The relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and growth: The moderating role of family involvement

Lumpkin and Dess [Lumpkin, G.T., and G.G. Dess. 1996. Clarifying the entrepreneurial orientation construct and linking it to performance. <italic>Academy of Management Review</italic> 21, no. 1: 135--72] established the basis of their research agenda on the relationship between Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and company performance. A wide range of research has incorporated different moderating variables and dimensions of performance, such as profitability, growth, etc. Our work proposes the degree of family involvement comprising a moderating variable in the relationship between EO and company growth. This paper pursues to analyse the influence of family involvement on the relationship between EO and company growth. The empirical study was developed using a sample of 449 small- and medium-sized companies in Spain. The proposed hypotheses were tested using hierarchical linear regression. The results obtained reveal the influence of innovativeness and proactiveness on the growth of a company. However, when family involvement is included as a moderating variable in the equation, a new influence on growth is born from the interaction between innovativeness and family involvement and the interaction between risk-taking and family involvement.