Earlier this week, I had a US-based student in a graduate-level marketing source discuss Slogar et al. (2023) in an assignment regarding entrepreneurial marketing. I read the article and pointed out the student the article is not necessarily related to marketing but entrepreneurial orientation and its influence on firm performance. Orientation, according to the authors, has three components:

• Innovativeness
• Proactivness
• Risk-taking

However, I started looking at the article and its sources. Two sources popped out to me: Miller and Friesen (1981) and Covin and Sleven (1991). I read these articles in graduate school, so I decided to skim Slogar et al. to see how these researchers evaluated the sources and executed their research.

The first item I found of interest was Slogar et al.’s use of Country and Industry Effects as interval control variables. Country was defined on a 1-6 scale with each country being assigned to a number. Industry Effects was set a 1-8 scale with specific industries being assigned a number (with 8 representing “Other”). See the authors descriptive statistics (e.g., M, SD) relating to these categorical variables on p. 8 of their study. What wasn’t discussed by Slogan et al. were that a variable called Firm, which is defined as “the number of total employees within the firm” (p. 7), was treated as an ordinal variable (M = 1.7, SD = 0.73). Treating these categorical variables and ordinal variable as interval, rather than using dummy coding, makes the control variables invalid and the rest of their model incorrect.

Another concern I have is how Slogar et al. surveyed “organizations” using the Covin and Slevin instrument, which was originally directed to firm owners. How can organization take a survey? Slogar et al describe sending out surveys to 9,000 firms in southeast Europe and only receiving 963 usable responses; however, there is no statement whether there were controls in place to eliminate surveys completed by more than one person at a company.

There are a few more items I have concerns about but I would need to the data to confirm. I’ve requested a copy of the data from the authors, and have drafted a Letter to Editor. I’ll give them 60 days before I send the letter.

Note: The journal where this article was published, Administrative Sciences, is an Open Access Journal. According to their webpage, the journal (currently) charges USD$2,200 per article to be published. What’s the chance they would retract an article after accepting payment?

References:

Clovin, J. C., & Slevin, D. P. (1991). A conceptual model of entrepreneurship as firm behavior. Entrepreneurship Theory and Management Journal,16(1) 7-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/104225879101600102

Miller, D., & Friesen, P. H. (1982). Innovation in conservation and entrepreneural firms: Two models of strategic momentum. Strategic Management Journal, 3(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250030102

Slogar, H., Milovanich, B. M., & Hrvatin, S. (2023). Does the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and subjective financial firm performance have an inverted U-shape? Evidence from Southeast European SMEs. Administrative Scienses, 13(2), Article 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci13020026