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Entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities: how firm age and size affect the ‘capability enhancement–SME performance’ relationship

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  • Richard Arend

Abstract

The entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities literature adds to our understanding of how strategic change can drive firm performance. We draw on a recent survey of US SMEs to determine whether entrepreneurial ventures have dynamic capabilities, and, if so, whether differences in the characteristics of those ventures lead to differences in how dynamic capabilities benefit firm performance. We find that most entrepreneurial ventures report having such capabilities and that their differences in age and size lead to differences in how dynamic capabilities affect firm performance. We consider how these results redefine the overlap of the dynamic capabilities view literature with the entrepreneurship literature, because the redeployment of resources to create and adapt to opportunities that defines what are dynamic capabilities lies at the core of what is entrepreneurial activity. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

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  • Richard Arend, 2014. "Entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities: how firm age and size affect the ‘capability enhancement–SME performance’ relationship," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 33-57, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:42:y:2014:i:1:p:33-57
    DOI: 10.1007/s11187-012-9461-9
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dynamic capabilities; Entrepreneurship; SME; Survey; Domain; Contingent effect; Firm age; Firm size; L25; L26; M13; O33;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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