Contribution to the understanding of the effect of corporate culture and the psychological profile of the manager on the entrepreneurial orientation of French SMEs.

Summary The purpose of our PhD project is to present a better understanding of the role of corporate culture and the psychological profile of the manager in the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of French SMEs. The nature of the research problem remains original in the French-speaking literature. Indeed, research on EO has tended to be concentrated mainly in the Anglo-Saxon literature. The main interests of our thesis are: 1) to highlight specific actions that would help develop a culture favorable to entrepreneurship. 2) to encourage the vocation of managers in their entrepreneurial approach. 3) to better perceive the determinants of the economic and financial performance of entrepreneurial firms. 4) to specify the characteristics of French SMEs through the configuration approach. To meet these objectives, we constructed a specific main question: To what extent do the corporate culture and the psychological profile of the manager affect the entrepreneurial orientation of French SMEs and their performance? To carry out this research, we opted for a quantitative empirical study through a questionnaire administered to SME managers of two chambers of commerce: the Chambre Régionale de Commerce et d'Industrie du Nord-Pas de Calais and the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie du Beaujolais. We were able to collect 123 complete responses. To carry out the analysis, we used the linear regression approach with the STATA.11 software to test the nature of the relationships between the key variables of our study. In a second part of the analysis, we used the configurations approach with the hierarchical ascending components method. Regarding the first hypothesis, the results of the quantitative empirical study show that the entrepreneurial culture and the group culture are associated with the innovation, proactivity and risk-taking capacity of the firm. Conversely, the hierarchical culture is negatively associated with this triple capacity. The second hypothesis concerning the psychological profile of the leader yields rather unexpected results regarding the effect of the leader's external control field on EO. Leaders who have an external control field seem to contribute positively to the EO process. We were also able to show that these leaders lead their companies to achieve better performance. The leader's need for achievement is also related to the firm's orientation toward entrepreneurial activities. As for the third hypothesis, we were able to show in our research that the entrepreneurial activities of the company contribute to the improvement of its economic and financial performance. In a second part of this study, we tested our conceptual model with the configuration approach. Our objective was to propose a classification of firms according to the degree of EO intensity. The analysis of the hierarchical ascending components allowed us to reveal three forms of business configuration: 1) entrepreneurial businesses, 2) traditional businesses and 3) emerging businesses.