Identifying 'high performing' entrepreneurial oriented microenterprises -an empirical framework

Lahiri, Dhruba Identifying 'high performing' entrepreneurial oriented microenterprises -an empirical framework. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, economies and governments across the world have progressively recognised the importance of 'technology' and 'entrepreneurship' as the driving forces for creation of economic value and wealth. In the context of microenterprises, firm level characteristics like the ability to absorb ‘technology’ (i.e. Absorptive Capacity) and to act ‘entrepreneurially’ (namely, Entrepreneurial Orientation) have become important measurements. This research presents a methodology that integrates the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) constructs to explain the performance of microenterprises and identify high performers. The performance of microenterprises has been measured in terms of their potential to create value or wealth. This research validates that a ‘forward looking’ measure of performance that measures the ‘potential value or wealth’ is more suitable than the conventional measure, which uses historical data. It also establishes that the EO and ACAP constructs can be successfully integrated to explain a large part of this value or wealth creating potential. This study covers 165 UK based microenterprises spread across different sectors and industries. Seventy (70) of these microenterprises have been labelled as ‘Entrepreneurial Oriented (EO)’ type enterprises as distinct and separate from the 95 Small Business Owners (SBO) types. The demarcation between the EO and SBO type has been justified and subsequently validated in this research. The results show that it is possible to demarcate between the EO and SBO type enterprises before their respective internal attributes (EO or SBO) are measured. This is particularly important since the two types of enterprises have different antecedents that drive their performance. As in previous studies, this research found Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) to be a uni-dimensional concept. On the other hand, Absorptive Capacity (ACAP), applying the original definition of Cohen & Levinthal (1991) was found to comprise of three components. The predictive model used in this study based on Principal Component analysis (PCA) and Ordinal Regression was able to successfully identify a majority (81.81%) of the high performers. More importantly, none of the low and only one of the medium performers was wrongly identified as high performers. The development of a methodology to predict potentially high value-creating microenterprises has important ramifications for policymaking and economic development both in developed economies like the United Kingdom as well as peripheral and developing economies

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	Date: 2015-10 (completed)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Entrepreneurial Orientation, Absorptive Capacity, Performance, Microenterprises
Subjects:	?? H1 ?? ?? HB ?? ?? HD28 ??
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	09 Dec 2015 15:09
Last Modified:	16 Dec 2022 04:43
DOI:	10.17638/02038719
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2038719