An operationalization of Stevenson's conceptualization of entrepreneurshipas opportunity-based firm behavior

Stevenson (1983) holds that entrepreneurial management, defined as a set of opportunity-based management practices, can help firms remain vital and co ntribute to firm and societal level value creation. Mule his conceptualizat ion has received much attention, little progress has been made because of a lack of empirical tools to examine his propositions. This article seeks to resolve this by describing a new instrument that was developed specificall y for operationalizing Stevenson's conceptualization. After two pre-tests, the instrument was tested full scale on a very large (1200+ cases) stratifi ed random sample of firms with different size, governance structure, and in dustry affiliation. The results show that both in the full sample and in va rious sub-samples it was possible to identify six sub-dimensions with high discriminant validity and moderate to high reliability, which represent dim ensions of Stevenson's theoretical reasoning. We label these Strategic Orie ntation, Resource Orientation, Management Structure, Reward Philosophy, Gro wth Orientation and Entrepreneurial Culture. We were further able to show t hat these dimensions only partly overlap with 'Entrepreneurial Orientation' , the hitherto best established empirical instrument for assessing a firm's degree of entrepreneurship. Our instrument should open tip opportunities f or researchers to further evaluate entrepreneurship in existing firms. Copy right (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.