Entrepreneurial orientation – an overlooked theoretical concept for studying media firms

Current changes in the media industries not only provide a range of new business opportunities for entrepreneurial start-ups, they also force legacy media firms to engage in corporate entrepreneurship and (re-)develop their entrepreneurial orientation as part of their strategic renewal. In recent years, media entrepreneurship has emerged as an area of study within media business studies, but it still lacks theoretical anchoring. While in mainstream entrepreneurship research entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has developed into a highly prominent theoretical concept, it has been largely overlooked for the study of media firms to date. This paper introduces entrepreneurial orientation to media business studies. It characterizes EO’s different dimensions and reviews relevant studies, and then illustrates the dimensions of the EO concept by drawing on the case example of a European online publisher. The case shows how different dimensions of EO are at play in the media firm and how the relevance of these dimensions is not stable over time, but in constant flux. Such process perspective on EO is outlined as a major future research opportunity for media entrepreneurship studies

Small firm growth

We review and discuss the literature on small firm growth with an intention to provide a useful vantage point for new research studies regarding this important phenomenon. We first discuss conceptual and methodological issues that represent critical choices for those who research growth and which make it challenging to compare results from previous studies. The substantial review of past research is organized into four sections representing two smaller and two larger literatures. The first of the latter focuses on internal and external drivers of small firm growth. Here we find that much has been learnt and that many valuable generalizations can be made. However, we also conclude that more research of the same kind is unlikely to yield much. While interactive and non-linear effects may be worth pursuing it is unlikely that any new and important growth drivers or strong, linear main effects would be found. The second large literature deals with organizational life-cycles or stages of development. While deservedly criticized for unwarranted determinism and weak empirics this type of approach addresses problems of high practical and also theoretical relevance, and should not be shunned by researchers. We argue that with a change in the fundamental assumptions and improved empirical design, research on the organizational and managerial consequences of growth is an important line of inquiry. With this, we overlap with one of the smaller literatures, namely studies focusing on the effects of growth. We argue that studies too often assume that growth equals success. We advocate instead the use of growth as an intermediary variable that influences more fundamental goals in ways that should be carefully examined rather than assumed. The second small literature distinguishes between different modes or forms of growth, including, e.g., organic vs. acquisition-based growth, and international expansion. We note that modes of growth is an important topic that has been under studied in the growth literature, whereas in other branches of research aspects of it may have been studied intensely, but not primarily from a growth perspective. In the final section we elaborate on ways forward for research on small firm growth. We point at rich opportunities for researchers who look beyond drivers of growth, where growth is viewed as a homogenous phenomenon assumed to unambiguously reflect success, and instead focus on growth as a process and a multi-dimensional phenomenon, as well as on how growth relates to more fundamental outcomes

Research on Small Firm Growth: A Review

Studies of small firm growth are no longer short in supply. On the contrary, as demonstrated by recent reviews, dozens and dozens of empirical research studies on this topic can be compiled. This does not necessarily mean that we know everything we want to know about small firm growth. In fact, all of the authors of recent review articles complain that a coherent picture is not easy to distil from the material. This is likely due to differences in theoretical and epistemological perspectives and interpretations; operationalizations; empirical contexts; modelling and analysis approaches, as well as the inherent complexity of the phenomenon itself. Thus, not only a superficial but also a rather deep reading of the extant literature easily leaves the reader confused and wondering. Admitting that, we will focus in this paper on the fact that significant progress has been made and that we do actually know quite a bit now about the phenomenon of small firm growth; its antecedents and effects, and how it can or should be studied. It is not possible within the confines of a conference paper—and possibly outside the capacity of these authors—to give a complete account of that knowledge. What we will attempt is a summary of points of convergence within some key themes. We first discuss the nature of the phenomenon of small firm growth and its relation to entrepreneurship. Here we discuss the fact that the concept ‘growth’ is used both for ‘change in amount’ and for the process that leads to that change. We also note that part of the reason for lack of coherence in previous research is the heterogeneous nature of growth; firms can expand along different dimensions and show many different growth patterns over time. As regards the relationship between growth and entrepreneurship we conclude that at least early growth of new ventures is part of the entrepreneurship phenomenon. We then move on to how growth can best be assessed. This involves decisions about number of time periods; choice of specific indicator(s) and growth formulae, and the like. We conclude that ideally, growth should be assessed as size changes over multiple periods, preferably in a concurrent, longitudinal design. While sales growth is the most generally applicable measure, theoretical and industry-specific concerns should also influence the choice of indicator(s). A major section is devoted to the long list of internal and external factors that have been hypothesized and shown to influence firm growth. It is probably the case that every theoretically reasonable suggestion for a growth determinant has been shown to have the predicted impact in some context. We argue that the problem is to develop better knowledge about the relative and combined effects of the many predictors under different circumstances. One way to deal with this problem is to increase the level of abstraction and regard the many particularities as aspects of more over-riding factors, some of which influence growth directly while others only have an indirect impact. Another is to give up ambitions of approaching full explanation but instead enhance our understanding of the interplay among a smaller set of specific factors. A third is to limit the study to a more homogenous empirical context and generalize only to that context until replications have shown broader generalization is warranted. We then turn to how small firms grow, if at all. This concerns issues of organic vs. acquisition-based growth; internationalisation; integration; diversification, etc. One striking result here is the very marked difference between young and small vs. large and mature growing firms in that the former mainly grow organically while the latter achieve the bulk of their growth through acquisitions. This has some overlap with the next topic, which is ‘growth stages and transitions’, but as the latter is a relatively separate stream in the literature we keep it as such. We note that the critique of this literature seems to have led not to better research but to no research at all in this stream more recently. This is unfortunate because it represents the type of knowledge small firm managers typically need and demand. Before concluding, we also treat the relationship between growth and profitability. Surprisingly few studies have investigated this crucial relationship. Recent findings indicate that firms that grow successfully do so by first securing profitability, and then go for growth. This is strong reason to caution against a universal and uncritical growth ideology. As it appears, firms that grow at low profitability often end up in the undesirable state of low growth and low profits instead. This also puts small-firm managers’ widespread reluctance to pursue growth in a different light. Finally, we conclude the paper with a summary of what our review implies for the design of further studies on small firm growth

Le discourse entrepreneurial dans les journaux allemands – “esprit entrepreneurial, montre-toi”

In diesem Beitrag verwenden wir die Methode der zeitungstextbasierten Diskursanalyse, um auf unterschiedlichen Analyseebenen zu eruieren, wie das Phänomen „Entrepreneurship“ in großen deutschen Zeitungen diskutiert wird. Dabei untersuchen wir in der Berichterstattung der Jahre 1997-2003, wie sich die Diskussion vor, während und nach dem Internetboom entwickelt hat. Wir stellen die Analyseergebnisse in den Kontext für Unternehmensgründungen und –entwicklungen in Deutschland im selben Zeitraum und leiten im Anschluss an die Diskussion unserer Ergebnisse einige Handlungsempfehlungen ab.In this paper, we introduce discourse analysis as a method to investigate on different levels of analysis how the major German newspapers discuss the phenomenon of ‘entrepreneurial spirit’, and how this discussion changes over the years 1997-2003 (and thus before, during and after the Internet boom). We interpret our findings in light of the context of entrepreneurship in Germany during the same period and conclude with a number of implications.Este artículo introduce el análisis de discurso como un método válido para investigar, en diferentes niveles de análisis, cómo los principales diarios alemanes han tratado el fenómeno del ‘espíritu de emprendimiento’. También se discute cómo el debate ha evolucionado en el período 1997-2003, cubriendo antes, durante y después del boom de Internet. Los resultados de la investigación son interpretados considerando el contexto alemán para los emprendedores en dicho período, concluyendo con las respectivas implicaciones.Dans cette étude, nous appliquons la méthode d’analyse de discours à partir de textes journalistiques afin d’étudier à différents niveaux comment les principaux journaux allemands traitent le phénomène “d’esprit entrepreneurial” et de voir comment ce discours a évolué de 1997 à 2003 (avant, pendant et après la bulle Internet). Les résultats seront ensuite interprétés au regard du contexte entrepreneurial en Allemagne pendant la même période, et nous conclurons finalement par plusieurs recommandations.</p