Corporate entrepreneurship and performance: A meta-analysis

Despite considerable research, empirical findings on the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship (CE) (i.e., strategic renewal, innovation and corporate venturing) and performance remain inconclusive. Using a meta-analysis, the present paper synthesizes prior literature regarding the CE–performance relationship of 43 independent samples including 13,237 firms. Our results reveal that strategic renewal, innovation and corporate venturing positively influence overall, subjective and objective firm performance. In addition, we conduct moderator analyses to reflect on the context and to verify whether and how the relationships vary in the presence of several study-specific factors. We find that innovation has a stronger effect on performance in high-tech as opposed to low-tech industries, and the association between corporate venturing and performance is the strongest in Europe (compared with North America and Asia). Against our theoretical predictions, we find the association between strategic renewal and performance to be stronger for larger than for smaller firms. Based on our results, we derive recommendations for future research and point to managerial implications.