Determinants of entrepreneurial orientation in family-owned healthcare organizations

Entrepreneurship studies are highly necessary in the healthcare field, as nowadays, managers perform entrepreneurial activities to generate innovative strategies in order to obtain a competitive advantage in the turbulent healthcare environment. Despite this industry faces complexity and growing competition, healthcare providers have been rarely analysed from the entrepreneurial point of view. As very little is known about this topic, we use a multiple-case studies approach to inductively develop propositions. This study applies the construct of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in the context of private healthcare organizations. This research serves as an initial attempt to account for the determinants of some dimensions of EO in healthcare organizations, in order to comprehend how innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness performs. We also consider the effect of family involvement and of the professionalization phenomenon in second – or subsequent – generation firms on the EO of family-owned healthcare organizations.