Board behavior’s impact on entrepreneurial orientation in public enterprises

Artikel

Public enterprises find themselves in increasingly competitive markets, a situation that makes having an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) an urgent need, given that EO is an indispensable driver of performance. Research describes politicians delaying the strategic change of public enterprises when serving as board members, but empirical evidence of the impact of board behavior on EO in public enterprises is lacking. We draw on stakeholder-agency theory (SAT) and resource dependence theory (RDT) and use structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate survey data collected from 110 German energy suppliers that are majority government owned. Results indicate that board strategy control and board networking do not seem to predict EO on first sight. Closer analysis reveals a board networking–EO relationship depending on ownership structure. Remarkably, we find that it is not the usually suspected local municipal owner who hinders EO in our sample organizations but minority shareholders engaging in board networking activities. The results shed light on the intersection of governance and entrepreneurship with special reference to the fine-grained conceptualization of RDT.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal: Journal of Management and Governance ; ISSN: 1572-963X ; Volume: 26 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 4 ; Pages: 1183-1211 ; New York, NY: Springer US

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Management
• Subject: Entrepreneurship ; Public enterprise ; Entrepreneurial orientation ; Board ; Governance

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Tremml, Timo ; Löbbe, Sabine ; Kuckertz, Andreas
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Springer US
• (where): New York, NY
• (when): 2021

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.1007/s10997-021-09592-8
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET