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expect greater levels of exploration, indicating more spatial search in domains external to the
organization, to be positively related to the payoff of innovativeness. Thus, the following
specific hypothesis is formulated:
Hypothesis 2: The higher levels of explorative orientation, the better performance of
new product development.
2.7 The Mediating Role of Exploration Orientation
The preceding hypotheses link the relationships among managers’ stewardship
orientation, exploration orientation and NPD performance. Implicitly, this discussion
suggests that the managers’ stewardship orientation, in terms of decision comprehensiveness,
governance participation and long-term orientation influences the firm’s NPD performance
through its influence on the firm’s exploration activities. Lumpkin and Dess (1996) argue the
importance of entrepreneurial processes, i.e., the methods, practices and decision-making
styles managers use to act entrepreneurially. The entrepreneurial processes include
explorative and exploitative activities, such as experimenting with promising new
technologies versus reducing production cost, and having a predisposition to undertake risky
ventures versus introducing a new generation of products in existing markets (Covin and
Slevin, 1989, 1991; Miller, 1983). With the combinations of the entrepreneurial behaviors on
the individual and/or organizational levels, the entrepreneurial processes influence the
outcome of entrepreneurship. Besides, since managers’ stewardship orientation controls
family firms’ strategic decisions and largely defines exploration behaviors, the effect of
managers’ stewardship orientation on NPD is created by the managers’ effect on exploration
behaviors. In other words, managers’ stewardship orientation affects NPD performance, only
because of the differentiating characteristics (decision comprehensiveness, governance
participation and long-term orientation) that influence exploration behaviors, which in turn,
influences NPD performance. Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3a: Explorative orientation mediates the effects of managerial decision
comprehensiveness on new product development performance.
Hypothesis 3b: Explorative orientation mediates the effects of participative governance
on new product development performance.
Hypothesis 3c: Explorative orientation mediates the effects of managerial long-term
orientation on new product development performance.