Perceived Environmental Turbulence and Its Effect on Selected Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Organizational Characteristics in Industrial Firms

Abstract

Entrepreneurship and marketing are approached as proactive corporate responses to an increasingly dynamic, threatening, and complex external environment. Both represent organizational orientations built around creativity, innovativeness, flexibility, and risk-taking. A conceptual model is proposed relating the levels of entrepreneurship, marketing activity, and marketing-related structure of a firm to the degree of perceived environmental turbulence confronting the firm. Results of a survey involving personal interviews with managers in 93 firms representing six industries are reported. Turbulence is found to have a significant causal impact on both the levels of entrepreneurship and the marketing orientation of the firm, but not on structural variables.