A growing interest for the field of entrepreneurship can be noticed in recent psychology literature. A few psychological studies of entrepreneurship in Croatia are predominantly focused on the characteristics of entrepreneurs, while the characteristics of organizational culture and other organizational processes remained completely ignored. One of these constructs is entrepreneurial orientation - a phenomenon that refers to the processes and activities of new businesses formation which includes five components: innovation, proactiveness, risk-taking, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness. Since many studies show that it is significantly influenced by the firm’s external environment, it should be verified whether the structure of entrepreneurial orientation will be replicated on a sample of Croatian entrepreneurs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to test the assumptions of the 5-factor entrepreneurial orientation model on a sample of Croatian entrepreneurs. Confirmatory factor analysis conducted on data collected for 252 small and medium sized enterprises in Croatia confirmed the hypothesized multidimensional structure of the entrepreneurial orientation model. The obtained results can provide a basis for interventions aiming to raise the performance of Croatian small and medium sized enterprises.

entrepreneurship, psychology of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial orientation, Croatian entrepreneurs, confirmatory factor analysis