Matching entrepreneurial orientations: a new perspective on the external accountant's advisory role towards entrepreneurs

Abstract

External accountants increasingly position themselves as full-fledged business advisors who offer a broad array of advisory services to SME owner-managers to help them address specific business challenges. This study examines whether these owner-managers are more likely to use the advice of external accountants if their Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation (IEO) matches that of the external accountant. By analysing questionnaire data of 161 external accountant - owner-manager pairs using regression analyses, we find that this depends on the dimension of IEO. For the innovativeness dimension, owner-managers are more likely to use the external accountant's advice when both parties equally value this dimension (i.e., a supplementary fit). For the risk-taking dimension, owner-managers are more likely to use their advice when the external accountant is dissimilar regarding this dimension (i.e., a complementary fit). For the third dimension, proactiveness, no significant results were found. By applying the person-environment-fit perspective to the entrepreneur-external accountant relationship, our study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature. Moreover, it offers practical guidelines to both entrepreneurs and external accountants to further optimize their advisory relationship.