CEO Entrepreneurial Orientation, Managerial Discretion, and Strategic Change

This study focuses on the relationship between CEOs individual difference in their entrepreneurial orientation and firm's magnitude of strategic change. Based on upper echelons perspective and the attention based view, this study proposes that CEO entrepreneurial orientation acts as filters in how they interpret competitive cues and in turn affect a firm's overall magnitude of strategic change. In addition, the relationship between CEO entrepreneurial orientation and strategic change is strengthened when the environmental discretion or the firm's financial slack is relatively high, or when the CEO is also the chairman of the board. Analyses of 1452 observations from the S&P 500 firms collected for the 18-year period of 1996¨C2014 have largely supported our theses.