In recent years, entrepreneurship research has focused a lot of attention on entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Many researchers assume that EO has positive effects on enterprise performance. However, the significance and influence of each dimension are still up for debate. The review process includes dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) investigated in the SMEs context, entrepreneurial orientation from theoretical perspective and the extent of solutions that has been found regarding the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on SMEs performance. Contradictory findings are found in African economies. In contrast to Asia and Europe, where the results tend to be consistent across all economies, the results in Africa seemed to vary among all economies. Similar to other African nations where numerous researches have produced conflicting results, Nigeria’s geopolitical zones have produced mixed conflicting results. In the meantime, there are still some gaps that need to be resolved: the majority of empirical data comes from developed economies or weighty emerging markets, leaving gaps in particular regional contexts like sub-Saharan Africa; researchers employ different performance metrics (financial vs. non-financial), making universal comparisons challenging; and cross-sectional designs predominate in the literature, making it challenging to demonstrate long-term causality versus short-term correlation.
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Orientation, contradictory findings., enterprise performance, systematic review
