Entrepreneurial Orientation as an Unintended Market Signal (WITHDRAWN)

Substantial research explores how firms engage in behaviors to intentionally signal information to encourage a specific reaction, but studies identifying behaviors that unintentionally signal information are comparatively scarce. This study examines whether a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is an unintended signal influencing market performance. Using an objective measure of the EO of U.S. publicly traded companies from 2001-2010, we find that EO unintentionally sends an observable and consistent signal resulting in market performance non-monotonically increasing at an increasing rate. We also find that environmental dynamism and hostility influence the EO-market performance relationship, supporting signaling theory’s assertion that signal environment influences signal quality.