Azlin Shafinaz Mohamad Arshad and Amran Rasli An ambidextrous style is where leaders are capable of simultaneoulsy exploiting existing competencies and exploring new opprtunities (Schreuders & Legesse, 2012). For exploration, ambidextrous leader hs the role to assess regularly firm vision, encourage innovation and have adjustments and changes in the organziation when needed (Dover & Dierk, 2010). In case of exploitation, approach use has to be different where firm must be efficent in carrying out activities. Hence, to ensure the survival and success of technology firm, balancing between exploration and exploitation must exist (Rosing et al., 2011).
2.2 Entrepreneurial orientation Entrepreneurial orientation is described as the involvement of a firm to enter a new market by Lumpkin & Dess (1996) and Lee & Peterson (2000). Miller (1983) characterized entrepreneurship is being measured by using three dimensions of innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking. Similar with Covin and Slevin (1989), these three dimensions are also used in measuring entrepreneurial orientation. However, Lumpkin & Dess (1996) suggested entrepreneurial orientation involved five dimensions - risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy (p. 136). Many earlier studies have adopted Miller (1983) three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (Covin & Slevin, 1989; Lumpkin & Dess 1996; Lee & Peterson 2000; Kresier et al. 2002; Tarabishy et al 2005). Only a few have use Lumpkin & Dess (1996) five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation in their studies (Hughes & Morgan, 2006). According to Lumpkin & Dess (1996), dimension of innovativeness reflects the tendency to engage in and support new ideas, novelty, experimentation and creative processes resulting in newness (p.142). Proactiveness reflects firm’s actions in exploiting and anticipating emerging opportunities by develop and introduce as well as making improvement towards a product (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Risk-taking is It represents the willingness to commit resources to undergo activities and projects which resulted in uncertainty of the outcomes (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Competitive aggressiveness is the intensity of the firm’s to improve their position to outdo and overtake their competitors in the market (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Autonomy refers to an independent action of individual or teams in ensuring ideas and concepts are being carried out till completion (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996).
2.3 Business performance Business performance can be measured using subjective indicators and objective indicators. These indicators can be divided into financial and non-financial indicators. A self-reported subjective measure will be adopted in measuring business performance by looking at the perceptions of the owners/managers/leaders. As majority of earlier studies on business performance has been using self-reported measures, these results have been proven to be reliable (Knight, 2000). Most of the times, respondents may be reluctant to provide actual financial data to outsiders (Tse et al., 2004) as public information is unreliable especially from SMEs as they are privately held and have no legal obligation to disclose information to the public (Yang, 2008).
2.4 Conceptual framework Based on the gaps found in the literature and discussion earlier, there is a need to conduct a study on SMEs especially on technology based SMEs. Figure 1 illustrates the proposed conceptual framework of the study.
Figure 1 : Conceptual Framework The dependent variable will be business performance as it is the focus in the study which leads to specific results. Specifically, it intends to study performance of technology based SMEs in Malaysia using subjective measures which are financial profitability and growth. These variables were based on the indicators used by Brush & Hisrich (1991) and used in entrepreneurship research (Brush & VanderWerf, 1992).
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