A growing consensus on suitability of Strategic Entrepreneurship (SE) for firms to face challenges in a competitive environment is anchored on the argument that SE is an intersection of entrepreneurship and strategic management associated with opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviours. However, this concept is flawed by failure of firms to simultaneously combine opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviours to attain and sustain performance, a situation that raised contentions on the relevance of constructs chosen to build SE. Recently, other scholars suggested that SE is more than interface between strategic management and entrepreneurship and treat this fusion as a debatable idea. This argument presents a conceptual gap which triggered this study. This study examined three constructs namely: Market Orientation (MO), Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Networking Capability (NWC), which are collectively referred to as dimensions of Strategic Entrepreneurial Response (SER) as appropriate constructs to enhance simultaneous opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviours. With the understanding that these constructs were collectively used for the first time to study SER, this study examined if their individual dimensions could successful measure SER, and if they are related to SME performance. Also, examined how much variance in SME performance is explained by scores of the dimensions of SER and whether the interaction of the dimensions of SER explains a significant amount of variance in performance to enhance simultaneous opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviours. In the course of the study, a cross-sectional research design was used to collect data from SME’s in Tanzania of which 291 SME owners/managers were randomly selected and interviewed in three types of industries namely: manufacturing, service and retail. A factor analysis after oblique rotation revealed 9 factors and explained 68.16% of total variance. The identified factors were customer orientation, competitor orientation (market orientation), pro-activeness, risk taking, competitive aggressiveness (entrepreneurial orientation), relational skills, internal communication, coordination and partner’s knowledge (networking capability). Subjecting the nine factors into the second order factor analysis converged into a single component suggesting successful measuring SER. The findings confirmed a relationship between dimensions of SER and SME performance suggesting that emphasis on market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation and networking capability enhance SME performance. However, the interaction of the three dimensions only market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation explained significant amount of variance in SME performance, with large amount of variance accounted for by the market orientation. The findings suggest that emphasis on market orientation is a firm’s strategic choice to generate strategic information which forms a seedbed of opportunities from which entrepreneurial oriented firms identify and proactively seize to build competitive advantage. Contrary to previous studies, which emphasized that opportunity seeking is a domain of entrepreneurial orientation, this study argues that previous studies underplayed the role of market orientation on opportunity seeking. This study views entrepreneurial orientation as more driven by opportunity exploitation which is more of advantage seeking than opportunity seeking. This study suggest that sustained market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation cultures build opportunity seeking and advantage seeking behaviors crucial to create and sustain SME performance. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Business Management / unrestricted

Background: Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) are major contributors to wealth,economy as well as society. In today’s uncertain times, the challenge for SMEs’ top managerslies in choosing the right strategic approach to generate a competitive advantage and wealth. Research Problem: Due to the ambiguous business context, the strategic approach of SMEs isof high importance to ensure a flexible, growth, and value-generating approach. Top managersare exposed to the difficulty of applying a strategy, which ensures performance and enables thecreation of newness. The concept of strategic entrepreneurship consists of advantage-seekingand opportunity-seeking and aims to ensure wealth creation. This is done by combining thesetwo dimensions to ensure strategic renewal within established organizations. Until now,especially in SMES, the concept of strategic entrepreneurship has not been studied substantialenough from a top managers perspective. We consider the field decisive to analyze, ensuring astrategic approach for top managers in SMEs to help manifest the competitive advantage intoday’s ambiguous business context. Research Purpose: To explore how top managers are managing the two dimensions, namelythe performance (advantage-seeking) and the entrepreneurial (opportunity-seeking) dimension,of strategic entrepreneurship in SMEs.Research Questions: (1) How do top managers engage in strategic entrepreneurship in SMEs?(2) How do top managers manage the relationship between advantage-seeking and opportunityseekingin SMEs? (3) How does the SME context impact top managers in managing SE? Method: Ontology: Relativism - Epistemology: Social constructionism - Research approach:Qualitative study - Methodology: Study based on exploratory qualitative interviews - Datacollection: In-depth interviews - Sampling: Purposive sampling with 10 SME top managers and2 SME consultants - Data Analysis: Content analysis with tree-diagram Conclusion: This study contributes by demonstrating the cognitive as well as the contextuallevel top managers are utilizing to engage in strategic entrepreneurship in the performanceorientedSME context. Moreover, our contributions are associated with various managerialsupport actions. To demonstrate these, we developed a model which outlines top managers’cognitive-oriented engagement towards the advantage-seeking and opportunity-seekingdimension of SE in SMEs. Managerial Implications: We present three managerial implications for top managers who areactive in SE as well as for aspiring top managers and SME owners. The practicalrecommendations can support top managers’ engagement in strategic entrepreneurship from anindividual as well as an organizational perspective.