The Impact of Strategic Entrepreneurship inside the Organization: Examining Job Stress and Employee Retention

Abstract

How do managers and staff react to strategic entrepreneurship? How can we minimize resulting job stress and maximize employee retention? We surveyed 1,975 managers and staff in 110 departments of a diversified healthcare organization on department-level entrepreneurial orientation (EO) (e.g., risk taking, proactiveness, and innovativeness), degree of role ambiguity in their job, and their strength of intention to quit. After validating manager and staff reports of EO, we estimated structural equation models for managers and staff. Our results demonstrate that strategic entrepreneurship can impact management and staff differently and thus requires a correspondingly customized design philosophy.

The impact of entrepreneurial intensity on job stress: the mediating role of role ambiguity with evidence from top 1.000 industrial organizations of Turkey

“…EI is influenced by an organization's both external and internal organizational context (Zahra, 1991) since it is embedded in its vision, strategies, objectives, structures and operations (Morris, Kuratko and Covin, 2008) and involves a radical change in patterns of internal organizational behaviors (Monsen and Boss, 2009). With this perspective from top to bottom, entrepreneurial decisions made in an organization require individuals to behave proactively, to be innovative and to take risks since they engage in predicting the "unknown" future, creating something "new" and taking responsibility of a possible "loss", in which high level of pressure, ambiguity cannot be avoided (Teoh and Foo, 1997;Baird and Thomas, 1985;Antoncic and Hisrich, 2003;Lumpkin and Dess, 1996;Chauhan, 2014;Schindehutte, Morris and Allen, 2006: 349).…”

“…With this perspective from top to bottom, entrepreneurial decisions made in an organization require individuals to behave proactively, to be innovative and to take risks since they engage in predicting the "unknown" future, creating something "new" and taking responsibility of a possible "loss", in which high level of pressure, ambiguity cannot be avoided (Teoh and Foo, 1997;Baird and Thomas, 1985;Antoncic and Hisrich, 2003;Lumpkin and Dess, 1996;Chauhan, 2014;Schindehutte, Morris and Allen, 2006: 349). Thus, individuals, in organizations where the need for loose intra-organization boundaries arise (Hornsby et al, 1990; and there is a high degree and frequency of entrepreneurial events, are expected to perform a number of boundary-spanning tasks, which they are neither trained to do nor expected to have to do (Monsen and Boss, 2009) which requires them to have a high tolerance for ambiguity since they are more likely to engage in creative and novel ways of doing things (Teoh and Foo, 1997). Such an organizational climate that individuals are required to think strategically and act entrepreneurially with a lack of clearly defined tasks and objectives make them feel ill-equipped to handle with the situation or perceive their role to be unclear and ambiguous in other words, which role ambiguity is created (Monsen and Boss, 2009;Demirci, 2013;Upson, Ketchen and Ireland, 2007).…”

“…Thus, individuals, in organizations where the need for loose intra-organization boundaries arise (Hornsby et al, 1990; and there is a high degree and frequency of entrepreneurial events, are expected to perform a number of boundary-spanning tasks, which they are neither trained to do nor expected to have to do (Monsen and Boss, 2009) which requires them to have a high tolerance for ambiguity since they are more likely to engage in creative and novel ways of doing things (Teoh and Foo, 1997). Such an organizational climate that individuals are required to think strategically and act entrepreneurially with a lack of clearly defined tasks and objectives make them feel ill-equipped to handle with the situation or perceive their role to be unclear and ambiguous in other words, which role ambiguity is created (Monsen and Boss, 2009;Demirci, 2013;Upson, Ketchen and Ireland, 2007). With this perspective role ambiguity is often defined as "the degree to which clear information is lacking" about the expectation associated with a role, the method for fulfilling known role expectations and the consequences of role performance (Yongkang et al, 2014).…”

“…With respect to the level of entrepreneurship, an organization can be placed on a continuum ranging from conservative one to entrepreneurial (Covin and Slevin, 1990;Barringer and Ireland, 2008), which involves a radical change in patterns of internal organizational behaviors (Monsen and Boss, 2009). In other words, the level and frequency of entrepreneurial behaviors to determine an organization's point on that continuum, are empirically assessed __________________________________________________________________________________ 28 in different industries with the entrepreneurial intensity (EI) construct in (Urban and Sefalafala, 2015).…”

The emergence of the entrepreneurial hospital

“…40 Understanding these and other threats to cultural stability that arise in entrepreneurial firms can lead to proactive means to manage expectations and relationships. 41 Strategic human resource management has been shown to facilitate new product introductions in entrepreneuriallyoriented firms, and facilitate more prominently in more uncertain environments. 37 Empirical work, using both qualitative and quantitative methods, shows how aspects of general organizational culture in hospitals relate to patient safety, and how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) within hospitals motivates and protects staff and patients.…”