One Scale Fits All? Meta-analyzing Psychometric Properties of Measuring Entrepreneurial Orientation

As a core concept of entrepreneurship research, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) captures companies’ entrepreneurial activities and behaviors. Spanning over more than four decades of research, the concept and its dimensions have been deeply investigated. However, no meta-analysis has examined the psychometric properties of EO (reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity) so far. This is particularly important given the popularity of EO in general and its most prominent measurement scale (Miller, 1983; Covin & Slevin, 1989) in particular. Hence, it is unknown under which circumstances this scale performs better or worse. Using 40 samples from 26 studies that capture over 12,000 responses, the present meta-analysis thus aims to fill this void by systematically investigating the psychometric properties of this scale and exploring multiple moderators. Combining the strength of meta-analysis with structural equation modelling, this study reveals in three steps that all properties are highly contextual. Based on these findings, we discuss consequences for scale development and point at further investigations needed to understand EO measurement.