Environmental dynamism and entrepreneurial orientation: The moderating role of firm's capabilities

The purpose of this paper is to study the antecedents of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Specifically, the authors aim to analyze how firms' capabilities influence the relationship between firm environmental dynamism and entrepreneurial orientation. The study seeks to provide a better understanding of antecedents of EO, helping to fill in the gap that exists in the EO literature and explain how certain internal and external factors, independently and jointly, influence EO.

The empirical study is conducted on a sample of 253 firms from the information and communication technology (ICT) industry. In order to test the proposed model, a hierarchical regression analysis was developed.

A positive effect of environmental dynamism, technological capabilities and marketing capabilities on EO was detected and it was possible to observe how technology capabilities improve the positive effect of environment dynamism on EO.

The most important contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that the direction of the moderating effect of capabilities on environment dynamism changes depending on the capabilities that are analyzed. While the technology capabilities improve the positive effect of environment dynamism, the marketing capabilities worsen the effect of environment dynamism on EO.