Entrepreneurial orientation: where do we go from here?

The aim of this work is to depict the evolution of the concept of entrepreneurial orientation in managerial literature, focusing, in particular, on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Over time many authors have provided a comprehensive qualitative review and evaluation of the teorethical empirical entrepreneurial orientation literature. Are we at the final stage of maturity in entrepreneurial orientation literature? What can we learn from previous literature and what remains still unexplored? What are the new tendencies in conceptualizing the complex construct of entrepreneurial orientation? Adopting a critical perspective, our work aims at synthesizing through a systematic literature review the managerial literature on entrepreneurial orientation, emphasizing the most recent contributions and the literature gaps. Our results suggest that main literature adopts a prevalently static approach to entrepreneurial orientation. Our work aims at opening a debate on more dynamic approaches to entrepreneurial orientation which is, in our opinion, strictly related to the organizational learning issues.