International Variations in Firm-Level Strategic Entrepreneurial Orientation of SMEs

• Published in: Scientific Papers of the University of Pardubice. Series D, Faculty of Economics and Administration Faculty of Economics and Administration, 2020-01, Vol.28 (1)
• Main Authors: Civelek, Mehmet, mánek, Ivo, Nétek, Václav, Milan Robin Paták
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Entrepreneurship; Executives; Organizational behavior; Small & medium sized enterprises-SME
• ISSN: 1211-555X; 1804-8048

Since the executives of SMEs have a crucial part in decision and strategy making processes, their entrepreneurial attitudes related with Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO), might enable them to perform better in achieving their firms’ targets, growth and success. In this sense, this research purposes to determine and compare EO of executives of SMEs from various countries by concentrating their gender, age and education. To achieve this goal, the researchers separately collected data from 1620 executives of Czech and Turkish SMEs and Mann-Whitney U test was performed to make analyses for this study. The findings corroborate that Czech executives are more proactive and aggressive in competition than Turkish executives while Turkish executives are more autonomous. Except differences between younger Czech and Turkish executives, risk taking behaviours do not change among the executives. Lastly, Turkish male and older executives take more innovative actions than their Czech counterparts. The reasons for these findings might be clarified with cultural differences, market structure, level of corruption, propensity to apply patents, public spending on childcare and assertive behaviours of executives. Some policy implementations for policy makers and other organizations are also offered by the researchers to eliminate differences in EO of the executives and SMEs.