Entrepreneurial Orientation and Entrepreneurial Management : Same, Different, or Both?

cahier de recherche n°2009-08 E4Entrepreneurial growth of the firm calls for insights from corporate entrepreneurship research, a rapidly developing field under the banners of “Entrepreneurial Orientation”, and “Entrepreneurial Management”. This proliferation can be understood when we consider the stakes: knowing what leads to corporate entrepreneurship would enable practitioners to identify these characteristics in their organisations, and develop what is lacking. Why have these two concepts developed? Are there really two distinct paths to entrepreneurship? Could there be a link between them? This conceptual paper ambitions at a comparative study of the two concepts: Entrepreneurial Orientation and Entrepreneurial Management, through a careful study of the literature. Our development clearly indicates that first, neither EO nor EM is sufficient alone to determine corporate entrepreneurship. We show that second, even if similarities and relations do exist, further research should be conducted to establish the contents of EM, in particular as organizational factors leading to entrepreneurship. Such knowledge would clarify the concepts of EO and EM, giving more qualitative contents to these constructs. This could be used by researchers to (re)open and reconsider the way of their operationalisation, as suggest Basso, Fayolle, and Bouchard (2010). A replication of Brown et al's study (2001) would also strengthen the validity of the existing scales, and allow a detailed study of any possible links between them. This comprehensive study should come strengthen knowledge on corporate entrepreneurship by first establishing the links between EO and EM, furnishing a more encompassing view. It would empirically give further contents of these concepts through the qualitative study. It aims also at testing the validity and reliability in another cultural context than that of the initial studies. Practitioners would benefit from this new knowledge. They would have means to identify the practices that encourage an entrepreneurial behavior existing in their firms, as well as a means to measure the entrepreneurial intensity of their firm. Finally, and most of all, they would have access to recommendations when entrepreneurial intensity is failin