Entrepreneurial orientation, network brokerage, and firm performance

Arguing that entrepreneurial firms will adopt different behavioural strategies than their competitors, we find that firms exhibiting high levels of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) are more likely to obtain brokerage positions in their networks to external partners. Acting as brokers allows entrepreneurial firms to benefit with respect to the acquisition of important resources such as information and knowledge, which ultimately has positive effects on their performance. In other words, network brokerage represents an important strategic behaviour allowing firms to translate their EO into higher performance levels. Using data from 82 high-tech companies, we find that consistent with our theoretical assumption network brokerage partially mediates the EO-performance relationship and hence represents a missing link when studying the performance-related effects of EO.