The dark side of EO: Insights into the EO-as-experimentation perspective by investigating the effect of EO on firm performance and failure

The objective of this paper is to advance knowledge on the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct and its effect on firm performance and survival. The EO construct has become an essential concept in the entrepreneurship and strategic management literatures, thus it is of significance to pursue. In this paper we provide evidence for the EO-as-experimentation perspective, which has been overlooked by the EO-firm performance literature (Wiklund & Shepherd, 2011). Most of the literature aligns with the EO-as-advantage perspective and considers that EO as a gestalt construct is advantageous to a firm’s performance (Rauch et al., 2009). Overlooking the EO-as-experimentation perspective is dangerous because this perspective predicts a dark side to EO. Furthermore, the results align with the ignored multidimensional view of EO (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Here we aim to answer a vital research question: what is the effect of EO and its separate dimensions on firm performance/survival? Unusually, the paper examines the effect of EO on firm performance along a longitudinal timeframe from the pre-crisis (fiscal year 2000) until the post-crisis period (fiscal year 2014). Furthermore, it develops objective proxies to measure the main EO dimensions and considers short term and long term measures of firm performance.