Search

Universities are a relevant and little-explored context to the study of strategic action, considering their need to adapt to environmental dynamics and establish a closer relationship with society. This study contributes to shedding light on how the changing process from a traditional university model to a more entrepreneurial model takes place. Thus, this study aims to analyze the role played by the universities' strategic management to the establishment of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in the academic environment. For this sake, we did a multiple case study focusing on managers' decisions at the strategic level. The selected cases are three universities, two in Brazil and one in Sweden, recognized for their academic entrepreneurship approach in their environments. Based on these cases, the study reveals the influence of top-management decisions for the establishment of EO and how traditional institutions can pursue an entrepreneurial university model. The results emphasize the key role played by the universities' strategic management in establishing EO, through different levels of participation, but with recurrent behaviors in the implementation of the third academic mission. [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]

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm growth and the moderating role of business environment for Russian and Finnish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). For hypothesis testing, structural equation modeling is applied to the data set of 104 Russian and 117 Finnish privately owned SMEs. Results show that while in the Finnish market context EO dimensions are directly associated with firm growth, in the emerging Russian market the relationship is moderated by the dynamic and hostile environment. The results also provide evidence of the nature of EO for SMEs operating in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]