ARTICLE REVIEW

TITLE:
THE IMPACT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP ON
INNOVATION WORK BEHAVIOR AND OPPORTUNITY
RECOGNITION IN HIGH-TECHNOLOGY SMEs

PRINCIPLES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP (ENT530)

FACULTY & PROGRAMME : FACULTY OF HOTEL AND TOURISM

MANAGEMENT (HM240)
SEMESTER : 4
NAME : FATIN NADHIRAH BINTI ZULFAKAR
STUDENT ID : 2018674092
GROUP : PHM2404A2
LECTURER : MADAM DALILI IZNI SHAFIE

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all those who provided me the
possibility to complete this article review assignment. First and foremost, I am grateful to Allah
S.W.T for giving me the chance to complete this assignment on time. Also, I would like to
thank my lecturer of Principles of Entrepreneurship (ENT530), Madam Dalili Izni Shafie for
the valuable guidance and advices.

A special thanks to my parents for being very understandable and giving me all the
support that I need especially during this Online Distance Learning period. Last but not least,
thanks to my classmates and to anyone who has given guidance in order to help me completing
this article review assignment.

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

PAGE

TITLE PAGE 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 2
TABLE OF CONTENT 3

1. INTRODUCTION 4
2. FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4-7
3. CONCLUSION 7
4. REFERENCES 8

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Bagheri, A. (2017). The impact of entrepreneurial leadership on innovation work behavior and
opportunity recognition in high-technology SMEs. Journal of High Technology Management
Research. 28 (2017) 159-166.

1. INTRODUCTION

I intend to review an article by Afsaneh Bagheri titled “The impact of entrepreneurial

leadership on innovation work behaviour and opportunity recognition in high-technology
SMEs” that was published on October 2017. The reason why I chose this article is because I
found it very attention grabbing for reviewing and becomes my tough belief that it would be
impressive for learners as well as practitioners too. By saying this, readers especially
entrepreneurship educators may find it applicable to improve the current and future business
leaders’ awareness on entrepreneurial leadership in business industry. I also consider the
novelty of the article and its impact on the field. The author’s write up of this article to make it
in its easiest and simplest presentation of facts are of which give birth the article to be easily
communicable and readable. This article is relevant as some may not know that entrepreneurial
leaders are truly have influence to regulate and inspire their employees toward innovation and
opportunity recognition. In this article review, I would highlight the findings and review the
overall results of Afsenah Bagheri’s study on this topic.

2. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The overall purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial
leadership on innovation work behaviour and opportunity recognition of employees in high-
technology (high-tech) small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), specifically in Iran
(Bagheri, 2017). The main theme of this article is to recognize the opportunities and
consequently innovative abilities of employees in high-tech SMEs based on the leadership style
of the business owners. In this article, I found that the researcher submitted two hypothesis.
The first hypothesis stated was entrepreneurial leadership has a direct and positive significant
impact on SME employees’ innovation work behaviour and the second hypothesis was
entrepreneurial leadership has a direct and positive significant impact on SME employees’
opportunity recognition.

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 Based on my review, it is important to publish this article because it examine whether
entrepreneurial leadership truly has influence on employees behaviour and performance
particularly in high-tech SMEs. My thoughts on this article, entrepreneurial leaders really do
play critical roles in developing and inspiring entrepreneurial vision of their employees for the
business to generate innovative ideas. It was really interesting to know how employees will be
more encouraged and empowered to challenge themselves, explore, generate and implement
innovative ideas when SME leaders enact their roles and tasks based on entrepreneurial
leadership principles by valuing and support new idea creation by employees.

The method that the author used in this research was by using validated questionnaires
that seeks to evaluate entrepreneurial leadership practices of their business leaders and their
own innovation work behaviour and opportunity recognition. In the research methodology, the
author also explains the measures of this research was by using three types of questionnaires
in order to get the ultimate result for this study. The first type of questionnaire is to measure
the employees’ innovative behaviour at their business, the second one is to measure the
participants’ alertness in opportunity recognition of employees and the last one is to measure
the perceptions of the participants toward entrepreneurial leadership practices of their business
leader.

Also in the research methodology, the researcher used sampling method that stated 39
out of 46 SMEs that the researcher contacted agreed to participate in this study and a total of
310 employees had involved. For me, the sampling size of the representative is big enough to
collect all the data and the author has beautifully describe the sample’s demographic, consisting
participants from the age of 20 to 60 that had good educational qualifications and years of
experience in the business. Based on the final analysis of questionnaires, the results of the data
collection using confirmatory factor analysis with a few model methods and procedures are
likely to have measured all the important characteristics with reasonable accuracy. I think the
data analysis appear to have been done with care using appropriate analytical techniques makes
it dependable and relevant article for the wished for results.

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 The findings of this study are found as steady with theoretical views and previous
studies showing that entrepreneurial leadership has a significant positive effect on employees’
innovation work behaviour and opportunity recognition. The article also trays to summarize
the results of the first empirical evidence on the effectiveness of entrepreneurial leadership in
enhancing innovation work behaviour and opportunity recognition of employees in high-tech
SMEs. Based on the analysis, entrepreneurial leadership has a stronger impact on employees'
innovation work behaviour than their opportunity recognition. In particular, this study
suggested the effectiveness of entrepreneurial leadership in improving employees' innovation
and opportunity recognition in the business environment of Iran as a developing country despite
the strong difficulties and constraints that leaders encounter in practicing the principles of
entrepreneurial leadership in such countries.

In my opinion, this article provides very useful information about how SME leaders
need to be actively engaged in entrepreneurial leadership as it gives big impact of
encouragement and support to their employees to explore and exploit new opportunities. I feel
that this information will be very useful for me, SME leaders and all entrepreneurs generally.
According to Esmer and Dayi, 2018, leaders have the ability to influence others and creating
support and confidence needed to achieve specific goals among people. To the best of my
understanding, employee creativity and innovation are not produced automatically but leaders
must support their employees and encourage them in that creative process, specifically in high-
tech industries (Tung and Yu, 2016).

Furthermore, in accord with prior research (Swiercz and Lyndon, 2002), I liked the fact
that this study highlight the critically increasing need for the development of new leadership
competencies in high-tech SME leaders in accord with the prior research in order to enable
them to create the effective climate and strategies for innovation and opportunity recognition
and learn how to overcome the challenges and complexities of competitiveness and success of
their business. It gave me a detail insight about how SME leaders should learn to incorporate
with entrepreneurial leadership styles to better promote innovation and opportunity recognition
among their employees.

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 On the other hand, the weakness which is the downside of this research is this research
only focused on the impact of entrepreneurial leadership and not mentioning how and what
techniques that leaders should use in order to evolve connection with their employees to
enhance their innovation and opportunity recognition in their business. Without the suggestion
of the ways to engage with the employees, some readers may not find it helpful and thinking
that this article just give them the basic idea of the fact that entrepreneurial leadership does
give an impact to employees. Apart from that, this research only concentrate on employees’
work behaviour. This study should consider other aspects such as employees’ performance, job
satisfaction or the quality of employees’ ideas.

3. CONCLUSION

As for the conclusion, I have reviewed the article on the impact of entrepreneurial
leadership on innovation work behaviour and opportunity recognition in high-technology
SMEs. Due to the influential impact of business leaders’ relationships and interactions in
shaping employees’ confidence in their capabilities for innovation and opportunity recognition,
SME leaders can use this findings of study and develop strong relationships with their
employees to stimulate and maximize their innovation and opportunity recognition. Apart from
that, I also recommend this article for scholars and practitioners who got in this area of interest.

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4. REFERENCES

Bagheri, A. (2017). The impact of entrepreneurial leadership on innovation work

behaviour and opportunity recognition in high-technology SMEs. The Journal of High
Technology Management Research 28 (2017) 159-166.

Esmer, Y., and Dayi, F. (2018). Entrepreneurial Leadership: A Theoretical Framework.

Mehmet Akif Ersoy University Journal of Faculty Economics and Administrative
Sciences, Year: 2017, Volume: 4, Issue: 2

Swiercz, P. M., & Lydon, S. R. (2002). Entrepreneurial leadership in high-tech firms:

A field study. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 23(7), 380–389

Tung, F. C., & Yu, T. W. (2016). Does innovation leadership enhance creativity in
high-tech industries? Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37(5), 579–
592.