Content area
Full Text
1 Introduction
Organizational performance, growth and development may depend considerably on entrepreneurship in existing organizations (intrapreneurship) and intrapreneurship employee-related antecedents. The study focuses on employee satisfaction, intrapreneurship and firm growth. It deals with the elements of job satisfaction important for the survival and growth of firms. Elements of employee satisfaction are intertwined with elements of organizational factors related to intrapreneurship. Previous research on the relationship between organizational elements and intrapreneurship has focused on the characteristics of internal organizational environments and their relationships with entrepreneurship in existing organizations ([74] Souder, 1981; [71] Schollhammer, 1982; [41] Kanter, 1984; [66] Pinchot, 1985; [47] Luchsinger and Bagby, 1987; [37] Hornsby et al. , 1993; [5] Antoncic and Hisrich, 2001; [2] Antoncic, 2007). In addition to some descriptive evidence ([41] Kanter, 1984; [66] Pinchot, 1985), in one study [43] Kuratko et al. (2005) empirically examined the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship, internal organizational antecedents and job satisfaction and found that they are related, but used a narrower measure of employee satisfaction and focused only on one aspect of intrapreneurship (number of new and implemented ideas and unofficial improvements). Past research in intrapreneurship has covered some elements important for employee satisfaction, but has only partially addressed the relationship between employee satisfaction and intrapreneurship. This study can be differentiated from past studies, since it considers an ensemble of employee satisfaction elements (general satisfaction with work, employee relationships, remuneration, benefits and organizational culture and employee loyalty) as a crucial antecedent of intrapreneurship and builds a model of employee satisfaction-driven intrapreneurship and firm growth, which has not been examined before. This study fills the research gap by developing and empirically testing a model. Based on theoretical starting points, we developed hypotheses and sought to find out whether the hypothesized relationships between employee satisfaction, intrapreneurship and growth exist. The key contribution of our research is the model which sheds light on the linkages between employee satisfaction, intrapreneurship and firm growth.
2 Theory and hypotheses
This section describes the elements of employee satisfaction, intrapreneurship along with the hypotheses on the relationships between employee satisfaction, intrapreneurship and firm growth.
2.1 Elements of employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is the satisfaction of employees with their jobs or the degree to which employees like their jobs ([75] Spector, 1997). An overall...