Centre for Comparative Economics (CCE), SSEES, UCL
Abstract
In the knowledge intensive context, firms’ capacity to integrate external and internal
sources of knowledge becomes an important competitive advantage and may
distinguish entrepreneurial from conservative firms. This paper explores the
proposition that differences in strategic entrepreneurial orientation (EO) across firms
may be significantly determined by differences in firms’ preferences regarding
knowledge sources. Our research is based on 208 firms operating in knowledge
intensive industries in six Central and East European countries (CEEC). We
identified three types of firms in terms of patterns of sources of knowledge: external
R&D knowledge based firms, in-house knowledge based firms and value chain
dependent firms. By using different proxies or different dimensions of EO, we have
found that the EO is strongest in firms based on external knowledge. Firms with inhouse
based knowledge have an intermediate strength of the EO, and firms dependent
on value chains are the least entrepreneurially oriented. We have also found moderate
support for grouping different proxies of EO into three dimensions identified in
literature – innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk-taking. Value chain firms are not
pro-active, have the lowest innovativeness, and are the most risk averse. External
knowledge based firms are the most active in all three dimensions of EO, while inhouse
knowledge based firms are in an intermediate position. Our results point to
strong systemic features of entrepreneurial activities; i.e., EO is inherently different in
different sub-populations of firms depending on their patterns of sources of
knowledge. It seems that these patterns operate as a moderating factor between
performance and the EO, which explains mixed results from the literature