Intrapreneurship and Trust

Abstract

Trust and entrepreneurship are seen as key ingredients of long term prosperity. However, it is not clear how these two are related. Part of the confusion can be traced back to the measurement of entrepreneurship, biased towards independent entrepreneurship (selfemployed and new firms), and excluding entrepreneurship within established organizations. We shed new light on the relationship between trust and entrepreneurship, by proposing two mechanisms relating trust to entrepreneurship by employees, so-called intrapreneurship. We hypothesize that generalized trust influences the prevalence of intrapreneurship in an economy, and the allocation of entrepreneurial talents between independent entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, through two mechanisms. First, generalized trust may substitute for complete contracts as a means of organizing labor in society, enabling a level of job autonomy in organizations necessary for intrapreneurship to flourish. Second, by way of its influence on the size and scope of the welfare state, generalized trust may increase the benefits of employment relative to self-employment, causing entrepreneurial individuals to elect to be intrapreneurs rather than independent entrepreneurs. Using a novel dataset, we find support for these hypotheses in a crosscountry regression model covering the time period 2011-2017.

The bottleneck of intrapreneurship: are social positions and held expectations constraints in organizations’ entrepreneur process? A conceptual view

“…The second contribution of this theoretical argument is about why a person chooses to be an intrapreneur or behave according to entrepreneurially (Elert et al, 2019) at the micro or individual levels. So, the other research question about the paper is if intrapreneurial roles are reflected appraisal (Bordens and Horowitz, 2002) of individuals rather than a reflection of organizational culture.…”

Fertile soil for intrapreneurship: impartial institutions and human capital

“…Koellinger and Minniti, 2009). The design of the social security system may also benefit employment relative to selfemployment, causing entrepreneurial individuals to be intrapreneurs (Elert et al, 2019). Employment protections can have the same effect (Liebregts and Stam, 2019).…”

“…Kodila-Tedika and Agbor (2016). Later research has also stressed the importance of trust for intrapreneurship (Elert et al, 2019). The possible influence of religion and religious beliefs is debated (see, e.g.…”

“…The earlier research has ex ante restricted the analysis to a particular set of variables or areas that the scholars deem to be most important. Examples include human capital (Stam, 2013), employment protection legislation (Liebregts and Stam, 2019), trust (Elert et al, 2019), or a sub-set of institutional factors (Bosma et al, 2018). This approach makes strong assumptions about what does not matter without examining the evidence.…”

“…In societies with low power distance, people strive to equalize the distribution of power and demand justification for inequalities of power. This factor might capture the idea that a low power distance in the society might spur job autonomy among employees in the firms, which enhances intrapreneurship (see Elert et al, 2019;Stam and Stenkula, 2017).…”