Strategic entrepreneurship in the South African financial services industry.

Abstract

Understanding the internal relationships within Strategic Entrepreneurship and its effect on the organisation is becoming increasingly crucial in the current complex and progressive business environment. Investigation into the consequences that the actions making up Strategic Entrepreneurship have on one another and on organisational performance is reviewed. Furthermore these actions are grouped together as constructs of Strategic Entrepreneurship, evaluating their collective relationship with organisational growth and financial performance in large financial organisations in South Africa. These relationships are analysed by testing hypothetic relationships between the dimensions of Entrepreneurial Orientation, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Innovation and both their individual and collective (SE) relationship with organisational growth and financial performance. Non parametric Spearman’s rank order correlation was performed to confirm that the selected dimensions of Strategic Entrepreneurship correlate strongly with each other and with organisational performance. This research found that Entrepreneurial Orientation correlates the strongest with all other sub-constructs of Strategic Entrepreneurship (SE) as well as with organisational Performance. Leading to the conclusion that Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) is complimentary to Innovation, Entrepreneurial Leadership and organisational Performance and deemed the most valuable component of an effective Strategic Entrepreneurial strategy. This research motivates further investigations into a potential causal relationship between each of these sub-constructs. As well as proposing exploration into their collective causal impact on increased organisational performance (as illustrated in fig 6, p30). This study is also confirms that Strategic Entrepreneurship is a critical requirement for the creation of Innovation, value, performance and ultimately wealth. This result is not only applicable to the South African Financial Services industry but also to a variety other industries and smaller institutions.