A growing body of research suggests that a firm's governance system can significantly impact the long-term value creative potential of an enterprise by disciplining and encouraging organizational efforts to pursue risky entrepreneurial projects. Following this stream of research, this study presents the impact of ownership and board governance on entrepreneurship in small technology-based firms. Entrepreneurship was measured by the firms' emphasis to take an Entrepreneurial Posture (EP), encompassing a risk-taking, innovative and proactive competitive orientation. Statistical analysis on a sample of 135 small technology-based firms shows that the level of executive ownership has no significant effect on the emphasis on EP. However, controlling for the level of ownership held by the founder of the firm reveals a significant and negative influence on the firms' commitment to EP. With respect to board governance, the view that a higher board involvement in networking activities by board members encourage EP efforts is supported, while there is no significant effect of higher board monitoring. In all, the findings give ample support for the argument that variations in ownership and board governance have a significant influence on the entrepreneurial strategic posture of small technology-based firms.

As pointed out by (Miles et al.,1999), the global competition and increasing speed of new technology development have exerted concurrent pressure on technology-based firms to improve their competitiveness. Research work suggests that Entrepreneurial Posture (EP) is required to meet these challenges, implying a strong risk-taking propensity, commitment to technological and product innovation, and a proactive competitive strategic orientation (e.g., Covin and Slevin, 1991; and Zahra and Covin, 1995). Adopting such an EP will allow the entrepreneur and his firm to be responsive to lucrative product/market opportunities, as well as quickly act on environmental changes (Zahra et al., 2000). Besides, taking such an EP will improve the ability of the firm to spot and quickly respond to opportunities while repressing environmental threats (Zahra and Covin, 1995).

The Impact of Ownership and Board Governance on Firm-level Entrepreneurship in Small Technology-based Firms,ownership, technologybased, environmental, commitment, influence, orientation, quickly, risktaking, enterprise, strategic, executive, challenges, changes, global, ability, increasing, competitiveness, involvement, measured, lucrative, concurrent, organizational, pointed, potential, Posture, productmarket, propensity, disciplining, Research, responsive