The positive relationship of firm-level entrepreneurship and performance has received much attention in recent years and has become an attractive title in the entrepreneurship literature. This popularity encourages researchers to study the role played by the phenomenon on other organizational outputs such as internationalization. Until now, the majority of international studies have put their attention on the conceptual explanation of the interaction, and the number of empirical studies on the subject is few. Furthermore, almost all the empirical studies have been performed in developed and emerging markets, and developing areas such as the Middle East are nearly ignored. In the real context of Iranian business, policymakers support entrepreneurship as a proven way to improve the internationalization of smaller companies. Following this assumption, several supportive plans have been designed and executed which aim to increase the entrepreneurial status of SMEs as a way to enhance their internationalization. A question worth answering here is: Does having a better entrepreneurial stature mean better internationalization for Iranian SMEs? To answer this question and to fill the gap in the literature on the subject, this research explains the relationship of firm-level entrepreneurship and the internationalization of Iranian SMEs. To resolve the current conceptualization problem of firm-level entrepreneurship and to respect a broad conceptualization of entrepreneurship, a profile measurement model was employed in which companies are classified into four different groups: non-entrepreneurial, forced entrepreneurial, latent entrepreneurial, and actual entrepreneurial. This profile model incorporates the two popular constructs of entrepreneurial orientation and corporate entrepreneurship to determine the entrepreneurial stature of a company. Surprisingly, while the literature predicted the highest level of internationalization for actual entrepreneurial companies, the forced entrepreneurial firms showed the best internationalization in reality. The only exception was when the environments became very hostile, in which the actual entrepreneurial SMEs suppressed the forced entrepreneurial, showing better internationalization. These unexpected conclusions led the researcher to consider the complementary role of business networks. A case study approach was applied. The results revealed the importance of actor type in the decision to enter a foreign market, structural holes in identifying international opportunities, and network closure in realizing the opportunities. In simpler words, the forced entrepreneurial company held a better position to receive the information about international markets because most actors who dealt with them where international companies. In addition, it enjoyed an external network rich of structural holes and a dense internal network, which respectively facilitated the exploration and exploitation of subsequent international opportunities. All in all, however, firm-level entrepreneurship seems an important factor of companies’ internationalization that could somehow justify why entrepreneurial companies show better international activities than nonentrepreneurial firms, it is not able to explain how different types of entrepreneurial companies could hold different levels of internationalization. This is the mutual interaction of entrepreneurial status and the network structure that presents a powerful explanation of the difference in internationalization among companies. Therefore, researchers are invited to focus more on a configurational analysis of firm-level entrepreneurship, network structure, and internationalization, and policymakers are recommended to see both entrepreneurship and business networks when they design a supportive plan to improve the internationalization of SMEs. / <p>In the printed version is the ISBN incorrrect: 978-91-7519-497-4. The ISBN is corrected in the electronic version.</p>

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’apporter de nouveaux éclairages théoriques et empiriques sur les mécanismes d’entrepreneuriat organisationnel, et plus précisément « orientation entrepreneuriale » (OE). Afin de mieux comprendre ce phénomène, cette dissertation est le fruit de quatre efforts successifs : - Identifier ce qu’est l’orientation entrepreneuriale en le distinguant de ce que ce n’est pas - Comprendre comment le construit « OE » s’intègre dans les principaux modèles d’entrepreneuriat organisationnel - Offrir une discussion critique en synthétisant et mappant les questions existantes, dévoilant qu’il y a en fait au moins quatre conceptualisations derrière « OE », parmi lesquelles la conceptualisation initiale de Miller (1983), ignorée ou incomprise. - Pour poursuivre dans l’intention de Miller, je propose une tamie dexono firmes selon leur gestalt d’OE, ainsi que les caractéristiques propres de chaque configuration. Par une meilleure compréhension du phénomène d’entrepreneuriat organisationnel, cette thèse propose de contribuer à la littérature en entrepreneuriat, en management stratégique, et en management. / The objective of my PhD is to better understand the theoretical and empirical mechanisms of organizational-level entrepreneurship, and more precisely “entrepreneurial orientation” (EO). To better comprehend the phenomenon, this dissertation is the succession of four research efforts: - Identify what entrepreneurial orientation is by distinguishing from what it is not (entrepreneurial management) - Understand how the EO construct fits into the main models of firm-level entrepreneurship - Furnish a critical discussion of EO through the synthesis and mapping of existing issues, to unveil that there are actually four conceptualizations behind the term “EO”, among which the original conceptualization by Miller (1983), gone unheard or misunderstood - In line with Miller’s initial intention, I offer a taxonomy of firms according to their gestalt of EO, and the characteristics of each configuration This dissertation aims at contributing to entrepreneurship literature, to strategic management, and to general management by improving our understanding of firm-level entrepreneurship in SMEs.

Entrepreneurship has been argued to be a key driver of the economy by creating jobs, turning inventions to innovations, and also improving the overall standard of life. A firm’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO) indicates the degree to which a firm is entrepreneurial. However, there are several different approaches to conceptualizing the EO concept and its sub-dimensions, frequently described as innovativeness, risk taking, and proactiveness. The role of the sub-dimensions is not quite clear in the EO literature. Furthermore, many studies claim that firms can increase their performance simply by increasing their EO, while this thesis draws upon contingency theory to argue that EO needs to be aligned with—‘fit’ the internal and external context, if the firm is to perform well. Thus, this thesis aims to advance the conceptualization of EO by problematizing the core construct and also discussing how EO can fit with context. The thesis consists of four papers in which the EO concept is elaborated on and contingency theory is applied to construct conceptual models of the interaction between EO and different contexts, which are also empirically investigated. Furthermore, the sub-dimensions of EO are discussed in terms of their meanings and measurement to point out their individual impact on the EO. The overall findings indicate that EO is not as simple a concept as often portrayed in the EO literature. Rather, EO is more complex in the ways that it can fit with internal and external context and, on these bases, it is suggested that ideal types of EO and context is a way forward for research in the area. Additionally, it is argued that EO as a theoretical construct may not only be conceptualized as an overall entrepreneurial attribute (which is common in the extant literature), but also as a complex and granular attribute.