The Entrepreneurial Orientation Paradigm: Performance Implications for Emerging Businesses in Nigeria

The paper focuses on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) paradigm with a clear focus on the aspects of innovativeness and risk-taking and their effects on performance of the emerging businesses (EBs) in the nascent economy of Nigeria. The main value addition is the research of two different contextual moderators namely the business developmental stage and ownership structure to explain the boundary conditions under the EO-performance relationship. It utilizes a descriptive cross-sectional research design where data were gathered by use of a cloud-based survey with 181 owners of businesses in the country and later analyzed with PlS-SEM- Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling. The results indicate that the effects of innovativeness and risk-taking on EB performance are strong, and positive. An interesting finding is that business stage has a strong negative moderating impact, which means that the performance returns on EO dwindles with the maturity of firms. On the other hand, ownership structure did not portray a modulating effect. The research concludes that despite the contribution of EO to performance, the effects of the concept are very dependent on the level of development of the firm. All these findings imply that the relationship between the EO and performance is much more subtle than assumed, with both theoretical and practical implications, especially on how the strategies of entrepreneurs can be adjusted according to the particular lifecycle stage of a company.