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

Abstract

The intrapreneurial behavior of employees has become of strategic importance for the performance of organizations. However, the literature on intrapreneurship is dispersed and in need of an integrated overview of the characteristics and behaviors of intrapreneurial employees. Based on a systematic literature review, we propose a new definition of intrapreneurship that emphasizes its multilevel nature. Moreover, we propose a comprehensive model of intrapreneurship in which we integrate the new definition, dimensions, and determinants applicable to individual employees. We find that innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, opportunity recognition / exploitation and internal / external networking are important behavioral dimensions of intrapreneurship. A certain skillset, a perception of their own capabilities, personal knowledge, past experience, the relation with the organization, motivation, satisfaction and intention are the determinants of intrapreneurial behavior that we derived from the literature review. Based on our results and an integrated model of intrapreneurship, we suggest a number of future research directions.

Unveiling International New Ventures’ Success: Employee’s Entrepreneurial Behavior

“…The EEB is under-researched in the literature (De Jong et al 2015;Blanka 2018;Mustafa et al 2018), which has led to confusion on its conceptualization, appearing terms such as individual entrepreneurial orientation, intrapreneurship, or corporate entrepreneurship. Those terms have even been used interchangeably in the investigations, although some effort has been made to clarify the concepts (Blanka 2018;Mustafa et al 2018;Neessen et al 2019). For example, corporate entrepreneurship seems to refer to entrepreneurial actions at the firm level.…”

“…EEB can be defined as "the extent to which individual workers proactively engage in the creation, introduction, and application of opportunities at work, marked by taking business-related risks" (De Jong et al 2015, p. 982). EEB is an individual bottom-up construct that can affect the performance of INVs (Maritz 2010;Fellnhofer et al 2017;Kollmann et al 2017;Neessen et al 2019). By developing EEB employees contribute to the organization creating new products, processes, services, and they can initiate self-renewal in the INV increasing its competitiveness and performance (Neessen et al 2019).…”

“…EEB is an individual bottom-up construct that can affect the performance of INVs (Maritz 2010;Fellnhofer et al 2017;Kollmann et al 2017;Neessen et al 2019). By developing EEB employees contribute to the organization creating new products, processes, services, and they can initiate self-renewal in the INV increasing its competitiveness and performance (Neessen et al 2019). Accordingly, three dimensions can be identified in the EEB construct: innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking (Gawke et al 2017;Blanka 2018;Mustafa et al 2018;Neessen et al 2019).…”

“…By developing EEB employees contribute to the organization creating new products, processes, services, and they can initiate self-renewal in the INV increasing its competitiveness and performance (Neessen et al 2019). Accordingly, three dimensions can be identified in the EEB construct: innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking (Gawke et al 2017;Blanka 2018;Mustafa et al 2018;Neessen et al 2019). Shortly, the dimension related to innovative behavior at the employee level refers to the initiation and intentional introduction of new and useful ideas, processes, products or procedures, which can take place within a work role, group or organization (De Jong and Hartog 2010).…”

Human capital and employee entrepreneurship

“…As Figure 1.1 shows, especially the past decade has shown an increase in the number of scientific publications on intrapreneurship 5 . The number of publications on intrapreneurship has rapidly grown to such magnitude, that the first review studies synthesising the scientific knowledge on employee intrapreneurship have recently emerged (see Blanka, 2018;Fleisher et al, forthcoming;Mustafa et al, 2018;Neessen et al, 2018).…”