THE DEMARCATION PROBLEM: EXPLORING THE BOUNDARIES OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION USASBE EXTENDED ABSTRACT.

A positive association between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and performance is a nearly ubiquitous finding in the entrepreneurship literature. Instead, there is a demarcation problem in determining the contexts in which this association does not apply. This study uses a sample of community colleges to explore the boundaries of the EO-performance relationship and introduces “entrepreneurial degrees of freedom" as a moderator. Two instruments, survey and computeraided text analysis (CATA) were used to measure EO. A moderate positive relationship between survey EO and revenue growth was found along with a negative relationship between survey EO and graduation rates. There was no significant relationship between CATA EO and performance. Curiously, the subscales of the CATA scales were not internally consistent and no relationship was found between survey EO and CATA EO. The implications of these findings for theory, practice and future research are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]