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Poor marketing is widely accepted as one of the key reasons to explain success and failure of small firms. There is less agreement, however, about whether these types of business should adopt a classic strategic management approach to marketing. Some writers are now proposing that an entrepreneurial marketing style is more appropriate in the smaller firm. Although this concept is gaining acceptance, there apparently exists no quantitative evidence to support the hypothesis that an entrepreneurial style will definitely enhance the overall performance of the small firm. Covin and Slevin (1988) have tested this hypothesis for large firms in the USA. Presents a project which aims to repeat their study in the UK SME sector and gain further understanding of the relationship between performance, style, structure and organizational capabilities. Demonstrates that a move towards being more entrepreneurial and adopting an organic management structure may assist overall performance. Reinforces the view that it is probably not wise to recommend owner/ managers should adopt an entrepreneurial style without also advising them to implement concurrent consideration of the appropriateness of their current organizational structure. Discriminant function analysis suggests that style and organicity may influence internal organizational capabilities in areas such as innovation, employee productivity and the management of quality. Recognizes that the study was, however, unable in the SME sector to validate the Covin Slevin hypothesis that only two forms of organization (conservative/mechanistic and entrepreneurial/ organic) can achieve high overall performance.

The purpose is to show the interconnections between the management style of an internationally expanding company and the pattern of its network connections, while incorporating the company size and corporate traditions as secondary determinants.

The paper uses multiple case study analysis. Included case studies characterise the various management attitudes of Estonian companies in engaging in international inter‐company relationships. To allow for the generalisation of results, the cases analyse the companies from several sectors and size groups.

Research concludes that the decision to participate in an international network could be made either because of socio‐economic circumstances or as the innovative entrepreneurial choice toward more rapid expansion. Thus, the paper views certain decisions of a company about its relationships with other agents, including suppliers and competitors, as entrepreneurial choices made by its general management. This research also categorises these choices as irreversible and temporary and positions company size and traditions as secondary factors, besides management style, which are important in determining the usage of relational support.

The case study analysis might fail to illuminate the most archetypical features that could be generalized to all similar companies. Thus, one should exercise extreme caution when generalizing given results. In the case of qualitative research, the danger of misinterpretation of facts or events is bigger than in the case of quantitative research. The methodological variations make it more difficult to bring in cause and effect patterns.

These results imply the role and authority of an entrepreneur not only in multinational or ownership‐based networks but also in solely relational networks. This issue at present is not the subject of the research focus. The managers should also increasingly account for the impact of entrepreneurial management style in the corporate setting of takeovers and partnerships. Thus, innovative choices might achieve an increasingly important role in the formation of industrial networks.

This paper establishes the position of entrepreneurial management style as a determinant of partnership contacts, while controlling for company size and its management traditions. It offers case evidence about this entrepreneur‐led relationship building in Estonian companies.

Adopting an entrepreneurial orientation is accepted as strategy through which to improve the performance of small firms. The management of innovation literature indicates that firms seeking to survive in rapidly changing and/or highly competitive markets are being advised to consider participating in business networks. By combining these two concepts it is hypothesised that four different marketing styles may exist; namely conservative/transactional, conservative/network orientated, entrepreneurial/transactional and entrepreneurial/network orientated firms. A survey of small manufacturing firms was undertaken in an attempt to determine whether these four marketing styles exist. The survey revealed that high growth entrepreneurial firms tend to participate in business networks. Membership of a network confers the benefit of increasing the level of organisational learning. Additionally it was concluded that higher levels of competence were found for entrepreneurial/network orientated organisations. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to Government small firms support policies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how a team leader’s conflict management style (CMS) affects team innovation performance (TIP) in entrepreneurial teams using a team emotion perspective.

It is proposed in this study that team passion mediates the impact of team leader’s CMSs on team performance, which is further moderated by team emotional intelligence (TEI). Then this study collected paired data from 105 teams including 105 team leaders and 411 team members to test the proposed model.

The results show that a team leader’s cooperative CMS has a significant positive impact on TIP and team passion further mediates the relationship between the team leader’s CMSs and TIP. The results also show that TEI moderates the relationship between the leader’s CMSs and team passion.

This study helps enriches the literature of conflict management by exploring the mechanisms through which a team leader’s CMSs affect team performance in entrepreneurial activities, and the findings of this study highlight the important role of team passion in this process. In addition, this study integrates the research on conflict management and the research on team passion in entrepreneurial teams to provide a new perspective to explore the dynamic process of entrepreneurial activities, which sheds light on the investigation of the important implications of effective conflict management in the entrepreneurship.

Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV), the study investigates the impact of entrepreneurial leadership (EL) on knowledge management (KM) processes and further examines the mediating role of KM processes on the linkage between EL and project success (PS).

Survey data were collected from 304 project workers in software projects, and the proposed relationships were assessed through SMART-PLS structural equation modeling tool.

The study found a significant impact of EL on KM processes and PS. The analysis also revealed that KM processes significantly impact project success while EL impact PS indirectly through KM processes.

The relevancy of the research stems from the scarcity of research on EL, while studies on the role of leadership as a predictor of KM are significantly limited. Additionally, there is a scarcity of research on the impact of KM on project success. This is one of the earliest studies that investigate the inter-relationship among EL, KM processes and project success.

Critical and prescriptive evaluation of human resource management (HRM) tells us little about the direction in which its practice and rationale purport to push management. Contends that the prevailing course of HRM ventures to make management more entrepreneurial. Distinguishes between the spirit and substance of HRM. The former propagates “empowering” employees and line managers to square the circle of increased competition, improved efficiency/productivity and financial stringency. The substance of HRM involves a reconfiguration of existing management structures in an effort to re‐create an entrepreneurial philosophy in management practice. First distinguishes entrepreneurship from traditionally defined management. Second, locates disparate HRM initiatives as entrepreneurial. Finally examines tensions between the two forms of management by reference to contemporary sources. In conclusion seeks to demonstrate that substance makes spirit a utopian vision, at least in the UK context.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the underlying mechanisms of entrepreneurs' passion, orientation and behavior by investigating the role of rational and nonrational cognitive elements. Building on dual process theory and sociointuitionism, a conceptual model is proposed in order to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial passion, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and strategic entrepreneurship behavior (SEB). Specifically, entrepreneurs' linear thinking styles (System 2) and nonlinear thinking styles (System 1) are hypothesized as being significant moderators of such a relationship.

Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) is used to empirically validate the proposed conceptual model and test the moderating hypotheses on a sample of 300 entrepreneurs actively involved in European small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Entrepreneurial passion is shown to be a significant antecedent of EO, which, in turn, strongly influences SEB. Moreover, entrepreneurs' linear thinking style positively moderates the EO-SEB relationship, but not the link between passion and EO. Instead, a nonlinear thinking style positively moderates the relationship between passion and EO, but not the links between EO and SEB.

Entrepreneurs should trust their nonlinear thinking style – related to affective/emotive and intuitive information processing systems – to foster the effect of their entrepreneurial passion on EO. Furthermore, entrepreneurs should rely on a linear thinking style, namely the rational and deliberative cognitive processes, to enhance the impact of their EO on SEB.

Dual process theory and sociointuitionism are integrated to simultaneously investigate the effect of nonrational and rational cognitive mechanisms on entrepreneurs' orientation and behavior. Moreover, the proposed model is empirically tested on a sample of entrepreneurs working in SMEs located in Europe, which have received little attention from entrepreneurship scholars in comparison to their US counterparts. The authors’ findings suggest important implications for entrepreneurs, policymakers and entrepreneurial universities educators.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on emerging ideas related to the concept of entrepreneurial leadership which emphasises a “distributed” model synonymous with terms which indicate that authority is decentralised (“shared”, “team”, “democratic”, “representative” and “dispersed”).

A model of authentic entrepreneurial leadership was developed based on a review of the literature. Eight small manufacturing companies were selected to empirically examine, via interviews, the extent to which authentic entrepreneurial leadership was adopted by owner‐managers.

Interviews with owner‐managers indicated that they did in fact rely on an approach to leadership which emphasised the role of employees as genuine stakeholders in the business. This finding can be related to the concept of what Dovey and Fenech, describe as “enterprise logic” which the authors link to the emergence of knowledge‐based capitalism. Owner‐managers were keen to involve their employees in development of the businesses through the development of new products and new services.

This study confirms earlier work which points out the importance of entrepreneurs adopting an authentic approach to leadership. Authentic leadership means that employees are encouraged to develop their individual strengths and owner‐managers adopt an ethical approach to their dealings with all stakeholders.

The paper develops a model of entrepreneurial leadership which sets out the links to organizational innovation. The empirical study provides clear evidence of links between this approach to management and higher levels of innovation within small firms.

The literature on international entrepreneurship offers two competing views on why new ventures internationalize: (a) the nature of the opportunity pulls them international or (b) the founder pushes the firm international. While these two internationalization drivers are not independent, they do represent unique causal mechanisms. Previously, the tools available to understand the entrepreneur’s disposition toward internationalization were limited. The present study uses the theoretical foundation of the international entrepreneurial orientation construct and from it develops and tests an attitudinally-based individual-level measure of disposition toward internationalization. To ensure the validity and reliability of the new measure, termed International Entrepreneurial Orientation Disposition, studies were conducted to: develop new scale items, examine their psychometric properties and construct validity, and demonstrate criterion validity. A strong measurement model is developed using structural equation modeling (CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.07), and the measure is shown to be useful as a predictor of perceived international venture attractiveness.

The present study examines entrepreneurship in established firms holistically and critically. The authors start by reviewing previous research and highlight a variety of definitional, conceptual, methodological, contextual, and temporal factors that have been confounding the research. The authors then present a multidimensional framework that specifies a more nuanced picture of the determinants, motives, activities, and consequences of corporate in established firms. Finally, the authors discuss conceptual, methodological, and practical implications, as well as outline future research avenues.