation – goal striving process view of proactivity, we define leaders' proactivity as “generating and enacting self-initiated and future-focused leading actions that are persistently sustained to bring changes toward the environment.” In line with the process view, we also propose the competency requirement of proactive leadership, by benchmarking against a scientifically developed, comprehensive competency dictionary, the Universal Competency Framework (UCF). Finally, we discuss the possibility that leaders' proactivity can be observed and evaluated differently by raters at different positions. Overall, this chapter provides a conceptual analysis of proactive leadership and points to potential research directions subject to empirical investigation.