Corporate Entrepreneurship in Perilous Times: Striking a Balance between EO and FSO

Abstract

Corporate entrepreneurship impels firms to engage in novel pursuits that provide exciting opportunities for growth and renewal. Yet, this same vigorous pursuit of new, stakeholder-enhancing possibilities also exposes firms to a vast array of increasingly alarming security threats such as cyber-attacks, organized retail crime, and terrorism. Paradoxically, then, a strong entrepreneurial orientation can lead simultaneously to highly desirable growth and highly undesirable threats. Navigating this paradox has become a defining – albeit largely understudied – facet of corporate entrepreneurship. Our study remedies this gap by developing and testing new theory concerning the interplay between a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation and security orientation. In results that are relevant to scholars and practitioners, we find that firms engaging in a careful rightsizing security attentiveness are able to protect their assets and stakeholders without suffocating the firm’s growth prospects.