Although entrepreneurship and alliances research fields provide valuable information on exploitation and knowledge basis, the studies relating Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) to Strategic Alliances (SA) formation remains limited. To the best of our knowledge, only five studies (Marino et al., 2002; Teng, 2005; Franco & Haase, 2013; Brouthers et al, 2014; Shu et al., 2014) related entrepreneurship to SA. However, these studies did not consider Lumpkin and Dess’ (1996) EO perspectives as a multiple construction, and these studies failed to consider how these two factors [EO and Top Management Team (TMT)] interact and influence SA. Overall, our belief is that large corporations and small and mediumsized enterprises (SME) that effectively integrate EO to SA are well positioned to continuously create wealth.

1. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
THE IMPACT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL
ORIENTATION ON STRATEGIC
ALLIANCES’ FORMATION AND THE
ROLE OF A TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM
Doctoral Student Antonio Benedito de Oliveira Jr – FEI
Prof. Dr. Felipe Mendes Borini – ESPM
Prof. Dr. Roberto Carlos Bernardes – FEI
Prof. Dr. Mauro José de Oliveira – FEI
São Paulo, Brazil.

2. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 Context
 Gaps
 Purpose and Hypothesis
 Research questions
 Theorical reference
 Research design
 Findings
 Discussion
Agenda

3. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Although entrepreneurship and alliances
research fields provide valuable
information on exploitation and knowledge
basis, the studies relating Entrepreneurial
Orientation (EO) to Strategic Alliances
(SA) formation remains limited.

4. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
To the best of our knowledge, only five studies
(Marino et al., 2002; Teng, 2005; Franco & Haase,
2013; Brouthers et al, 2014; Shu et al., 2014)
related entrepreneurship to SA.
However, these studies did not consider Lumpkin
and Dess’ (1996) EO perspectives as a multiple
construction, and these studies failed to consider
how these two factors [EO and Top Management
Team (TMT)] interact and influence SA.

5. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Overall, our belief is that large
corporations and small and medium-
sized enterprises (SME) that
effectively integrate EO to SA are well
positioned to continuously create
wealth.

6. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
GAPs

7. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
This research follows the logic proposed
by Covin and Lumpkin (2011) seeking to
fulfill such theoretical and empirical gap
in EO research.
Autonomy (A)
Innovativeness (I)
Proactiveness (PA)
Risk Taking (RT)
Competitive Aggressiveness (CA)
Covin and Lumpkin
(2011) argue and
suggest there is a gap
in entrepreneurial
orientation (EO),
since few empirical
studies have used all
five dimensions of EO
construct proposed
by Lumpkin and Dess
(1996) as multi
construct.

8. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
No research has related TMT
and all EO dimensions to SA
Top
Management
Team
(TMT)
(Antecedent)
Strategic
Alliance
(SA)
(Dependent)
Entrepreneurial
Orientation
(EO)
(Independent)
considering the EO by Lumpkin and Dess (1996).

9. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
The main objective of
this work is to extend
and contribute to the
literature by looking at
the multi-dimensionality
of the EO construct,
generating a conceptual
mechanism that
illustrates the impact of
EO on the formation of
SA and the role of TMT
on this relationship,
teasing out a novel
aspect for the EO
literature.

10. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
H1: Test the hypothesis that
EO is associated with SA.
H2: This relationship is
influenced by antecedents
(top management team).
Purpose & Hypothesis

11. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
So…

12. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
RQ1: Is there a
relationship between
the all EO dimensions
and SA?
RQ2: The relationship
between EO and SA is
influenced by
antecedent (top
management team of
EO?
Research Questions

13. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Entrepreneurial
Orientation
Dimensions

14. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) is a
strategic process in which the
conceptual domain includes certain
performance indicators and managerial
preferences, related beliefs and
behaviors expressed by top
management (Covin et al., 2006).

15. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
• All these factors - Autonomy (A),
Innovativeness (I), Risk Taking (RT),
Proactiveness (PA) and Competitive
Aggressiveness (CA) - may be present
when a company operates in a market or
enters in a new one.

16. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Strategic Alliances

17. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Strategic Alliances (SA) refers to the
strengthening of key business locations
through association with others and
strategic suppliers, as well as its ability to
maintain them over time as a way to
reduce or eliminate uncertainties and build
barriers to entry (Sarasvathy, 2001).

18. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Research Design

19. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Type Search
Descriptive
Technical Research
Structural Equation
Modeling
Data Collection
Instrument
Survey - On-line
questionnaire
Data Analysis
Partial Least
Square (PLS)
Method of Research

20. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Data Collect
Sending email to
top management:
owners,
presidents, vice
presidents and/or
directors of firms
in various sectors
of the economy.
Sample
2014: 101
Brazilian´s firms
Data
Non-probabilistic
data.
To analyse the
relationship
between EO and
SA.
Constructs
Online survey to
measure all five
dimensions of
EO independent
variable (A, RT,
CA, I and PA)
and dependent
variable (SA).
Specifications

21. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
The scales was composed of three-
item, seven-point Likert-type
The SA developed for this study was based on the
alliance’s theory (Sarasvathy, 2001; Hitt et al., 2001;
Dickson et al., 2006).
EO construct was measured by 5 subdomains:
Autonomy (A) adapted from Lumpkin and Dess
(2005);
Innovation (I) from Miller and Friesen (2005);
Proactiveness (PA) by Lumpkin and Dess (2005);
Competitive Aggressiveness (CA) from Covin and
Covin (1990);
Risk Taking (RT) of Khandualla (1977 cited in Miller
and Friesen, 1982) one item; Friesen and Miller (1982)
one item; and Covin and Slevin (1988) one item.

22. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Proposed Model and
Hypothesis
Autonomy
(A)
Risk Taking
(RT)
Competitive
Aggressiveness
(CA)
Innovation
(I)
Proactiveness
(PA)
TOP
Management
Team
(TMT)
Strategic
Alliances
(SA)
Entrepreneurial
Orientation
(EO)
H1a
H1b
H1c
H1d
H1e
H2a
H2f
H2c
H2d
H2e
H2b

23. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Findings!

24. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Description Analysis

25. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Reliability of Measures
Internal consistency, varying
from 0.71 to 0.88, surpassed the
recommended value of 0.7
(Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
Moreover, in consonance with
Fornell and Larcker directives,
the average variance extracted
(AVE) > 0.50.
The data
indicates
robustness of the
measurements

26. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Discriminant Validity
For all cases, the diagonal
elements of the matrix,
which represent the square
root of the AVEs, are larger
than the elements out of
the diagonal line (situated
in its correspondent row
and column).
The discriminant
validity of the
scales was
supported

27. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Convergent Validity
The results indicate that
all loaded factors
exceeded both the
inferior (0.70) and
superior (0.95) limits.The convergent
validity was
supported

28. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Confirmation of Sample Validity
According to Hair et al.
(2009), factor loadings
above 0.70 assure
significance in samples
in which the number of
records is superior to 60,
which corroborates the
sample size of 101
companies.
The sample
is okay

29. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Structural model results
Strategic
Alliances
(SA)
R2 = 0.255
SA1
SA2
0.78
0.71
Innovatiness
(I)
A2A1
0.83 0.79
Autonomy
(A)
Competitive
Aggressiveness
(CA)
PA3PA2
0.82 0.81
Proactiveness
(PA)
PA1
0.90
0.84
0.80
Risk Taking
(RT
RT3
0.80
RT2RT1
0.173
0.042
0.046
0.280*
-0.075
Nota: Path coefficients.
* Significant: p < 0.10
** Significant: p < 0.05
*** Significant: p < 0.01
0.87
Top
Management
Team
(TMT)
TMT2
0.83TMT4
0.337***
0.210**
0.268***
0.372***
0,180
0.321***
I3I2
0.84 0.86
CA2CA1
0.91 0.70
CA3
0.73

30. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
H1
The beta coefficients of Risk
Taking (RT) (beta = 0.280; p <
0.10) are positive and
significant.
RT dimension of the EO
construct had a positive
influence on SA.
The others EO variables did
not show a significant
influence on SA.
H1 was partially
accepted

31. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
H2
Excepting innovativeness
(beta = 0.180), all beta
coefficients of the EO
dimensions including the
TMT itself are positive and
significant.
TMT has a highly relevant
role in the EO and SA
relationship of the firm.
H2 was almost
fully accepted

32. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Model Fit
The present model
explained 25.5% of the
EO variance in SA.
According to Cohen
(1988), R2 > 26%
indicates a large effect
size and an excellent
explanatory power.
It is reliable
representative of the
entrepreneurship field

33. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Ok, you may be thinking ...

34. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 Leaders are an important
antecedent of EO in its
relationship with SA, as four of
five dimensions of EO were
related to them in 2014.
 RT dimension, was related to
SA, supporting our hypothesis.

35. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 EO is a multidimensional construct.
 The relationship between EO and SA
will be affected by TMT.
R2=26.7%

36. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
As suggested by Han
et al. (2012) and Franco
and Haase (2013), it
was found that there is
a relationship between
EO and SA.
Refuting the results of
Montoro-Sanchez et al
(2009) who found no
relationship between
EO and SA.

37. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Discussions

38. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 The present study assumed the existence
of a relationship between Lumpkin and
Dess’ EO (1996) and SA as a manner to
decrease business-associated risks.
 This relationship would be affected by the
company’s TMT.
 EO would act as a multidimensional
construct.

39. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 According to what has been
suggested by Marino et al. (2002),
Teng (2005), Franco and Haase (2013)
and Shu et al. (2014), the present
study found a relationship between
EO and SA.

40. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
This study empirically assessed
the cooperation as a manner to
put the entrepreneurial activities
into practice and connected two
study areas: EO and SA, filling a
theoretical and empirical gap
identified in the literature.
Contribution
to Theory

41. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
The article showed that RT is
associated to SA.
This result exalts Covin and
Lumpkin’s (2011) propositions
that EO is a multidimensional
construct.
Contribution
to Theory

42. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 Investing in EO, especially, RT dimension is
important in order to promote SA. Of course, that
TMT influences SA, but companies with RT
developed capabilities are more prone to give
support to an SA decision and to conduct their
implementation.
 Lumpkin and Dess (1996) pointed out that
researchers have failed to find consistency in
relations/perceptions of RT in entrepreneurship,
whether in the form of creation of new businesses or
misleading relations between RT and performance.

43. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 The RT resides primarily at the individual level and
then is transported to the company level.
 The firms’ RT that appear to contribute to high
performance in the formation of SA are:
(1) Strong tendency to high-risk projects with a
chance to receive very high returns
(2) Take a bold approach in which large actions
are needed to achieve the company's goals
(3) Adopt an aggressive posture to maximize the
probability to explore potential opportunities.

44. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
The present study calls attention
to TMT as predecessor of EO on
the EO-SA relationship helping in
connecting the TMT within the
entrepreneurship literature (Menz,
2012).
Contribution
to Theory

45. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
 The results incentivize firms to develop
TMT in order to have an EO.
 Despite different views and approaches
about the entrepreneur, there are many
points of convergence among them.
 This study provides evidence and an
understanding regarding the potential
benefits associated with closer links
between TMT and firm’s EO and SA.

46. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Practical
Implications
 For practitioners, a firm can benefit from
partners with strong EO through sharing
knowledge that can induce to form an
alliance and improve performance.
 These imply that their companies need to
have RT in seeking to form a partnership.
 As a way to promote an EO, we would
suggest two things.

47. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
TMT must cultivate good
relationships with their team
members to encourage them to
generate ideas and identify
opportunities.
Practical
Implications

48. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
TMT must protect their
entrepreneur from the institutional
sanctions if their efforts fail,
considering that, employees with
autonomous entrepreneurial
behaviour already have EO.
Practical
Implications

49. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Limitations and
Suggestions

50. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Whilst on one hand, theoretical
guidance EO effectiveness
suggests that EO outcome
relationships should exhibit
moderation from internal
organizational variables (Covin &
Slevin, 1991; Lumpkin & Dess,
1996; Rauch et al., 2009), on the
other hand, it is possible that these
variables may influence EO.
However, we consider this
limitation as unimportant.

51. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
We argue that EO is influenced by the
philosophies of the TMT, which helps to
explain the formation of SA.
Therefore, we believe that our framing is
appropriate and sheds interesting light
upon a theoretically meaningful EO-SA
relationship, as calls have long advocated
for within the EO literature (Journal of
Business Venturing, v. 21, 2006).
Future work could verify the EO-SA
relationship through secondary data or
combining survey with secondary data.

52. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Any
questions?

53. The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Alliances’ Formation and the Role of a Top Management Team – CLADEA 2015
Thank You
for your attention!
Doctoral Student Antonio B. de Oliveira Jr.
Centro Universitário da FEI,
São Paulo, Brazil.
abojuniorj@hotmail.com
Prof. Dr. Mauro José de Oliveira
Centro Universitário da FEI,
São Paulo, Brazil.
maurojornalista@fei.edu.br
Prof. Dr. Felipe Mendes Borini
ESPM,
São Paulo, Brazil.
fborini@espm.br
Prof. Dr. Roberto Carlos Bernardes
Centro Universitário da FEI,
São Paulo, Brazil.
bernardes@fei.edu.br