Entrepreneurial behaviour, firm size and financial performance: the case of rural tourism family firms

Abstract

Family firms dominate the rural tourism industry, and within these firms family related interests guide entrepreneurial behaviour. This study utilises the entrepreneurial orientation (EO)-performance relationship to investigate which kind of entrepreneurial behaviour is important in order for rural tourism family firms to perform well. Considering the moderating effect of firm size, findings based on a sample of 198 firms and 4 follow-up interviews with owner-managers show that Innovativeness and Proactiveness are relevant variables to explain performance, while Risk-Taking is not. In addition, the Proactiveness-performance effect was negatively impacted by micro firm size. Initiatives to foster firm collaboration to overcome the disadvantage of small firm size and to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation are suggested. ARTICLE HISTORY

The role of state-owned commercial forests and firm features in nature-based tourism business performance

“…In addition, enterprises may seek competitive advantage by using economies of scale (Bamiatzi and Kirchmaier 2014). Since the impact of a venture's features on its growth is theoretically somewhat ambiguous (Kallmuenzer and Peters 2018), it is interesting to empirically explore how the growth of the NBT enterprise is affected by its size and the amount and type of services it offers.…”

“…As to personal traits, entrepreneurial attitude is especially relevant for the knowledge-driven NBT industry and the financial performance of a NBT enterprise (Kallmuenzer and Peters 2018). Two important elements of entrepreneurial attitude are the ability to recognize business opportunities (e.g., Nybakk and Hansen 2008 and references therein), and the ability to take a calculated risk (e.g., Lumpkin and Dess 1996;Lunnan et al 2006).…”

“…For example, among Norwegian NBT enterprises, survey respondents who exhibited a stronger entrepreneurial attitude seemed more likely to change the way they organized their enterprise and tended to have higher income growth (Nybakk and Hansen 2008). In Kallmuenzer and Peters (2018), innovativeness was positively associated with financial performance of rural tourism family firms, but the effect of risk-taking on performance was ambiguous.…”

Entrepreneurial Behaviors in the Hospitality Industry: Human Resources Management Practices and Leader Member Exchange Role

“…Considering that the hotel sector is a labour-intensive business, hotel employees with entrepreneurial behaviors form the basis for high-quality services, and the resulting high levels of customer satisfaction (Horng, Wang, Liu, Chou, & Tsai, 2016) allow hotels to achieve long-term profi tability and a sustainable competitive advantage. In the literature regarding the hotel sector, Kallmuenzer and Peters (2018) stated that entrepreneurial behaviors aff ect fi nancial performance positively, while Nicolau and Santa-María (2013) stated that entrepreneurial behaviors have a positive eff ect on the future sales of the hotel (300% per annum). These studies show that entrepreneurial behaviors provide a sustainable competitive advantage and are essential for hotels (Li & Hsu, 2016).…”

“…The entrepreneurial behaviors (EB) of the hotel employees provide signifi cant contributions to meet the changing product and service expectations of customers from all over the world to ensure customer satisfaction and thus maintain the competitive advantage of hotels (Nicolau & Santa-María, 2013). In spite of its importance, being unable to disseminate entrepreneurial behaviors is a serious problem of the hospitality industry (Kallmuenzer & Peters, 2018;Nicolau & Santa-María, 2013;Slatten & Mehmetoglu, 2015). For that reason, understanding what aff ects the entrepreneurial behaviors within the hospitality industry remains a very important research question that still needs to be investigated (Afsar, Badir, Saeed, & Hafeez, 2017;Kallmuenzer & Peters, 2018).…”