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Keywords
Intrapreneurship, Entrepreneurialism, Management, Strategy, Competitiveness
Abstract
This research contributes to the development of the theory of intrapreneurship by clarifying the intrapreneurship concept. Intrapreneurship is more precisely defined by referring to emergent behavioral intentions and behaviors that are related to departures from the customary ways of doing business in existing organizations. The intrapreneurship concept is positioned in the management literature, is contrasted with other similar management concepts and developed as an integrative concept composed of eight distinct, yet related dimensions.
Introduction
Entrepreneurship is an emerging and evolving field of inquiry. Entrepreneurship research has been expanding its boundaries by exploring and developing explanations and predictions of entrepreneurship phenomena in terms of events, such as innovation, new venture creation and growth, and in terms of characteristics of individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations. The largest institutionalized community of entrepreneurship scholars - the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management - has developed an entrepreneurship specific domain that incorporates the creation and management of new businesses, small businesses and family businesses, and the characteristics and special problems of entrepreneurs; it has further identified major topics such as new venture ideas and strategies, ecological influences on venture creation and demise, the acquisition and management of venture capital and venture teams, self-employment, the owner-- manager, management succession, corporate venturing, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development. One growing entrepreneurship research subfield is intrapreneurship, i.e. entrepreneurship in existing organizations. Emerging in the past two decades, the initial research in intrapreneurship focused on new business venturing, i.e. the formation of new ventures by existing organizations, mostly corporations, and the focus on the entrepreneurial individual inside a corporation - this focus was then extended to include entrepreneurial characteristics at the organizational level. Intrapreneurship research has evolved into three focal areas. The first area of focus is on the individual intrapreneur (Souder, 1981; Pinchot, 1985; Luchsinger and Bagby, 1987; Ross, 1987; Lessem, 1988; Knight, 1989; McKinney and McKinney, 1989; Jones and Butler, 1992; Jennings et al., 1994), mainly emphasizing the intrapreneur's individual characteristics. Recognition and support of entrepreneurs in organizations is also a part of this focal area. The second area of focus has been on the formation of new corporate ventures (Hlavacek and Thompson, 1973; Cooper, 1981; Fast and...