Entrepreneurial orientation: Growth and profitability of Finnish small- and medium-sized enterprises

Our paper investigates, whether there exist intrinsic strategic characteristics, which enables some firms to tolerate economic difficulties stronger than their companions. Tolerance as such also indicates if SMEs as investments are providing return accordingly to their risk level. In our view, the differences in entrepreneurial orientation could be a decisive explainer behind this phenomenon. This paper contributes to previous literature by investigating, how the firm's internal strategic behavior is able to improve the firm performance, and also by showing that SMEs are providing the compensation of risk to investors. Our results indicate that entrepreneurial orientation affects directly firm's growth rate.