Entrepreneurial Orientation Rhetoric in Franchise Organizations: The Impact of National Culture

Abstract

This study examines the role of national culture on the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric contained within franchisee recruitment promotional materials, where EO rhetoric is defined as the strategic use of words in organizational narratives to convey the risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness of the firm. The sample comprised 378 franchise organizations, in five different countries (Australia, France, India, South Africa, and the UK). The results indicate that franchise systems operating in high uncertainty avoidance and feminine cultures use less entrepreneurially oriented rhetoric, suggesting that EO rhetoric in franchise organizations varies according to different national cultural contexts. Keywords franchising, entrepreneurial orientation, national cultureResearch suggests that there are cross-cultural variations in entrepreneurial entry rates (Autio, Pathak, & Wennberg, 2013) and it seems that this in part stems from differences in national cultural values. It has been contended that entrepreneurship is a response to certain environmental conditions that can help or hinder entrepreneurial success (Lee & Peterson, 2000). Berger (1991, p. 122) comments that ''culture [. . .] serves as the conductor, and the entrepreneur as the catalyst'' to entrepreneurship. Mueller and Thomas (2001, p. 58) argue that values and norms are ''powerful forces in controlling and directing human behavior,'' and thus differences in cultural values may mean that the extent to which entrepreneurial behaviors, such as risk taking and independent thinking, are considered desirable will differ between cultures (Hayton, Gerard, & Zahra, 2002). Therefore, it is suggested that some cultures will be Covin and Miller (2014), empirical research on the relationship between EO and national culture is very limited. This provides a significant research opportunity (Covin & Miller, 2014), which the present study seeks to develop further.This paper examines the role of national culture on the EO rhetoric contained within franchisee recruitment promotional materials. Drawing on Zachary et al. (2011a), we define EO rhetoric as the strategic use of words in organizational narratives to convey the risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness of the firm. We argue that cultural differences in EO will lead to differences in the extent to which EO rhetoric is used to attract franchisees. Thus, for example, in cultures where autonomy is more highly valued, franchisors may be more likely to stress the independence offered by franchising in their communications. Similarly, in cultures where risk taking is not valued (or indeed where cultures are risk-averse), franchisors may emphasize the reduced risk offered by being part of an established system. EO has been conceptualized in a number of different ways in the literature (see Covin & Lumpkin, 2011 for a discussion), but these have principally been aligned to one of two key conceptualizations. The first,...

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