Decision Making and Entrepreneurial Orientation of SMEs: A Focus on the Polish International New Ventures

Introduction

The research on the decision making of newly established companies has been going on for at least two decades. However, despite the conceptualization of effectual and causal logic, still little is known about how they are applied in the dynamic international environment by the quickly expanding start-ups. Moreover, the connections of such firms’ decision-making approach with their entrepreneurial behavior, enabling them to act quickly upon the foreign market opportunities, are not adequately explored.

Taking into account that such firms are playing an increasingly important role in both emerging and mature economies, it seems worthwhile to explore the above topics. This study focuses on the small and medium-sized (SME) exporters from the transition market of Poland, and takes a quantitative approach by examining a sample representing the manufacturing industry. The main aim of the study is to explore the decision-making styles of SME-exporters following different expansion routes and to find out about the connections of decision making with entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of such firms. The authors attempt to fulfill this goal with the use of structural equation modeling of the relationships between constructs measured with commonly applied scales. The first section of the article focuses on the theoretical background of the analysis; next – in section two – the authors present the selected sample and conceptual tools which were adapted to measure the latent constructs. In section three, the results of statistical analyses are included. Finally, section four focuses on the conclusions on the research material, compared with other studies, and on implications for the future.