Research on entrepreneurial orientation: current status and future agenda

Purpose – Research on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has attracted researchers’ attention for over 30 years. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively analyze the body of literature resulting from 30 years of research in EO, and to answer the following questions: what are the major themes that have emerged? What areas are missing? What degree of convergence do we see in the field of EO, and what concepts/topics has the field converged around? Design/methodology/approach – A bibliometric study with a sample of 405 articles published from January 1987 to July 2014 was developed. Techniques of bibliometric, lexical, and content analysis were used. The analysis involved: the evolution of published articles; the main authors, their nationalities, and institutional affiliations; citation and co-citations analysis; the journals that have published the most articles; and the most frequently-searched topics. Opting for bibliometric techniques permit an analysis of a larger number of articles and a greater variety of articles than other methodologies such as meta-analyses and systematic review studies. Accordingly, a more comprehensive look at the field of EO can be taken. Findings – Two distinct but complementary classifications are proposed to characterize the body of the literature resulting from 30 years of research in EO. The first one demonstrates that the field presents a convergence of the themes in four axis which together comprise studies on EO: performance, strategy, entrepreneurial attitude, and management. The second one presents the frequency of occurrence of the themes in the field: high-frequency themes or classical themes, frequently in the literature; moderate-frequency themes or emerging issues have not been sufficiently explored; low-frequency themes or potential opportunities related to understudied issues and contexts less frequently surveyed. A future research agenda is proposed for emerging themes and specific contexts. Practical implications – The identification of key themes in the field of EO contributes to assess the research evolution in order to recognize emerging themes and contexts, and the research gaps. With this, it is possible to lead new studies to cover a lack of research and advance knowledge in the field. The themes most studied also show the contribution for EO to organizational practice, especially in relation to the impact on the performance, the stimulus to the development of innovations, and the effects on organizational growth. Additionally, the identification of the authors most cited, most productive on the theme and the identification of the core journals for publishing of the area is recommended as a general reference for researchers interested in the topic of EO. Social implications – Although EO literature has been widely developed in Anglo regions (especially in the USA and UK) and Germanic Europe (especially Spain), there are others lacking these studies, especially Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and Middle East, with rare articles published internationally. The results can guide the advancement of research in these different contexts and realities where even issues more widely treated in the literature have been unexplored. The lack of studies in certain contexts can lead to new studies for inserting new insights into EO, such as potential differences between developed regions and in development. For regions where the studies on EO are more developed, the results of this paper contribute to signaling issues and contexts little explored that may be the focus of attention. Originality/value – The generation of literature indicators of EO through bibliometric fills a research gap on the theme, providing a more comprehensive view of the field and of the current status of the research on EO. Identifying the most frequent topics in EO literature, and little-explored themes and contexts makes it possible to propose an agenda for future research and knowledge generation on EO. Thus, it is suggested the development of studies focus on emerging themes like growth, learning, knowledge, resources, and capabilities; also in specific contexts with potential for aggregating new knowledges in the EO field such as family firms, non-profit organizations, social contexts, the public sector, university, spin-off, firms in emerging and developing economies.