This book sits at the intersection of two lines of inquiry of critical importance to management researchers—what are the contributory factors to building an entrepreneurial company, and what is senior leadership’s role in this process? Inherently cross-disciplinary, it adopts a behavioral perspective and proposes a research model delineating how various strategic leadership variables influence a firm’s exhibition of entrepreneurial behaviors, captured by the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct. While EO research touches briefly on the role of the CEO senior leadership consideration, the field lacks an integrated perspective on how senior leadership decisions enable or constrain EO. To address this gap, the author proposes resource allocation decisions as the central mechanism through which a set of strategic leadership variables causally influence EO. He argues for the superiority of a behavioral view of EO and of strategic leadership, which stands in contrast to the attitudinal perspective on EO and the ex officio perspective on strategic leadership. Opening a rich new stream of inquiry on leadership antecedents to EO, this work will appeal to both entrepreneurship and leadership researchers, unpacking both research gaps and research questions concerning the role of the CEO and top management team, corporate boards, and emerging leadership challenges.
