Strategic Business Orientations

A remarkable volume of literature has been developed so far on the subject of strategic business orientations. The main principles of strategic management that lead the way of the formation and implementation of strategies and tactics that aim to ensure the survival and good performance of an organization are named strategic orientations (Hakala, 2011 cited in Krzakiewicz & Cyfert, 2019). Several relevant concepts have been developed in this field to describe different strategic approaches and priorities of organizations (e.g. Entrepreneurial Orientation, Market Orientation and its subcategory Market Driving Strategy, Corporate Social Responsibility Orientation, Digital Orientation, Strategic Green Marketing Orientation and Internal Marketing Orientation to name a few). Due to the impressive volume of published research, a complete description of the relevant literature is almost impossible. The current thesis focuses on three types of strategic business orientations namely Entrepreneurial Orientation, Market Orientation and Market Driving Strategy. The thesis consists of two chapters: in the first chapter an introduction to the concepts of Entrepreneurial Orientation, and Market Orientation is provided followed by presentation of the thesis author’s research in the field. More specifically, the research presented in the first chapter focuses on how some small and medium sized enterprises managed to survive while facing the Greek economic crisis. It consists of two sub-studies that explored the interplay between specific entrepreneur’s personality traits and skills (i.e. need for achievement, optimism, locus of control, risk taking and negotiation skills) and the company’s entrepreneurial and market orientation, and their role in the performance and survival of those companies. Moreover, it revealed the tactics and strategies that helped companies survive, providing a potentially useful survival manual for firms facing the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. 4 In the second chapter an introduction to the concept of Market Driving Strategy (that represents a more contemporary development in the research field of Market Orientation) followed by presentation of the thesis author’s research in this area. More specifically, the research focuses on Market Driving Strategy and explores the role that personnel attributes play during the implementation of this strategy and investigates the main firm-level and market-level outcomes of this strategy. Indeed, it was empirically demonstrated for the first time that specific characteristics of the top management (i.e., open-minded policy, strong vision, strategic human resource management, transformational leadership, prediction skills and insightfulness, fostering creativity), as well as certain traits of middle-level employees (i.e., open-minded policy, transformational leadership, creativity, expertise, intrapreneurship, commitment, flexibility) are of central importance to the Market Driving Strategy concept. Moreover, it was shown that the firm-level outcomes of Market Driving Strategy are financial and customer performance, organizational reputation, and sustained competitive advantage and that this strategy enhances market change. In addition, it demonstrated that radical and incremental product innovation trigger Market Driving Strategy. Those are significant contributions in the literature of the specific field.