2
Most read
Entrepreneurial orientation,
entrepreneurial education
and performance
Yun Hee Cho and Joo-Heon Lee
College of Government and Business, Yonsei University, Wonju, South Korea
Abstract
Purpose – Korean economy is demanding to change from an industrial society to an entrepreneurial society.
It is asking for a generational change from the preexisting paradigms of such as labor consciousness, the
concept of work and company management. Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements that will lead to a
successful business performance under highly uncertain business conditions. The purpose of this paper is to
examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. Also, the authors
look for the role of entrepreneurship education in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on financial and
nonfinancial business performance.
Design/methodology/approach – To accomplish the purpose of this study, the authors carried out a
survey targeting nascent entrepreneurs and total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of
experience. Based on the Miller’s (1983) definition, a group of questions for entrepreneurial orientation, similar
to Covin and Slevin (1989), were developed.
Findings – First, among the subfactors of entrepreneurial orientation, it was clear that innovative
progressiveness affected nonfinancial business performance. Second, risk-taking propensity did not
influence both financial business performance and nonfinancial business performance. Third,
entrepreneurship education had no connection with entrepreneurial orientation or business
performance.
Practical implications – Nonfinancial business performances are related with long-term goals and
growth potential. Innovative proactiveness affects nonfinancial business performance. Thus, entrepreneurs
should look for ways to promote their innovative proactiveness. Entrepreneurship education for experienced
entrepreneurs is not as effective as that for students.
Originality/value – In the authors’ study, survey questionnaires were sent to 200 nascent and total
early-stage entrepreneurs searching for business angel investments or entrepreneurship consultants
in Korea. A total of 180 entrepreneurs answered the survey questions online. There are not so many
valid studies examining the effect of entrepreneurship education for nascent and total early-stage
entrepreneurs in Korea.
Keywords Business performance, Entrepreneurial orientation, Survey, Entrepreneurship education,
Nascent entrepreneurs
Paper type Research paper
© Yun Hee Cho and Joo-Heon Lee. Published in Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and
Entrepreneurship. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and
create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to
full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at
http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
This paper forms part of a special section “Global entrepreneurship and social innovation in the
fourth industrial revolution”, guest edited by Chang Won Lee.
APJIE
12,2
124
Received 4 May 2018
Revised 12 May 2018
Accepted 14 May 2018
Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation
and Entrepreneurship
Vol. 12 No. 2, 2018
pp. 124-134
EmeraldPublishingLimited
2398-7812
DOI 10.1108/APJIE-05-2018-0028
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2398-7812.htm
1. Introduction
Korean economy is demanding to change from an industrial society to an entrepreneurial
society (Bahn et al., 2014). It is asking for a generational change from the preexisting
paradigms of such as labor consciousness, the concept of work and company management.
With more production focused small and large businesses lose the ability to employ more
workers, the scale of mass unemployment increases with it. Youth unemployment is one of
the most critical social issues in Korea (Park, 2017). However, the development of
Information technology and networking is lowering the expenses and entry barriers for
entrepreneurs. Increasing the number of entrepreneurs will not just simply improve the
economy and produce more profits for the economy. Creating more businesses and hiring
more people can provide a social safety net for society. That is why all OECD countries have
placed great emphasis on entrepreneurship.
To start a business, an entrepreneur should have an ability to identify entrepreneurial
opportunities at the beginning. Only after securing enough financial resources, human
resources and physical facilities, entrepreneurs can produce and sell goods or services.
Usually, it takes a long time and needs strong intention to start businesses.
Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements that will lead to a successful business
performance under highly uncertain business conditions. Schumpeter (1934) argued that the
driving force to an economic development and a social change is innovation that destroy the
existing products or markets. This is also called creative destruction and in the core of this
activity is in an innovative entrepreneur. Drucker (1985) said that entrepreneurs are those
that sense changes in the future and find ways to adapt to this change. Entrepreneurs who
can use this change as a chance will affect the productivity of resources and earn
entrepreneurial profits (Say, 1815). Cantillon (1755) said entrepreneurs are those that make
the rational decision to make profits despite the risks that follow with it. To accomplish
innovations, entrepreneurs need to tolerate high risks from starting a business because they
are under fierce competition from existing businesses (Knight, 1921).
Our study defines entrepreneurship based on the entrepreneurial orientation studied by Miller
(1983), who has been the spotlight of many researches recently. Miller (1983) characterizes
entrepreneurial orientation as the proactive nature of businesses of products and services in the
market seeking for new innovations by even investing into it in spite of the high risk following it.
Our study ultimately defines entrepreneurial orientation after observing the many proactive,
innovative and risk-taking propensity found in the studies of entrepreneurial orientation.
To accomplish the purpose of this study, we carried out a survey targeting nascent
entrepreneurs and total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of experience.
Our purpose was to find out how the proactiveness, innovativeness and risk-taking
propensity of entrepreneurial orientation influence both financial and nonfinancial business
performance through multivariate regression analysis. We also tried to examine the
moderating effect of entrepreneurship education on the relationship between entrepreneurial
orientation and financial and nonfinancial business performance.
To achieve our goal, we will discuss through the following procedures. First, we will look at
the previous studies related to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation,
entrepreneurship education and business performance. Second, we will propose the research
model and hypothesis of this study. Then we will describe the format of the survey we took.
Also, sample and issues regarding measurement variables will be discussed. After performing
reliability and validity analysis, we will test the hypothesis of our research model. The
relationship among entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurship education, financial and
nonfinancial business performance will be investigated through multivariate regression analysis.
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2. Theoretical background
2.1 Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation
Entrepreneurship is a distinctive character that defines the entrepreneurs different from
managers or employees (Carland et al., 1984). Entrepreneurs are known to search for and
take innovative, proactive and risk-taking actions. Compared to entrepreneurs, managers or
workers tend to avoid the risks involved with entrepreneurial actions. Entrepreneurship is a
defining characteristic of entrepreneurs who continuously search and identify new business
opportunities and create new values for growth (Brockhaus, 1980). Also, it is generally
recognized that entrepreneurship is one of the most important ways to build wealth in a
capitalist society. In addition, entrepreneurship is a driving force for economic growth and
social change (Schumpeter, 1934).
Depending on different objects of studies and theories, entrepreneurship has a multitude
of meanings. McClelland (1961) suggested that those who choose to start a business prefer to
pursue challenging goals, work independently and seek challenging tasks that are hard but
possible. He claimed individuals who have high need for achievement(N-Ach) tend to
become entrepreneurs and looked for empirical evidence to support his argument. It is
known that entrepreneurs tend to not always pursue high risks but may tolerate the risks if
they are unavoidable in one’s tasks (Brockhaus, 1980). As an entrepreneur, it is important to
minimize risk, but it is also important to acknowledge the risk in businesses and to share it
with others while trying to seize opportunities under uncertainty. Self-efficacy, the idea of
having the conviction in one’s ability to accomplish tasks, is proven to be connected to
entrepreneurship by many empirical studies (Bandura, 1982). Innovativeness refers to being
able to carry out creative and original ideas and draw out due diligence processes such as
producing new products, new processes, new development of suppliers and raw resources.
Innovativeness is one of the key components of entrepreneurship that create values that
businesses want while drawing out new changes or combinations through creative ideas
and combinations. Proactiveness is the ability to make strategic decisions towards a
progressive direction to control the market by identifying and exploiting market
opportunities and recognizing changes in the market earlier than other competitors. This is
a necessary property to create a competitive advantage and maintain initiative by
discovering new opportunities through future demands and developing and launching new
products and services at the market. An entrepreneur must have the technical and
management knowledge to find new business opportunities while reading the changes in
the market and society. Ultimately, an entrepreneur must have the creative entrepreneurship
for business activities that have long-term vision and insight for decisions about the future
market.
Recently, Miller (1983) proposed that successful businesses tend to show innovativeness,
proactiveness and risk-taking propensity. He named this construct the entrepreneurial
orientation. Firms with entrepreneurial orientation try to identify and exploit new
opportunities persistently, create new values and become leaders in markets. According to
previous researches, entrepreneurial orientation is an important factor that lead to the
successful development of new products, high financial and nonfinancial business
performance and high social performance. In addition to usual three factors, Lumpkin and
Dess (1996) added competitive aggressiveness and autonomy as for the two additional
factors that comprise entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation was first
introduced for an organizational level of studies. However, these days, because of the huge
success, a lot of researchers use this construct for the studying of individual level of
entrepreneurship studies. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship
between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. Also, we look for the role of
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entrepreneurial education in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on financial or
nonfinancial business performance. Our study measures entrepreneurial orientation using
survey questions developed by Covin and Slevin (1991).
2.2 Entrepreneurship education
Israel’s venture shows amazing results such as the world’s highest venture start-up per
capita and the world’s largest number of NASDAQ listed companies. Many people in Israel
give credit to such as the Chutzpah spirit, the Yozuma fund, the fusion of technology to
civilian industries and entrepreneurial education. Vesper (1982) argues that counseling with
experts increases the chances of success for entrepreneurs. Lussier (1995), showed, through
empirical research, entrepreneurs who had received counseling from experts were more
successful than those who had no entrepreneurial education.
A lot of scholars claimed that entrepreneurship courses not only provide students basic
knowledge and skill for entrepreneurship but also make students have a positive attitude
towards entrepreneurship. Timmons (1994) put strong emphasis on entrepreneurship skills
and entrepreneurship education should teach these skills such as the ability to create high
performing culture, the ability to connect and network and the ability to lead and work in
teams. To succeed, entrepreneurs should have the necessary skills to deal with entrepreneurial
problems. Improved skills may increase students’ confidence on entrepreneurship and
promotes the chances of entrepreneurial success.
Many researchers claimed that entrepreneurship can be learned and taught (Gibb, 2002).
McGrath (1999) said through entrepreneurship education, students can study the factors
that lead to failure in entrepreneurship and can avoid the same mistakes. Entrepreneurship
education may also reduce the negative image of entrepreneurship and business failure.
Entrepreneurship education can legitimize the entrepreneurship as a viable career option
and develop entrepreneurial culture among students (Donckels, 1991; Johannisson, 1991;
Kirkley, 2017). It can give students chances to meet famous entrepreneurs and influence the
attitude towards entrepreneurship. In other words, entrepreneurship courses may help
students find their role models to become entrepreneurs. According to Peterman and
Kennedy (2003), after finishing entrepreneurship education, participants showed
significantly higher perception of desirability and feasibility of starting a business. Kuttim
et al. (2014) confirmed, based on the empirical study of 17 country students, participants in
entrepreneurship education showed higher entrepreneurial intentions. Through the
empirical investigation on science and engineering students, Souitaris et al. (2007) found that
because of psychological inspiration, entrepreneurship programs raised the overall
entrepreneurship intention. Noel (2001) also found entrepreneurship majoring graduate
students showed stronger intentions to start their businesses because, he claimed, education
could affect self-efficacy (Gist and Mitchell, 1992). Fayolle and Gailly (2015) found the
impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention is negatively influenced
by the students’ prior experience on entrepreneurship. Because the average experience level
of nascent or total early-stage entrepreneurs is high, educational effectiveness may not be as
strong.
There are not so many valid studies examining the effect of entrepreneurship education
for nascent and total early-stage entrepreneurs in Korea. Most studies have seemed to suffer
from small sample problems and methodological flaws (Martin, et al., 2013; Elert et al., 2014).
Also, there have been very few studies examining the relationship between entrepreneurship
education and business performance in Korea.
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127
2.3 Business performance
In addition to the technical superiority over rival companies, the ability to identify and
satisfy the needs of the customers is one of the most important elements for business
success. In the long run, to maximize the profit, companies must pursue excellence on every
aspect of their business such as creating superior value to customers, satisfying employees,
creating better working environments, creating resource for future innovation and
performing social responsibility activities. Business performance can be defined as many
different ways depending on purposes. An organization has a set of goals. Business
performance can be defined as how much an organization achieves these goals. Also,
business performance can be defined as how much an organization can cope with
fluctuating environmental factors such as profits, productivity, employee satisfaction, social
responsibility and business survival. In the empirical research on business performance,
diverse measures have been used.
Generally, business performance can be classified in two categories, financial business
performance and nonfinancial business performance. Financial business performance
usually includes growth measures and measures of profitability. In our research, we
measured financial business performance with return on asset (ROA), return on equity
(ROE), growth in revenue and return on sales. While financial measures focus on short-term
financial goals, nonfinancial measures are related with long-term goals and growth
potential. Our nonfinancial business performance includes employee growth rate, social
responsibility, organizational learning capability and growth potential. Financial measures
are less subjective, reliable and easily verifiable. However, they only reflect past
performance and do not guarantee future performances. Kaplan and Norton (1992) argued
that, to improve the performance measures focusing on the past results, researchers should
consider the factors such as internal process include the consider the factors such as the
internal process performance, organizational learning and innovation performance,
employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Many empirical researches have confirmed
that subjective measures are correlated with objective financial measures (Pearce et al.,
1987).
On a study based on 132 Swedish companies, entrepreneurial orientation had influenced
business performance for three years on a study (Wiklund, 1999). Cooper (1990) found that
education levels, the level of previous experience, the degree of similarity between previous
businesses and the new business were all positively correlated with business performance.
He also found that business performance was also affected by the size of initial capital
investments.
3. Empirical research
3.1 Research model
Innovative, proactive and risk-taking entrepreneurs will eagerly carry out entrepreneurial
activities and achieve high business performances as a result. According to Miller (1983),
firms with entrepreneurial orientation pursue innovation in products and markets, take
necessary risks instead of avoiding and proactively react to opportunities and changes in
environments. Entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial orientation can identify new
opportunities, create tangible and intangible resources for innovation and launch innovative
products frequently. Thus, they can sell more products and obtain high profits because of
innovativeness and competitiveness (Malerba and Orsenigo, 1997). Our research model is
shown in Figure 1.
In this article, we examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation,
entrepreneurship education and business performance. Previous research confirmed that
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financial business performance is closely related to nonfinancial business performance. We
divided business performance into financial and nonfinancial. Our hypothesis are as follows:
H1. Entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to financial business performance.
H1.1. Innovative proactiveness positively affects financial business performance.
H1.2. Risk-taking propensity positively affects financial business performance.
H2. Entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to nonfinancial business
performance.
H2.1. Innovation proactiveness positively affects nonfinancial business performance.
H2.2. Risk-taking propensity positively affects nonfinancial business performance.
H3. Entrepreneurship education is positively related to financial and nonfinancial
business performance.
3.2 Sampling and measures
In our study, survey questionnaires were sent to 200 nascent and total early-stage
entrepreneurs searching for business angel investments or entrepreneurship consultants in
Korea. A total of 180 entrepreneurs answered the survey questions online. We frequently
contacted them via email, phone or face-to-face meeting. Among the survey takers, there
were 122 (67.8 per cent) total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of
experience and 58 (32.2 per cent) nascent entrepreneurs. The age distributions were 91 (50.6
per cent) entrepreneurs in their 40 s, 35 (19.4 per cent) in their 30 s, 29 (16.1 per cent) in their
50 s, 21 (11.7 per cent) in their 20 s and 4 (2.2 per cent) in their 60 s. The education levels of
the entrepreneurs were as follows: 42.8 per cent (77) master’s degree, 35.0 per cent (63)
bachelor’s degree, 8.9 per cent (16) associate’s degree, 7.8 per cent (14) doctorate degree and
6.5 per cent (10) high school diploma.
The three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation can be easily derived from the
previous research because numerous researchers in the world have used them (Covin and
Slevin, 1989). Innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking propensity have widely been
used constructs, even though Lumpkin and Dess (1996) added two additional dimensions,
competitive aggressiveness and autonomy. Based on the Miller (1983)’s definition, a group
of questions for entrepreneurial orientation were developed. To assure reliability and
Figure 1.
Research model
Entrepreneurial Orientation
Innovative Pro -activeness
Risk-taking
Propensity
Education
Financial Business
Performance
Non -Financial Business
Performance
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129
validity of constructs, we use the questionnaires similar to the Covin and Slevin (1989)’s
scale.
To measure entrepreneurial orientation, a nine-item questionnaire was used: three
questions for innovativeness, three questions for proactiveness and three questions for risk-
taking propensity. To measure financial business performance, a four-item questionnaire
was used: one question for ROA, one question ROE, one question for growth in revenue and
one question for return on sales. To measure nonfinancial business performance, a four-item
questionnaire was created: one question for loyalty, one question for competitiveness, one
question for stability and one question for customer satisfaction. In our study, SPSS 18.0
was used for empirical analysis. Each survey question uses the Likert scale as a tool of
measurement and had choices ranging from 1 point standing for “not at all” to 5 points
standing for “very much”.
3.3 Reliability and validity analysis
Before the hypothesis test, we performed reliability and validity analysis. To find out
whether the variables were measured as the study’s intention we analyzed the reliability and
validity of the list of measurements. Analyzing the reliability of the list of measurements
means to repeatedly measure identical concepts to derive identical progress. Analyzing the
validity of the list of measurements examines whether the list of measurements was able to
deduce what this survey intended to achieve. To verify the construct validity, we conducted
exploratory factor analysis. Our paper used principal component analysis with Varimax
rotation. The results are shown in Table I.
Table I.
Reliability and
validity analysis
Item Factor loading Eigenvalue Variance Cronbach’s alpha
Innovative proactiveness
Inno1 1.708 3.048 117.930 1.804
Inno2 1.633
Inno3 1.550
Pro1 1.769
Pro2 1.735
Pro3 1.645
Risk-taking propensity
Risk-taking1 1.849 2.158 12.694 1.761
Risk-taking2 1.771
Risk-taking3 1.758
Financial business performance
Finan1 1.660 2.669 15.698 1.778
Finan2 1.830
Finan3 1.688
Finan4 1.673
Nonfinancial business performance
Non-finan1 1.843 2.578 15.162 1.801
Non-finan2 1.754
Non-finan3 1.740
Non-finan4
KMO
Bartltt’s test
1.793
1,108.134 (1.000)
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Internal consistency test using Cronbach’s alpha is the most popular methods for measuring
reliability. To establish an internal consistency test, the list of measurements must first
satisfy the single dimensionality test. A factor that passes 0.5 of the load range can be
regarded as an important variable, proving that all of them are important variables. To
verify the reliability of the measurements used on surveys, a reliability analysis was carried
out by using calculations that include the Cronbach’s alpha.
3.4 Correlation analysis
Correlation analysis is a method to study the relationship between variables, which
examines the relationship between two of the variables and how much the two are related to
one another. The correlation analysis of variables can become a valuable preliminary data
for predicting verification relationship in a set hypothesis. The correlation coefficient r has a
range between 1 and þ1. If the measured data on the coordinate is close to a positive slope,
Table II.
Analysis of
correlation among
variables
Variables 1 2 3 4
Innovative proactiveness 1
Risk-taking propensity 1.377*** 1
Financial business performance 1.174** 1.101 1
Nonfinancial business performance 1.346*** 1.101 1.400*** 1
Notes: ***p  0.01; **p  0.05
Table III.
Multivariate
regression analysis
for financial business
performance
Dependent: financial
Variable b t p
(constant) 6.689 000
Innovative proactiveness 1.157 1.933 1.055
Risk-taking propensity 1.041 1.498 1.619
Entrepreneurship education 1.030 1.402 1.688
F = 1.911, R square = 1.134, Adj R square = 1.119
Note: ***p  0.01
Table IV.
Multivariate
regression analysis
for nonfinancial
business
performance
Dependent: nonfinancial
Variable b t p
(Constant) 5.065 000
Innovative proactiveness 1.361*** 4.687 0.000
Risk-taking propensity 1.029 1.377 0.706
Entrepreneurship education 0.113 1.585 0.115
F = 8.757***, R square = 1.134, Adj R square = 1.116
F = 1.911, R square = 1.134, Adj R square = 1.119
Note: ***p  0.01
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the data has a positive correlation coefficient, and when the measured data on the coordinate
is close to a negative slope, the data has a negative correlation coefficient.
Results from the correlation analysis between variables can be found on Table II. The
correlation analysis amongst variables of innovative proactiveness, risk-taking
proactiveness, financial business performances and nonfinancial business performances are
only considered valid at the 1 per cent level. The result shows that the correlation between
innovative proactiveness and risk-taking proactiveness are considered valid, showing they
have a high degree of dependence. It is same for the correlation between innovative
proactiveness and nonfinancial business performance, and also for the correlation between
financial and nonfinancial business performance, as both correlations have results proving
that the correlations are valid.
3.5 Multivariate regression analysis
Tables III and IV shows the results from the multivariate regression analysis. A variable is
statistically significant when the result from the regression equation of the variable is at the 1
per cent level. Regarding the dependent variable of non- financial business performance and
the independent variables of innovative proactiveness, risk-taking propensity and the
entrepreneurship education, the result from our analysis show that only the innovative
proactiveness variable was statistically significant, while the rest of the variables were not.
The regression equation demonstrates that when the number of the innovative proactiveness
variable increased by 1, the financial business performance increased by 0.517.
Our study uses the multivariate regression analysis to verify H3. Tables III and IV
displays the result. The result examines the influence of entrepreneurial education on
innovative proactiveness and risk-taking propensity, which are the independent variables.
The moderating effect of entrepreneurial education had a significance level of 0.253, which
demonstrates that it was not statistically significant. This result proves that H3 of our study
cannot be accepted.
4. Conclusion
Korean economy is demanding to change from an industrial society to an entrepreneurial
society. It is asking for a generational change from the pre-existing paradigms of such as
labor consciousness, the concept of work and company management. Youth unemployment
is one of the most critical social issues in Korea. Increasing the number of entrepreneurs will
not just simply improve the economy and produce more profits for the economy. Creating
more businesses and hiring more people can provide a social safety net for society. That is
why all OECD countries have placed great emphasis on entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements that will lead to a successful business
performance under highly uncertain business conditions. The purpose of this research is to
examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance.
Also, we look for the role of entrepreneurship education in the influence of entrepreneurial
orientation on financial or nonfinancial business performance.
To accomplish the purpose of this study, we carried out a survey targeting nascent
entrepreneurs and total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of experience.
Our results of this study were as followed. First, among the subfactors of entrepreneurial
orientation, it was clear that innovative progressiveness affected nonfinancial business
performance. Second, risk-taking propensity did not influence on both financial business
performance and nonfinancial performance. Third, both entrepreneurship education had no
connection with entrepreneurial orientation or business performance.
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and resource”, Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 566-591.
Timmons, J.A. (1994), New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century, Irwin, Burr Ridge.
Vesper, K.H. (1982), “Research on education for entrepreneurship”, in Kent, C., Sexton, D. and Vesper, K.
(Eds), Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Wiklund, J. (1999), “The sustainability of the entrepreneurial orientation-performance relationship”,
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 37-48.
Corresponding author
Joo-Heon Lee can be contacted at: dardenlee@yonsei.ac.kr
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
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Entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial education and performance

  • 1. Entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial education and performance Yun Hee Cho and Joo-Heon Lee College of Government and Business, Yonsei University, Wonju, South Korea Abstract Purpose – Korean economy is demanding to change from an industrial society to an entrepreneurial society. It is asking for a generational change from the preexisting paradigms of such as labor consciousness, the concept of work and company management. Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements that will lead to a successful business performance under highly uncertain business conditions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. Also, the authors look for the role of entrepreneurship education in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on financial and nonfinancial business performance. Design/methodology/approach – To accomplish the purpose of this study, the authors carried out a survey targeting nascent entrepreneurs and total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of experience. Based on the Miller’s (1983) definition, a group of questions for entrepreneurial orientation, similar to Covin and Slevin (1989), were developed. Findings – First, among the subfactors of entrepreneurial orientation, it was clear that innovative progressiveness affected nonfinancial business performance. Second, risk-taking propensity did not influence both financial business performance and nonfinancial business performance. Third, entrepreneurship education had no connection with entrepreneurial orientation or business performance. Practical implications – Nonfinancial business performances are related with long-term goals and growth potential. Innovative proactiveness affects nonfinancial business performance. Thus, entrepreneurs should look for ways to promote their innovative proactiveness. Entrepreneurship education for experienced entrepreneurs is not as effective as that for students. Originality/value – In the authors’ study, survey questionnaires were sent to 200 nascent and total early-stage entrepreneurs searching for business angel investments or entrepreneurship consultants in Korea. A total of 180 entrepreneurs answered the survey questions online. There are not so many valid studies examining the effect of entrepreneurship education for nascent and total early-stage entrepreneurs in Korea. Keywords Business performance, Entrepreneurial orientation, Survey, Entrepreneurship education, Nascent entrepreneurs Paper type Research paper © Yun Hee Cho and Joo-Heon Lee. Published in Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode This paper forms part of a special section “Global entrepreneurship and social innovation in the fourth industrial revolution”, guest edited by Chang Won Lee. APJIE 12,2 124 Received 4 May 2018 Revised 12 May 2018 Accepted 14 May 2018 Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Vol. 12 No. 2, 2018 pp. 124-134 EmeraldPublishingLimited 2398-7812 DOI 10.1108/APJIE-05-2018-0028 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/2398-7812.htm
  • 2. 1. Introduction Korean economy is demanding to change from an industrial society to an entrepreneurial society (Bahn et al., 2014). It is asking for a generational change from the preexisting paradigms of such as labor consciousness, the concept of work and company management. With more production focused small and large businesses lose the ability to employ more workers, the scale of mass unemployment increases with it. Youth unemployment is one of the most critical social issues in Korea (Park, 2017). However, the development of Information technology and networking is lowering the expenses and entry barriers for entrepreneurs. Increasing the number of entrepreneurs will not just simply improve the economy and produce more profits for the economy. Creating more businesses and hiring more people can provide a social safety net for society. That is why all OECD countries have placed great emphasis on entrepreneurship. To start a business, an entrepreneur should have an ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities at the beginning. Only after securing enough financial resources, human resources and physical facilities, entrepreneurs can produce and sell goods or services. Usually, it takes a long time and needs strong intention to start businesses. Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements that will lead to a successful business performance under highly uncertain business conditions. Schumpeter (1934) argued that the driving force to an economic development and a social change is innovation that destroy the existing products or markets. This is also called creative destruction and in the core of this activity is in an innovative entrepreneur. Drucker (1985) said that entrepreneurs are those that sense changes in the future and find ways to adapt to this change. Entrepreneurs who can use this change as a chance will affect the productivity of resources and earn entrepreneurial profits (Say, 1815). Cantillon (1755) said entrepreneurs are those that make the rational decision to make profits despite the risks that follow with it. To accomplish innovations, entrepreneurs need to tolerate high risks from starting a business because they are under fierce competition from existing businesses (Knight, 1921). Our study defines entrepreneurship based on the entrepreneurial orientation studied by Miller (1983), who has been the spotlight of many researches recently. Miller (1983) characterizes entrepreneurial orientation as the proactive nature of businesses of products and services in the market seeking for new innovations by even investing into it in spite of the high risk following it. Our study ultimately defines entrepreneurial orientation after observing the many proactive, innovative and risk-taking propensity found in the studies of entrepreneurial orientation. To accomplish the purpose of this study, we carried out a survey targeting nascent entrepreneurs and total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of experience. Our purpose was to find out how the proactiveness, innovativeness and risk-taking propensity of entrepreneurial orientation influence both financial and nonfinancial business performance through multivariate regression analysis. We also tried to examine the moderating effect of entrepreneurship education on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and financial and nonfinancial business performance. To achieve our goal, we will discuss through the following procedures. First, we will look at the previous studies related to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurship education and business performance. Second, we will propose the research model and hypothesis of this study. Then we will describe the format of the survey we took. Also, sample and issues regarding measurement variables will be discussed. After performing reliability and validity analysis, we will test the hypothesis of our research model. The relationship among entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurship education, financial and nonfinancial business performance will be investigated through multivariate regression analysis. Entrepreneurial education and performance 125
  • 3. 2. Theoretical background 2.1 Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation Entrepreneurship is a distinctive character that defines the entrepreneurs different from managers or employees (Carland et al., 1984). Entrepreneurs are known to search for and take innovative, proactive and risk-taking actions. Compared to entrepreneurs, managers or workers tend to avoid the risks involved with entrepreneurial actions. Entrepreneurship is a defining characteristic of entrepreneurs who continuously search and identify new business opportunities and create new values for growth (Brockhaus, 1980). Also, it is generally recognized that entrepreneurship is one of the most important ways to build wealth in a capitalist society. In addition, entrepreneurship is a driving force for economic growth and social change (Schumpeter, 1934). Depending on different objects of studies and theories, entrepreneurship has a multitude of meanings. McClelland (1961) suggested that those who choose to start a business prefer to pursue challenging goals, work independently and seek challenging tasks that are hard but possible. He claimed individuals who have high need for achievement(N-Ach) tend to become entrepreneurs and looked for empirical evidence to support his argument. It is known that entrepreneurs tend to not always pursue high risks but may tolerate the risks if they are unavoidable in one’s tasks (Brockhaus, 1980). As an entrepreneur, it is important to minimize risk, but it is also important to acknowledge the risk in businesses and to share it with others while trying to seize opportunities under uncertainty. Self-efficacy, the idea of having the conviction in one’s ability to accomplish tasks, is proven to be connected to entrepreneurship by many empirical studies (Bandura, 1982). Innovativeness refers to being able to carry out creative and original ideas and draw out due diligence processes such as producing new products, new processes, new development of suppliers and raw resources. Innovativeness is one of the key components of entrepreneurship that create values that businesses want while drawing out new changes or combinations through creative ideas and combinations. Proactiveness is the ability to make strategic decisions towards a progressive direction to control the market by identifying and exploiting market opportunities and recognizing changes in the market earlier than other competitors. This is a necessary property to create a competitive advantage and maintain initiative by discovering new opportunities through future demands and developing and launching new products and services at the market. An entrepreneur must have the technical and management knowledge to find new business opportunities while reading the changes in the market and society. Ultimately, an entrepreneur must have the creative entrepreneurship for business activities that have long-term vision and insight for decisions about the future market. Recently, Miller (1983) proposed that successful businesses tend to show innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking propensity. He named this construct the entrepreneurial orientation. Firms with entrepreneurial orientation try to identify and exploit new opportunities persistently, create new values and become leaders in markets. According to previous researches, entrepreneurial orientation is an important factor that lead to the successful development of new products, high financial and nonfinancial business performance and high social performance. In addition to usual three factors, Lumpkin and Dess (1996) added competitive aggressiveness and autonomy as for the two additional factors that comprise entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation was first introduced for an organizational level of studies. However, these days, because of the huge success, a lot of researchers use this construct for the studying of individual level of entrepreneurship studies. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. Also, we look for the role of APJIE 12,2 126
  • 4. entrepreneurial education in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on financial or nonfinancial business performance. Our study measures entrepreneurial orientation using survey questions developed by Covin and Slevin (1991). 2.2 Entrepreneurship education Israel’s venture shows amazing results such as the world’s highest venture start-up per capita and the world’s largest number of NASDAQ listed companies. Many people in Israel give credit to such as the Chutzpah spirit, the Yozuma fund, the fusion of technology to civilian industries and entrepreneurial education. Vesper (1982) argues that counseling with experts increases the chances of success for entrepreneurs. Lussier (1995), showed, through empirical research, entrepreneurs who had received counseling from experts were more successful than those who had no entrepreneurial education. A lot of scholars claimed that entrepreneurship courses not only provide students basic knowledge and skill for entrepreneurship but also make students have a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. Timmons (1994) put strong emphasis on entrepreneurship skills and entrepreneurship education should teach these skills such as the ability to create high performing culture, the ability to connect and network and the ability to lead and work in teams. To succeed, entrepreneurs should have the necessary skills to deal with entrepreneurial problems. Improved skills may increase students’ confidence on entrepreneurship and promotes the chances of entrepreneurial success. Many researchers claimed that entrepreneurship can be learned and taught (Gibb, 2002). McGrath (1999) said through entrepreneurship education, students can study the factors that lead to failure in entrepreneurship and can avoid the same mistakes. Entrepreneurship education may also reduce the negative image of entrepreneurship and business failure. Entrepreneurship education can legitimize the entrepreneurship as a viable career option and develop entrepreneurial culture among students (Donckels, 1991; Johannisson, 1991; Kirkley, 2017). It can give students chances to meet famous entrepreneurs and influence the attitude towards entrepreneurship. In other words, entrepreneurship courses may help students find their role models to become entrepreneurs. According to Peterman and Kennedy (2003), after finishing entrepreneurship education, participants showed significantly higher perception of desirability and feasibility of starting a business. Kuttim et al. (2014) confirmed, based on the empirical study of 17 country students, participants in entrepreneurship education showed higher entrepreneurial intentions. Through the empirical investigation on science and engineering students, Souitaris et al. (2007) found that because of psychological inspiration, entrepreneurship programs raised the overall entrepreneurship intention. Noel (2001) also found entrepreneurship majoring graduate students showed stronger intentions to start their businesses because, he claimed, education could affect self-efficacy (Gist and Mitchell, 1992). Fayolle and Gailly (2015) found the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention is negatively influenced by the students’ prior experience on entrepreneurship. Because the average experience level of nascent or total early-stage entrepreneurs is high, educational effectiveness may not be as strong. There are not so many valid studies examining the effect of entrepreneurship education for nascent and total early-stage entrepreneurs in Korea. Most studies have seemed to suffer from small sample problems and methodological flaws (Martin, et al., 2013; Elert et al., 2014). Also, there have been very few studies examining the relationship between entrepreneurship education and business performance in Korea. Entrepreneurial education and performance 127
  • 5. 2.3 Business performance In addition to the technical superiority over rival companies, the ability to identify and satisfy the needs of the customers is one of the most important elements for business success. In the long run, to maximize the profit, companies must pursue excellence on every aspect of their business such as creating superior value to customers, satisfying employees, creating better working environments, creating resource for future innovation and performing social responsibility activities. Business performance can be defined as many different ways depending on purposes. An organization has a set of goals. Business performance can be defined as how much an organization achieves these goals. Also, business performance can be defined as how much an organization can cope with fluctuating environmental factors such as profits, productivity, employee satisfaction, social responsibility and business survival. In the empirical research on business performance, diverse measures have been used. Generally, business performance can be classified in two categories, financial business performance and nonfinancial business performance. Financial business performance usually includes growth measures and measures of profitability. In our research, we measured financial business performance with return on asset (ROA), return on equity (ROE), growth in revenue and return on sales. While financial measures focus on short-term financial goals, nonfinancial measures are related with long-term goals and growth potential. Our nonfinancial business performance includes employee growth rate, social responsibility, organizational learning capability and growth potential. Financial measures are less subjective, reliable and easily verifiable. However, they only reflect past performance and do not guarantee future performances. Kaplan and Norton (1992) argued that, to improve the performance measures focusing on the past results, researchers should consider the factors such as internal process include the consider the factors such as the internal process performance, organizational learning and innovation performance, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Many empirical researches have confirmed that subjective measures are correlated with objective financial measures (Pearce et al., 1987). On a study based on 132 Swedish companies, entrepreneurial orientation had influenced business performance for three years on a study (Wiklund, 1999). Cooper (1990) found that education levels, the level of previous experience, the degree of similarity between previous businesses and the new business were all positively correlated with business performance. He also found that business performance was also affected by the size of initial capital investments. 3. Empirical research 3.1 Research model Innovative, proactive and risk-taking entrepreneurs will eagerly carry out entrepreneurial activities and achieve high business performances as a result. According to Miller (1983), firms with entrepreneurial orientation pursue innovation in products and markets, take necessary risks instead of avoiding and proactively react to opportunities and changes in environments. Entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial orientation can identify new opportunities, create tangible and intangible resources for innovation and launch innovative products frequently. Thus, they can sell more products and obtain high profits because of innovativeness and competitiveness (Malerba and Orsenigo, 1997). Our research model is shown in Figure 1. In this article, we examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurship education and business performance. Previous research confirmed that APJIE 12,2 128
  • 6. financial business performance is closely related to nonfinancial business performance. We divided business performance into financial and nonfinancial. Our hypothesis are as follows: H1. Entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to financial business performance. H1.1. Innovative proactiveness positively affects financial business performance. H1.2. Risk-taking propensity positively affects financial business performance. H2. Entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to nonfinancial business performance. H2.1. Innovation proactiveness positively affects nonfinancial business performance. H2.2. Risk-taking propensity positively affects nonfinancial business performance. H3. Entrepreneurship education is positively related to financial and nonfinancial business performance. 3.2 Sampling and measures In our study, survey questionnaires were sent to 200 nascent and total early-stage entrepreneurs searching for business angel investments or entrepreneurship consultants in Korea. A total of 180 entrepreneurs answered the survey questions online. We frequently contacted them via email, phone or face-to-face meeting. Among the survey takers, there were 122 (67.8 per cent) total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of experience and 58 (32.2 per cent) nascent entrepreneurs. The age distributions were 91 (50.6 per cent) entrepreneurs in their 40 s, 35 (19.4 per cent) in their 30 s, 29 (16.1 per cent) in their 50 s, 21 (11.7 per cent) in their 20 s and 4 (2.2 per cent) in their 60 s. The education levels of the entrepreneurs were as follows: 42.8 per cent (77) master’s degree, 35.0 per cent (63) bachelor’s degree, 8.9 per cent (16) associate’s degree, 7.8 per cent (14) doctorate degree and 6.5 per cent (10) high school diploma. The three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation can be easily derived from the previous research because numerous researchers in the world have used them (Covin and Slevin, 1989). Innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking propensity have widely been used constructs, even though Lumpkin and Dess (1996) added two additional dimensions, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy. Based on the Miller (1983)’s definition, a group of questions for entrepreneurial orientation were developed. To assure reliability and Figure 1. Research model Entrepreneurial Orientation Innovative Pro -activeness Risk-taking Propensity Education Financial Business Performance Non -Financial Business Performance Entrepreneurial education and performance 129
  • 7. validity of constructs, we use the questionnaires similar to the Covin and Slevin (1989)’s scale. To measure entrepreneurial orientation, a nine-item questionnaire was used: three questions for innovativeness, three questions for proactiveness and three questions for risk- taking propensity. To measure financial business performance, a four-item questionnaire was used: one question for ROA, one question ROE, one question for growth in revenue and one question for return on sales. To measure nonfinancial business performance, a four-item questionnaire was created: one question for loyalty, one question for competitiveness, one question for stability and one question for customer satisfaction. In our study, SPSS 18.0 was used for empirical analysis. Each survey question uses the Likert scale as a tool of measurement and had choices ranging from 1 point standing for “not at all” to 5 points standing for “very much”. 3.3 Reliability and validity analysis Before the hypothesis test, we performed reliability and validity analysis. To find out whether the variables were measured as the study’s intention we analyzed the reliability and validity of the list of measurements. Analyzing the reliability of the list of measurements means to repeatedly measure identical concepts to derive identical progress. Analyzing the validity of the list of measurements examines whether the list of measurements was able to deduce what this survey intended to achieve. To verify the construct validity, we conducted exploratory factor analysis. Our paper used principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The results are shown in Table I. Table I. Reliability and validity analysis Item Factor loading Eigenvalue Variance Cronbach’s alpha Innovative proactiveness Inno1 1.708 3.048 117.930 1.804 Inno2 1.633 Inno3 1.550 Pro1 1.769 Pro2 1.735 Pro3 1.645 Risk-taking propensity Risk-taking1 1.849 2.158 12.694 1.761 Risk-taking2 1.771 Risk-taking3 1.758 Financial business performance Finan1 1.660 2.669 15.698 1.778 Finan2 1.830 Finan3 1.688 Finan4 1.673 Nonfinancial business performance Non-finan1 1.843 2.578 15.162 1.801 Non-finan2 1.754 Non-finan3 1.740 Non-finan4 KMO Bartltt’s test 1.793 1,108.134 (1.000) APJIE 12,2 130
  • 8. Internal consistency test using Cronbach’s alpha is the most popular methods for measuring reliability. To establish an internal consistency test, the list of measurements must first satisfy the single dimensionality test. A factor that passes 0.5 of the load range can be regarded as an important variable, proving that all of them are important variables. To verify the reliability of the measurements used on surveys, a reliability analysis was carried out by using calculations that include the Cronbach’s alpha. 3.4 Correlation analysis Correlation analysis is a method to study the relationship between variables, which examines the relationship between two of the variables and how much the two are related to one another. The correlation analysis of variables can become a valuable preliminary data for predicting verification relationship in a set hypothesis. The correlation coefficient r has a range between 1 and þ1. If the measured data on the coordinate is close to a positive slope, Table II. Analysis of correlation among variables Variables 1 2 3 4 Innovative proactiveness 1 Risk-taking propensity 1.377*** 1 Financial business performance 1.174** 1.101 1 Nonfinancial business performance 1.346*** 1.101 1.400*** 1 Notes: ***p 0.01; **p 0.05 Table III. Multivariate regression analysis for financial business performance Dependent: financial Variable b t p (constant) 6.689 000 Innovative proactiveness 1.157 1.933 1.055 Risk-taking propensity 1.041 1.498 1.619 Entrepreneurship education 1.030 1.402 1.688 F = 1.911, R square = 1.134, Adj R square = 1.119 Note: ***p 0.01 Table IV. Multivariate regression analysis for nonfinancial business performance Dependent: nonfinancial Variable b t p (Constant) 5.065 000 Innovative proactiveness 1.361*** 4.687 0.000 Risk-taking propensity 1.029 1.377 0.706 Entrepreneurship education 0.113 1.585 0.115 F = 8.757***, R square = 1.134, Adj R square = 1.116 F = 1.911, R square = 1.134, Adj R square = 1.119 Note: ***p 0.01 Entrepreneurial education and performance 131
  • 9. the data has a positive correlation coefficient, and when the measured data on the coordinate is close to a negative slope, the data has a negative correlation coefficient. Results from the correlation analysis between variables can be found on Table II. The correlation analysis amongst variables of innovative proactiveness, risk-taking proactiveness, financial business performances and nonfinancial business performances are only considered valid at the 1 per cent level. The result shows that the correlation between innovative proactiveness and risk-taking proactiveness are considered valid, showing they have a high degree of dependence. It is same for the correlation between innovative proactiveness and nonfinancial business performance, and also for the correlation between financial and nonfinancial business performance, as both correlations have results proving that the correlations are valid. 3.5 Multivariate regression analysis Tables III and IV shows the results from the multivariate regression analysis. A variable is statistically significant when the result from the regression equation of the variable is at the 1 per cent level. Regarding the dependent variable of non- financial business performance and the independent variables of innovative proactiveness, risk-taking propensity and the entrepreneurship education, the result from our analysis show that only the innovative proactiveness variable was statistically significant, while the rest of the variables were not. The regression equation demonstrates that when the number of the innovative proactiveness variable increased by 1, the financial business performance increased by 0.517. Our study uses the multivariate regression analysis to verify H3. Tables III and IV displays the result. The result examines the influence of entrepreneurial education on innovative proactiveness and risk-taking propensity, which are the independent variables. The moderating effect of entrepreneurial education had a significance level of 0.253, which demonstrates that it was not statistically significant. This result proves that H3 of our study cannot be accepted. 4. Conclusion Korean economy is demanding to change from an industrial society to an entrepreneurial society. It is asking for a generational change from the pre-existing paradigms of such as labor consciousness, the concept of work and company management. Youth unemployment is one of the most critical social issues in Korea. Increasing the number of entrepreneurs will not just simply improve the economy and produce more profits for the economy. Creating more businesses and hiring more people can provide a social safety net for society. That is why all OECD countries have placed great emphasis on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is one of the key elements that will lead to a successful business performance under highly uncertain business conditions. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. Also, we look for the role of entrepreneurship education in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on financial or nonfinancial business performance. To accomplish the purpose of this study, we carried out a survey targeting nascent entrepreneurs and total early-stage entrepreneurs with less than seven years of experience. Our results of this study were as followed. First, among the subfactors of entrepreneurial orientation, it was clear that innovative progressiveness affected nonfinancial business performance. Second, risk-taking propensity did not influence on both financial business performance and nonfinancial performance. Third, both entrepreneurship education had no connection with entrepreneurial orientation or business performance. APJIE 12,2 132
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