Journal of Management 2002 28(3) 387–412 Governance and Strategic Leadership in Entrepreneurial Firms

Corporate governance has been a central focus of strategic management research, particularly the associations among governance structures, strategic leaders, and firm performance. Extant research, however, provides little evidence of systematic relationships in these areas. There are a series of theoretical/conceptual rationales suggesting that such relationships might be more pronounced in entrepreneurial firms. Accordingly, we provide an overview and synthesis of the entrepreneurship literature addressing the intersection of governance and strategic leadership with firm performance. The strongest relationships reflected in this literature are consistent with a resource dependence perspective of the firm. We conclude with several suggestions for advancing research in this important domain. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. Entrepreneurial studies command an increasing share of management-related research. Attention to entrepreneurial firms, however, has not been accompanied by a concomitant increase in frameworks uniquely suited for conducting research in these domains. Shane and Venkataraman (2000: 217), for example, provocatively noted that entrepreneurial studies have not provided a framework to facilitate the discovery of empirical phenomena “no