Entrepreneurial Orientation and Environmental Hostility: A Threat Rigidity Perspective

We posit that environmental hostility exhibits an inverse U-shaped relationship with a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation. We suggest a nuanced perspective on the threat rigidity argument that firms generally retrench from entrepreneurial capital allocation behaviors as hostility increases. We argue that firms are likely to act opportunistically and increase EO, but only to the point where the marginal costs of such activity outweigh the...