Abstract
Several scholars in the area of entrepreneurial research have shifted their interests away from the dominant, independent-minded, owner-manager who makes the strategic decisions for his firm and have focused, instead, on the organizational factors and strategic actions which either foster or impede corporate entrepreneurship. Despite this research interest, however, little is known about the relationships between entrepreneurship and the strategic process, and about the relationship between the strategic actions of entrepreneurial organizations and their performance. The explicit research question of this study was to determine the relationship between selected processes of strategy formulation and performance in entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial organizations. The purpose of this study was to (1) develop objective definitions of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial organizations, (2) use this definition to assign specific organizations from one industry into classifications of entrepreneurial and nonentrepreneurial, (3) discover the strategic actions used by each organizational type (entrepreneurial and nonentrepreneurial) and (4) determine the relationship between these strategic actions and performance. The study was conducted on savings and loan associations located in Texas. Recent regulatory changes for the entire nation-wide industry have created the possibility for increased entrepreneurship by removing restrictions on certain activities. Sufficient archival data existed to satisfy the definitional requirements of this study. This study extended the work of Schumpeter (1947), Ansoff (1979), and Hambrick (1983c) where entrepreneurship has been defined in terms of the extent of product market additions. The concept of product market additions for savings and loans was operationalized using an extension of a measure developed by Goudreau (1984). Performance was measured on a high to low scale in terms of return on assets. A list of selected strategic actions was developed from previously reported research into the strategic process. This research has demonstrated that the notion of entrepreneurship can be functionally modeled in such a way that hypotheses can be tested. Weak support was found for two of six hypotheses of this study, while strong support was found for the remaining four. Definite patterns of performance were linked with specific strategic actions.
Jennings, Daniel Frederick (1986). A process model of organizational entrepreneurship, strategic actions, and performance. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -435226.