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Strategic Entrepreneurship and Business Performance of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises – the Mediating Effect of Perceived Organizational Support
Abstract
Theoretical background: Strategic entrepreneurship (SE) is one of the key concepts in a large body of entrepreneurship literature. By combining strategic management and entrepreneurship, SE emphasizes the importance of innovation, culture, leadership, and resources in generating long-term value. SE enables organizations to efficiently pursue sustainable advantage and opportunity identification, resulting in improved business performance (BP). This is of particular importance for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which, on the one hand, are a sector that stimulates economic growth and competitiveness and reduces unemployment, but on the other hand, they encounter a number of constraints during their growth and expansion. At the same time, the influence of SE on BP is mediated or moderated by various factors, including perceived organizational support (POS).
Purpose of the article: The main objective of the study is to identify and analyse the impact of EP on the performance of SMEs, taking into account the mediating effect of POS on this relationship.
Research methods: To achieve the research objective, a survey was conducted among 200 manufacturing SMEs in Poland in 2022. The research sample was randomly selected, and respondents expressed their opinions on a 5-point Likert scale. The variables studied were the averages of 4–5 items prepared based on the literature. The internal consistency of the set of variables was measured using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Then, statistical tools such as descriptive statistics, correlation analysis using the Kendall's Tau coefficient, and regression analysis were used.
Main findings: The main results of the study showed a statistically significant relationship between SE and BP. At the same time, it was confirmed that POS mediates the SE-BP relationship, however, the direct impact turned out to be stronger than the impact that is mediated by the POS variable.Keywords
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/h.2025.59.4.81-94
Date of publication: 2025-12-16 14:35:10
Date of submission: 2024-10-20 11:23:02
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