The chicken or the egg? : Causal inference in the entrepreneurial orientation-performance relationship

Title data

Anderson, Brian S. ; Schüler, Jens ; Baum, Matthias ; Wales, William J. ; Gupta, Vishal K.:
The chicken or the egg? : Causal inference in the entrepreneurial orientation-performance relationship.
2019
Event: Academy of Management Annual Meeting , August 9-13, 2019 , Boston, USA.
(Conference item: Conference , Paper )
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.17661abstract

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Abstract in another language

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is arguably the most popular construct in strategic entrepreneurship research because it associates with numerous interesting, and important, phenomena. While we know that EO relates to many things, we lack a robust understanding of those things that EO causes, and those things that cause EO. Addressing this gap in EO research requires tackling---and modeling---causal relationships, which is particularly difficult because EO is not something that can be readily manipulated in a laboratory setting. We explore the difficulties inherent to establishing causal relationships using a systematic review of recent studies on the EO-performance relationship. We then use a simulation to show how two popular research designs in the EO literature yield biased estimates. Lastly, we conceptualize an EO study to demonstrate the research design and analysis considerations necessary to estimate a causal effect of EO on performance.