Entrepreneurial Orientation

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has its roots in the literature on organizational strategy-making processes. EO is conceived as an organizational attribute that exists to the degree that an organization supports and exhibits a sustained pattern of entrepreneurial behavior reflecting incidents of new entry. That is, as a fundamental organizational attribute, EO captures an overarching strategic posture toward entrepreneurial activity. Though researchers have explored a number of aspects of EO, three primary areas continue to propel the advancement of the EO research agenda: conceptualization, measurement, and levels of analyses. Variations in these three aspects in turn have key implications for the antecedents and consequences of EO. Research on EO has explored its antecedents, moderators, mediators and has done so across various organizational forms, levels, and contexts. Notably, there has been a steady increase in the number of publications exploring EO over the years, within field journals in entrepreneurship (e.g., Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice; Journal of Business Venturing), in general management journals (e.g., Journal of Management; Strategic Management Journal), and in journals of other academic fields (e.g., Journal of Marketing; Journal of Operations Management). Since the late 1980s, EO has emerged as one of the most popular and robust constructs in entrepreneurship, strategy, and management research.

Team Pay Inequality: Pay Disparity in Large Teams Increases Employee Turnover by Reducing Job Control.

Pay dispersion is a core organizational attribute, but its’ relationship to employee turnover is relatively unclear. We propose this is the case because prior research suffers from two limitations: (1) it neglects how pay dispersion impacts employees’ psychological attitudes toward their job, and (2) it assumes that teams are homogenous, disregarding that variations in team characteristics shape how employees experience pay dispersion. The current research addresses these shortcomings by drawing on job demand-control theories to investigate how pay dispersion shapes employees’ job attitudes, and explicitly incorporates one aspect of team heterogeneity, team size variations. More specifically, our core proposition is that team pay inequality, i.e., the pay dispersion of employees within a team, reduces employees’ job control—their perceived capability to control work—particularly when teams are larger. This, in turn, makes it more likely employees in large unequal teams leave their organization. Two unique large-scale archival and survey datasets from a technology (N = 881) and financial services company (N = 22,816) provide support for our hypotheses. The current research thus offers a novel perspective on pay dispersion: salary differences within teams fundamentally shape employees’ job attitudes—particularly their job control—and thus determine important organizational outcomes.

What most attracts potential candidates? Innovative perks, training, or ethics?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of two instrumental organizational attributes (innovative perks and training) and one symbolic organizational attribute (ethics) on applicant attraction. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of business undergraduates in their final year (n=339) and a policy-capturing approach, the authors tested a 2 (absence/presence of innovative perks) ×2 (few/many training opportunities) ×2 (ethics is not very important/is important) quasi-experimental design using ANCOVA. Findings In regard to main effects, results show that all attributes have a significant effect on applicant attraction, the “ethics” organizational attribute having the strongest direct effect followed by “training” and then “innovative perks.” In regard to all interaction effects, findings are only significant for two two-way interaction effects: “innovative perks×training” and “innovative perks×ethics.” Specifically, results indicate that offering innovative perks only had a positive and significant effect on applicant attraction when: a firm offered few training opportunities and ethics was important for the firm. Originality/value This study compared three key organizational attributes where most studies only tested one. Understanding which organizational attributes have the greatest influence on potential candidates’ attraction can help organizations optimize recruiting. The results suggest that developing an organizational brand that focuses particularly on ethics and training constitutes a winning recruitment strategy. This experiment is the first to provide causal conclusions on the relationship between innovative perks and attraction.

Organizational Climate as a Predictor of Organizational Practices

The present study investigated the relationship between organizational climate and certain organizational practices. Organizational climate and organizational practices were measured using a perceptual measurement-organizational attribute approach. The Litwin and Stringer Improved Climate Questionnaire was used to measure perceptions of organizational climate dimensions and scales from House and Rizzo's Organizational Practices Questionnaire were used to measure perceptions of certain organizational practices of 84 salaried employees in a large industrial organization. The results showed dimensions of organizational climate to be predictive of the six organizational practices studied, adaptability, planning adequacy, work-flow coordination, conflict and inconsistency, decision delay, and information distortion and suppression. The results showed certain climate dimensions to be predictive of each of the organizational practices studied. The dimension of reward was an important predictor in each of the regression models and, therefore, may be the most important climate dimension for the six organizational practices.