Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2015
Abstract
Research on Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has mostly focused on the underlying entrepreneurial behavior of the owner but ignores related organization-wide business culture attributes that may account for the firm's success. In fact, numerous SMEs will survive without explicit entrepreneurial orientation. To understand this phenomenon we interviewed 29 owners and senior leaders of SMEs and examined the interrelatedness of the firm's cultural traits to business performance. We found that while many SMEs manifest entrepreneurial style of leadership, it is often other cultural traits such as employee empowerment, playfulness, and situated learning that contribute to innovation and firm performance. This discovery is important for small to medium-sized business leaders in that one need not be "entrepreneurial" to be a successful, innovative SME firm and that entrepreneurial behavior itself may not be sufficient in order to achieve success.
Keywords
business enterprises--small, business enterprises--medium, entrepreneurship, Weatherhead School of Management, small to medium-sized enterprises, SME, entrepreneurial orientation, empowerment, playfulness, learning, culture
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Chambers, Donald, "For Small To Medium Sized Enterprises Entrepreneurial Orientation Is Not A Necessary Attribute For Success" (2015). Student Scholarship. 219.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/219