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Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is a major strategy for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Prior studies have focused mainly on the EO-performance relationship in the traditional market. This article investigates the EO of online SMEs using a panel of secondary data for 149 SMEs from Alibaba.com over a three-month period. The results suggest that proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness have significant effects on online performance for SMEs in the business-to-business (B2B) electronic market. Online credibility plays an important role when SMEs adopt a strategy of proactiveness in the electronic market, but does not enhance the effectiveness of competitive aggressiveness. These findings offer managerial implications for online SMEs and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the prominence of dynamic capabilities (DCs) perspective it is still unclear whether and under what conditions DCs contribute to firm performance. This study develops and tests an interactive view emphasizing the moderating effects of internal entrepreneurial orientation and external environmental dynamism on the contribution of the exploration of emerging market firms' (EMFs) DCs to their performance. Using a unique sample of manufacturing firms in China's emerging market, the study provides general support for such moderating effects. We find that exploring the DCs of EMFs is positively associated with their performance. The results indicate that although exploring DCs fosters the performance of EMFs, the benefits are conditional on the internal and external conditions of the firms. That is, entrepreneurial orientation strengthens, whereas environmental dynamism impedes, the positive effect of exploring DCs on the performance of EMFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimal distinctiveness perspective argues that firms face competing pressures to be both 'like' and 'different from' their peers. On the one hand, institutional scholars assert that firms need to be similar to peers in order to gain legitimacy. On the other hand, strategy scholars insist that firms need to strive to be different to gain competitive advantage. In order to enrich the optimal distinctiveness perspective, the present study builds a conceptual model that addresses the relationships among organisational regulatory legitimacy, entrepreneurial orientation, and SME innovation under the context of China's transition economy. Our empirical results show that organisational regulatory legitimacy has an inverted-U relationship with SME innovation. Further, entrepreneurial orientation strengthens this inverse-U shaped relationship. That is, entrepreneurial orientation magnifies both the positive and the negative effect of organisational regulatory legitimacy on SME innovation. This study echoes to the call to conduct broader optimal distinctiveness research by integrating institutional theory and strategic management. Furthermore, our findings provide new evidence for the strategic balance perspective of optimal distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]