A summary of the research methods in individual publications

the dissertation. The information on data and sample size, variable measurement, and sources of measures, as well as methods of statistical analysis is provided.

Table 3. The summarized research methods used in the five publications Publication IPublication IIPublication III Publication IVPublication V Data221 Finnish and Russian privately owned SMEs, 2013/2014 612 Russian privately owned SMEs, 2015/20166,389 SMEs from 41 countries, 2016 (GUESSS data) 117 Finnish and 104 Russian privately owned SMEs, 2013/2014

163 Finnish and Russian privately owned SMEs, 2013/2014 Independent variables – strategic orientations

EO (Covin and Slevin, 1989); MO (Narver and Slater, 1990); LO (Sinkula et al., 1997) EO (Covin and Slevin, 1989; Lumpkin and Dess, 2001); MO (Narver and Slater, 1990) EO (Atuahene-Gima and Co, 2001, adapted from Covin and Slevin, 1989)

EO dimensions (Covin and Slevin, 1989) EO (Covin and Slevin, 1989) Dependent variable - firm performance

Sales growth (profit growth in a robustness check) Crisis performance (sales revenue, profitability, pricing, average deal size) (Latham, 2005) Relative market performance (making profit, sales growth, market share growth, job creation) (Eddleston et al., 2008)

Sales growth Sales growth (profit growth in a robustness check) Study context and/or moderator variables

a Context of economic crisis in Russia, 2015-2016; Financial capital availability (Story, Boso and Cadogan, 2015) as a moderator Legal system (IPRI), financial system (Global Competitiveness Report), entrepreneurship education (GEM NES), and supportive culture (GEM NES) as moderators Context of a developed and an emerging market; Dynamism, hostility and heterogeneity (Miller and Friesen, 1982) as moderators

Hostility (Miller and Friesen, 1982) and market growth as moderators Control variablesFirm age, firm size, industry typeFirm age, firm size, industry type, past performance, regional development index, GRP dynamics

Founder age, gender, study field and level, commitment to a firm, firm age, firm size, industry type, number of partners, GDP per capita Firm age, firm size, industry typeFirm age, firm size, industry type Statistical analysis methods

Confirmatory factor analysis, commonality analysis, structural equation modeling Confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis with moderator analysis Confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical linear modeling with moderator analysis Confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling with moderator analysis Factor analysis, regression analysis with moderator analysis Note: a Publication aimed to assess an integrative model of EO, MO, and LO in general, and therefore this cell is not applicable.

4 Summary of the publications and the results

This chapter summarizes the five research publications included in this dissertation.

Each publication is discussed in a separate section, which presents its background and objective and highlights its results and contribution. The final section summarizes the results and contributions of the whole study.

Publication I discusses three fundamental firm-level strategic orientations and assesses their unique and shared contribution to explain the variance in firm performance.

Publication II integrates entrepreneurial and market orientations as SME strategic responses in the context of an economic crisis. Publications III and IV draw attention to entrepreneurial orientation embedded in the institutional context, as well as developed and emerging markets. Publication V addresses the role of organizational task environment in shaping the EO-performance relationship. Overall, these publications help to establish an overarching view of strategic orientations, their interrelatedness, and performance implications in different contexts at country and industry levels.

4.1

4.1.1 Background and objective

The first publication addresses the sub-question of how do entrepreneurial, market, and learning orientations individually and jointly (complementarily) contribute to explanation of variance in firm performance. EO, MO, and LO have been identified to have significant implications for firm performance (e.g., Keith and Stephen, 2006;

Kirca, Jayachandran and Bearden, 2005; Rauch et al., 2009). By its strategic scope, a firm may either stay adhered to one strategic orientation or adopt a broader strategic approach by utilizing different orientations in its strategic decision-making. In an attempt to understand the interrelationship between multiple strategic orientations and their potential complementarities, several approaches have been examined (Hakala, 2011). In particular, a number of studies have investigated joint effects of orientations modeled as interactions (e.g., Boso, Cadogan and Story, 2012), higher-order constructs (e.g., Lonial and Carter, 2015), configurations of orientations (e.g., Ho, Plewa and Lu, 2016), or mediating relationships between them (e.g., Dutta, Gupta and Chen, 2016).

However, the presented approaches are limited in their ability to provide insights into the structure of explanatory power of strategic orientations and the parts of variance attributable to unique, bilaterally shared, and commonly shared effects when considering performance consequences of these firm-level strategic orientations. The aim of this article was to advance this discussion by decomposing the variance across three strategic orientations and comparing their individual and joint (complementary) effects on firm performance, which is measured by sales growth. This was implemented

4 Summary of the publications and the results 62

by an analytic approach based upon commonality analysis (Lomberg et al., 2017).

Furthermore, by building on previous research and performing SEM analysis, the study tests EO, MO, and LO as indicators of a higher-order construct, which is termed as

“proactive learning culture” (Gnizy, Baker and Grinstein, 2014) and reflects a firm’s ability to combine their market, entrepreneurial, and learning efforts for enhanced learning about new business opportunities. Figure 4 shows the hypothesized individual effects and complementary effect models of strategic orientations–performance relationship.

Figure 4. Theoretical model of Publication I: Individual and complementary effects of strategic orientations–performance relationship

4.1.2 Results and contribution

CFA was used to assess the reliability and validity of measurement models. To test the hypotheses, a commonality analysis and SEM analysis were run on a pooled sample of 221 Finnish and Russian firms. The investigation of the unique effects of strategic orientations suggests that sales growth of a firm is overwhelmingly driven by EO, which represents the dominant explanation of variance accounting for 42%. The investigation of the shared effects of strategic orientations further demonstrates that the commonly shared effect of EO, MO, and LO is responsible for a significant portion of variance in sales growth (26%); however, it is smaller compared to the unique effect of EO. These results validate the aggregation of these three firm-level strategic orientations into a higher-order construct of proactive learning culture (PLC). A PLC melds understanding/monitoring customers and competitors (MO), developing and proactively

Proactive learning culture

Complementary effect model Market

orientation Entrepreneurial

orientation Learning orientation

Individual effects model Market

orientation Entrepreneurial

orientation Learning orientation

Firm performance

Firm performance

trade-offs, and configurations with resource availability on SME performance introducing new product-market offerings (EO), and questioning assumptions and learning (LO).

This study contributes to the discussion on strategic orientations and complementarities by comparing and contrasting the individual and joint effects of EO, MO, and LO, and revealing how they work in isolation or aggregate together to drive a firm’s sales growth. The study applies commonality analysis in the context of strategic orientations and decomposes the structure of their explanatory power. It provides an empirical support of a higher-order construct, which lies at the intersection of these three strategic orientations. Moreover, while the combination of strategic orientations is observed to explain firm performance, the study suggests that different aspects of a firm’s PLC may be more pronounced in various contexts. For managers, the study reports that EO-related activities are particularly relevant to sales growth; nonetheless, the intersection between EO, MO, and LO plays an important role and directs a firm toward new marketplace opportunities.

4.2