Work context and employee behaviour as antecedents for intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurial employees and intrapreneurial projects are considered to be an important driver of innovation and strategic renewal within companies. While many studies addressed the top-down implementation of innovative projects, analyses of employee initiatives in promoting innovation within companies are scarce. This paper therefore takes a bottom-up approach and focuses on employee behaviour and how it can be stimulated towards intrapreneurship. We propose and test a two-step model where formal and informal work context affects employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour, which then provides the basis for bottom-up initiated intrapreneurial projects. Our empirical data consist of questionnaire responses of 176 employees in six Dutch companies. The results of structural equation model estimations indicate that formal organisational factors (horizontal participation, resource availability) affect employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour, but also highlight informal factors such as trust in the direct manager. We also find that innovativeness and personal initiative, but not risk taking, play a role for an effective translation of employees’ behaviour into intrapreneurial projects.     

Innovation for Inclusive Business: Intrapreneurial Bricolage in Multinational Corporations

It is often argued that multinational corporations (MNCs) are in a unique position to innovate business models that can help to alleviate poverty. This empirical study into intra‐organizational aspects of pro‐poor business innovation in two MNCs suggests, however, that certain elements of their management frameworks – such as short‐term profit interests, business unit based incentive structures, and uncertainty avoidance – may turn into obstacles that prevent MNCs from reaching their full potential in this respect. We introduce the concept of intrapreneurial bricolage to show how middle manager innovators may promote pro‐poor business models despite these obstacles. We define intrapreneurial bricolage as entrepreneurial activity within a large organization characterized by creative bundling of scarce resources, and illustrate empirically how it helps innovators to overcome organizational constraints and to mobilize internal and external resources. Our findings imply that intrapreneurial bricolage may be of fundamental importance in MNC innovation for inclusive business. In addition to the field of inclusive business, this study has implications for the study of bricolage in large organizations and social intrapreneurship, as well for managerial practice around innovation for inclusive business.     

Intrapreneurship and firm entrepreneurial orientation: insights from the health care service industry

Intrapreneurship affects our daily lives and is a research topic of great importance. Given the current economic climate, its relevance to firm performance has increased considerably both among academics and practitioners. Specifically, our approach has focused on the identification, analysis and explanation of the determinants/variables that influence the intrapreneurship process in the health care service industry, including the private, public and social sectors. The methodology employed consisted of collecting primary data via a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail to health care employees and middle managers from the northern and center regions of Portugal, and the study covered 202 professionals from 45 organizations. The results show that the participating health care team members present intrapreneurial behavior, and health care organizations create favorable internal conditions that support the theoretical concepts of intrapreneurship and firm entrepreneurial orientation (FEO).     

Intuition and rationality in intrapreneurship and innovation outputs: The case of health professionals in primary health care

The aim of this article is to explore the role of cognitive styles and intrapreneurship in health professionals’ innovation outputs, as well the mediated effect of intrapreneurship between cognitive styles and innovation output. This study used the survey method of data collection, through a self-administered questionnaire. Partial least square structural equation modelling method was used to analyse the result of the sample of 209 professionals of primary health care providers in Northern Portugal. Our findings reveal that cognitive style plays a significant role in intrapreneurship and innovation outputs, which are mediated by intrapreneurship. In particular, health care professionals with the rational cognitive style are likely to be more of a intrapreneur and innovative as compared to those with a intuitive cognitive style. Promoting intrapreneurship is crucial for successful innovation outputs. This study reveals that an understanding of the cognitive style of the health care professionals can help managers allocate appropriate individuals to different healthcare tasks. Our primary contribution to theory has been to highlight the importance of cognitive styles in intrapreneurship and innovation within the context of primary health care organizations.

     

How Does a Covenantal Approach to Developing Organizational Leadership Affect Innovation?

As organizations grow, they become more hierarchical and less adaptive; thus, innovation and intrapreneurship suffer. A covenantal approach to organizational behavior and leadership can facilitate organizational flexibility and adaptability to foster further innovation by engendering empowerment and deeper, more meaningful engagement among leadership and followers. A covenant is a morally informed agreement among two or more parties who commit to care for one another and protect one another's rights. Noncentralization, participative decision making, active dialog and big picture thinking are all encouraged by a covenantal approach, which in turn helps to foster innovation.     

Authentic leadership and intrapreneurial behavior: cross-level analysis of the mediator effect of organizational identification and empowerment

Intrapreneurial activity is positively associated with the organizational growth, and the factors that stimulate such behaviors need to be identified. The general goal of this work is to explore the relationship of authentic leadership with employees’ intrapreneurial behavior and the intervening processes. A correlational study was carried out with 212 employees of Spanish companies, in which two cross-level mediation hypotheses were tested. The results obtained indicate that employees’ organizational identification and organizational empowerment both mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ intrapreneurial behaviors. In this work, we note the importance of including authentic leadership as an antecedent of intrapreneurship.     

Are graduates’ intrapreneurial skills optimally used for innovation?

This paper studies the extent to which higher education graduates with higher intrapreneurial skills – creative, brokering, and championing skills – are more involved in innovation. Crucially, we differentiate between graduates employed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations and those employed in business occupations. Using data on higher education graduates from 11 European countries, we find that, in both STEM and business occupations, high levels of creative skills are important to involvement in innovation. Higher levels of brokering skills are particularly important for graduates employed in STEM occupations, whereas higher levels of championing skills are particularly important for those in business occupations. We find, however, that the innovative potential of graduates with higher levels of intrapreneurial skills is not optimally utilized for innovation. Our study provides valuable insights for those selecting graduates for STEM and business occupations based on specific intrapreneurial skills to foster both product and process innovation, as well as for those in charge of designing higher education study curricula.     

Entrepreneurs or employees: a cross-cultural cognitive analysis

This study examines the influence of the cultural-cognitive dimension - measured through creativity, risk taking and independence - on the probability of becoming an entrepreneur or an employee. Institutional economics is used as theoretical framework of the research. The empirical research uses binomial and multinomial probit models, when controlling for socio-demographic factors and macro variables. Data was obtained from the World Values Survey, for the period 2005-2008, considering a sample of 41 countries and 56,875 individuals. The main findings demonstrate that creativity, risk taking and independence increase the probability of becoming entrepreneur, and decrease the probability of becoming employee. Given that these characteristics facilitate the birth of new ideas, processes, products, and services, it is crucial to learn from entrepreneurs, and to foster such characteristics within organizations. The results have contributions for both researchers and policymakers on new firm creation (entrepreneurship) and on the generation of innovation within organisations (intrapreneurship).     

On the way to creativity: Engineers as intrapreneurs in organizations

Organizations often hide creativity and talent. This paper describes how to make engineers active in the field of intrapreneurship within large firms where they often are employed in R&D. This development is seen, in Europe at least, most desirable by the companies today. Technology has an extensive impact on the society and economy nowadays, and it is important to study how technological innovations appear and who is behind them. Entrepreneurship and organizational intrapreneurship are, in many cases, the basis of technological innovations and firm renewal. Engineers are the company's special professional workforce that has the role to produce and develop innovations. Since the world of high-tech companies needs the cooperation of many experts, engineers must be able to cooperate well with other fields of expertise such as marketing, research and development as well as external suppliers and service providers. Also, innovations today often ask not only for unique technical knowledge but also social knowledge to make these innovations meaningful. In this sense, social innovation parallels technical innovation. Thus, in this paper we explore the origins of the intrapreneurship capacity in engineering settings of hightech firms, thereby concentrating on three issues: Who is the intrapreneur and the engineer-intrapreneur in particular? What kind of managerial and organizational support is required to facilitate the intrapreneur's upcoming? What are the educational and work related consequences for practical intrapreneurship tool development?     

Linking intrapreneurship activities to multidimensional firm performance in Turkish manufacturing firms: an empirical study

This study investigates the relationships among the external environment, intrapreneurship and performance of Turkish manufacturing firms. As a multidimensional construct, intrapreneurship is examined in terms of innovativeness, new business venturing, self-renewal, risk taking, and proactiveness. The environmental munificence and hostility are examined as the external determinants of intrapreneurship activities. Firm performance is considered as a multifaceted structure that covers financial and non-financial measures. Based on the data from 331 Turkish manufacturing firms, empirical results showed that environmental factors have statistically significant impact on the intrapreneurship activities of these firms. Profitability is negatively and significantly associated with self-renewal, while it is positively and significantly related with dimensions of innovation and risk taking. Growth is found to be significantly and positively correlated with only new business venturing. Finally, innovation is the only dimension that is positively and significantly associated with both customer and employee satisfaction, which are the main non-financial firm performance measures.     

The influence of transformational leadership and organizational identification on intrapreneurship

Managers play a vital role in encouraging and supporting the initiatives of individual employees to explore new opportunities, to develop new products or to improve work procedures for the benefit of the organization. This study examines the influence of manager leadership styles on employee intrapreneurial behavior and the mediating role of organizational identification. Partial Least Squares modeling was used to analyze the data from 186 employees belonging to several Spanish public and private organizations. The results show that transformational leadership has a positive impact on employee intrapreneurial behavior, whereas transactional leadership negatively influences it. Furthermore, these effects are found to be partially mediated by organizational identification.     

The effect of intrapreneurial experience on corporate venturing: Evidence from developed economies

This paper examines a specific, yet unexplored, dimension of human capital; namely, intrapreneurial experience. Intrapreneurial experience is defined as a human capital attribute of employees who have a leading role in the development and implementation of re-generation activities within an organization under a proactive, innovative, and risk-oriented focus. The effect of individuals’ intrapreneurial experiences on firm creation from an organization (i.e., corporate venturing) is tested by using data collected from different countries. Using a binomial logistic regression analysis and data from the 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), results show that intrapreneurial experience is positively associated with corporate venturing. Moreover, the effect on corporate venturing seems to be higher than that exerted by other human capital variables of employees.     

Managing Persistent Tensions on the Frontline: A Configurational Perspective on Ambidexterity

Ambidexterity research has noted that firms’ simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation causes organizational tensions that are difficult to resolve. To make these tensions manageable, scholars have generally suggested that senior managers take the central role in designing organizational solutions, such as the structural separation or contextual integration of the exploratory and exploitative tasks. Yet, in an inductive study of ten corporate innovation initiatives, we find that our informants assigned far less importance to the senior managers’ initial design choices than to the frontline managers’ subsequent configurational practices. Frontline managers used these practices to constantly adapt and align their initiatives’ organizational contexts, which allowed them to cope with persistent exploration‐exploitation tensions in their daily business activities. Based on these empirical insights and drawing on paradox theory, we develop a configurational perspective on ambidexterity, where frontline managers play a more central, proactive, and strategic role than purported by the established design perspective on ambidexterity.     

The intrapreneurial employee: toward an integrated model of intrapreneurship and research agenda

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - The intrapreneurial behavior of employees has become of strategic importance for the performance of organizations. However, the literature on...     

Connecting strategic orientation,innovation strategy,and corporate sustainability: A model for sustainable development through stakeholder engagement

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between organizations' strategic orientation (i.e., instrumental, equidistant, and stewardship) and their innovational strategy (i.e., organizational ambidexterity and open innovation), and this relationship's influence on their sustainability performance. We expected organizations' strategic orientation to influence their innovational strategy and exhibit better corporate sustainability. We focused on 12 different multinational organizations in the Eurozone and found that inbound open innovation acts as a driver for corporate sustainability while simultaneously positively enabling organizations to pursue both financial and social initiatives. After suggesting open innovation as a new corporate sustainability antecedent, we only found empirical evidence of inbound open innovation. However, we would suggest that if organizations incorporated outbound open innovation in their strategy, they could likely improve their corporate sustainability. Also, we found that achieving an equidistant or stewardship orientation paves the way for sustainability to become an integral part of an organization's innovational culture and actualizes the organization's strategic behavior. Our findings further contribute to a deeper understanding of organizations' characteristics as their sustainability commitment grows and as they move from an instrumental to a stewardship orientation and implement an open innovational strategy.     

Roadmapping for technology push and partnership: A contribution for open innovation environments

There are several tools in the literature that support innovation in organizations. Some of the most cited are the so-called technology roadmapping methods, also known as TRM. However, these methods are designed primarily for organizations that adopt the market pull strategy of technology-product integration. Organizations that adopt the technology push integration strategy are neglected in the literature. Furthermore, with the advent of open innovation, it is possible to note the need to consider the adoption of partnerships in the innovation process. Thus, this study proposes a method of technology roadmapping, identified as method for technology push (MTP), applicable to organizations that adopt the technology push integration strategy, such as SMEs and independent research centers in an open-innovation environment. The method was developed through action-research and was assessed from two analytical standpoints: externally, via a specific literature review on its theoretical contributions, and internally, through the analysis of potential users' perceptions on the feasibility of applying MTP. The results indicate both the unique character of the method and its perceived implementation feasibility. Future research is suggested in order to validate the method in different types of organizations     

Integrating development and operations teams: A control approach for DevOps

Information systems (IS) literature has predominantly studied IS project control with a focus on software development projects. However, by virtue of digital transformation, an increasing number of organizations are implementing cross-functional teams, combining software development with software operations tasks. The goal is to react quickly to the ever-changing market requirements.The DevOps concept aims to effectively orchestrate development and operations activities and smoothly manage tensions within teams, resulting from the heterogeneous composition of skills, responsibilities, and working styles.In contrast to the predominant project management view of control of prior research, which focuses on software development, this study investigates a different perspective: focusing on exerting control in DevOps teams and simultaneously navigating tensions between software development and operations. Utilizing an inductive theory-building approach, we first identify the four tensions discussed in prior literature—namely, goal conflict, method discomfort, decision rights, and time rhythm—and then empirically derive corresponding resolutions.Integrating our findings, we present an empirically derived model that can serve as a DevOps control approach for navigating the tensions between development and operations teams. This model extends our theoretical knowledge about control in DevOps teams and serves to inform IT practitioners, helping them successfully implement and manage DevOps teams.     

Corporate sustainable actions through United Nations sustainable development goals: The internal customer's response

Designing sustainable corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy utilizing the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) framework to deal with consumption in a sustainable and responsible fashion is increasingly a requirement in emerging economies. This paper examines sustainable social initiatives (SIs) via a CSR model and social lens as part of the SDG framework for multinational enterprises (MNEs), to determine the perception of the internal customer and stakeholder (i.e., the employee) alongside their identification and voluntary engagement in their organization's SIs. The study examines internal customers (as the employee) of two MNEs who reside in a developed country and two developing countries from emerging economies. The findings indicate that identification with the SDG‐based SIs selected by MNEs for this study mediates the relationship between perception of their organization's perceived CSR and engagement in these initiatives, for employees in developing countries (and emerging markets) but not the developed country. This suggests the importance that internal employees “identify” with SDG‐based SIs in emerging markets in particular and builds on significant managerial implications for MNEs in these markets alongside their voluntary work with nonprofits as part of their SIs and CSR strategy. The findings also confirm the importance of MNEs adopting SIs that are not only relevant to the global United Nations SDG framework but also relevant to the actors, collaborators, and nonprofit organizations involved in these SIs, including stakeholders and in particular the internal customer (i.e., employee) who volunteer their time to implement these SIs in the communities where MNEs reside.     

Intrapreneurship in the Spanish context: a regional analysis

The objective of this article is to examine the influence of internal and external (environmental) factors on intrapreneurship in the Spanish context, considering differences among regions. Methodologically, the study applies logistic regression and uses data from the Spanish Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for the year 2011. The main findings of the research show through a double conceptual framework (resource-based theory and institutional economics) the direct effect of both internal factors – opportunity recognition and social capital – and environmental factors – fear of failure and education – on intrapreneurship. In addition, the role of fear of failure is reinforced as it has the indirect (moderating) effect; this effect is particularly relevant in lower income regions. The study contributes both theoretically (developing literature and provoking discussion in the field of intrapreneurship) and empirically (providing useful insights for the design of governmental policies for fostering entrepreneurial activities within firms).     

INNOVATION IN A REGULATED SERVICE: The case of English housing associations

This article explores the previously unexamined relationship between innovation and regulation in public service organizations. Innovation and regulation are conceptualized as different types of change - innovation is discontinuous change and regulation change to modify the behaviour of regulatees in relation to standards. Evidence is presented from a highly regulated public services sector - English housing associations, which are regulated by the Housing Corporation. In order to explain the behaviour of the case study housing associations and the regulator to innovation a two-stage innovation classification technique is developed and tested. Stage one draws upon social policy typologies, and stage two on attributes shown to influence innovation in other research. Housing associations' innovations are presented, categorized and classified. The findings indicate that innovation occurs at the borders of regulatory jurisdiction and that it is the tensions over these boundaries that are key drivers of innovation.