Does Ownership Matter Under Challenging Conditions?: On the relationship between organizational entrepreneurship and performance in the healthcare sector

This research explores how organizational entrepreneurship (proactiveness, innovativeness and risk-taking) in the health care sector affects hospital performance. We thereby consider heterogeneity in ownership and environmental conditions. To empirically investigate the relationships proposed by theory, a nation-wide survey was conducted generating a sample of 152 hospitals. Results show that organizational entrepreneurship is positively related to hospital performance. Furthermore, it is significantly influenced by both ownership and environment, whereas the entrepreneurship-performance link is independent of any environmental conditions. Our study creates important insight into ownership-related differences of entrepreneurship and gives strong arguments for an entrepreneurial behaviour of hospitals.