Since its emergence, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has grown in prominence to
represent a central concept in corporate entrepreneurship. Despite the importance of EO, insufficient attention has been devoted to EO in emerging markets and transitional economies. In this paper, we examine the international exposure of managers within an emerging market context as a driver of their firms’ EO formation as well other potentially impactful forces such as foreign competition growth in their domestic market and the level of involvement into international economic activity within the region where the firm operates. We explore the focal relationships using a sample of 769 manufacturing firms from Russia, a BRIC country that has received very little attention within the literature on corporate entrepreneurship in general and EO in particular. Our findings indicate importance of managerial international exposure and industry foreign competition growth in the process of EO formation. At the same time, the former is shown to be a context-specific EO driver. Implications are discussed.