ENVIRONMENT, CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE - A TAXONOMIC APPROACH

This study attempted to answer two questions: (1) How did companies in different competitive environments vary in their corporate entreprene urship activities?; and (2) Which corporate entrepreneurship activitie s were associated with superior financial performance within different environmental settings? Data from 102 strategic business units (SBUs) , in six 4-digit standard industrial classification (SIC) groups, were used to address these two questions. As a first step, cluster analysi s separated four different environmental settings, and then multivaria te analysis of variance (MANOVA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) help ed in identifying profiles of corporate entrepreneurship within each. The results suggested that each environment had a distinct combination of corporate entrepreneurship. Furthermore, these environments exhibi ted different associations between entrepreneurship activities and mea sures of financial performance. Overall, the data suggested that corpo rate entrepreneurship was associated with company growth and profitabi lity.