New ways of working and intrapreneurial behaviour: the mediating role of transformational leadership and social interaction

Abstract

To promote innovativeness and efficiency, an increasing number of firms have adopted New ways of working (NWW). However, it is not clear what effect NWW has on innovation-related outcomes, such as intrapreneurial behaviour. Therefore, we provide a first investigation on the relation between the facets of NWW and intrapreneurial behaviour, while testing transformational leadership and co-worker social interaction as mediators. We use a sample of 254 employees of the Dutch working population and apply the Preacher and Hayes’ (Behav Res Methods 40(3):879–891, 2008) bootstrap method for multiple mediation to test our hypotheses. We find that NWW facets time- and location-independent work and management on output are positively related to intrapreneurial behaviour. In addition, we find that the relation between a freely accessible open workplace and intrapreneurial behaviour is mediated by transformational leadership. However, we find no relationship between co-worker social interaction and intrapreneurial behaviour and thus no mediating role for social interaction. Our research adds to the budding literature on the effects of NWW and to the literature on the determinants of intrapreneurial behaviour. We conclude that implementation of several NWW facets and a transformational leadership style could help foster intrapreneurial behaviour among employees, and that future research that further enhances the measurement of the NWW facets and investigates its configurational effects on intrapreneurial behaviour is welcome.

Development of Entrepreneurial Competencies of Employees within the Framework of internal Entrepreneurship Programs in the Region

“…As the cases of the analysed companies show, internal initiative competitions can foster a culture of innovation in which employees can feel accomplished and receive recognition for presenting new ideas, as confirmed by the research of other scientists [10]. The relationship between a freely accessible open workplace and intrapreneurial behaviour is mediated by transformational leadership [6]. This area also needs to be studied by analysing the correlation between management styles in companies and the level of internal entrepreneurship.…”

“…According to WoS data, the number of publications on the subject of this paper (the search term "intrapreneurship") increased more than 4 times from 2010 to 2019 (from 14 publications in 2010 to 61 publications in 2019). Today, new concepts of internal entrepreneurship are emerging, which point to the need to study entrepreneurial competencies in terms of "potential" (opportunities for implementation in the field of entrepreneurship), and not only the "capital" (availability of special education and entrepreneurial experience) of a person [6,7].…”

“…New ways of working (NWW), which involves internal competitions for the development of a culture of initiative and innovation within a company, enables employees to gain recognition for their work and for their importance to the company. Within this context, the culture and conditions for the manifestation of initiatives within an organization have a significant impact on the development of internal entrepreneurship [6,10]. As a result of the activities of internal entrepreneurs, new products and services are introduced, new internal corporate companies are established, new markets and business development horizons are opened [11,12,13].…”

Social networks in coworking spaces and individual coworker’s creativity

“…With the research model and the following SEM analysis, we contribute to the literature on coworking and related research, e.g., new ways of working (Gerards et al 2020), and focus on knowledge exchanged, social interaction, and creative outcomes (Bouncken and Aslam 2019;Garrett et al 2017;Gerdenitsch et al 2016;Rese et al 2020). In particular, we go beyond conceptual (Bouncken and Reuschl 2018) and qualitative analyses (Bouncken and Aslam 2019;Capdevila 2019;Spinuzzi et al 2019) or literature reviews (Jeske and Ruwe 2019).…”

Assessing the factors of employees' intrapreneurial behaviour: an Indian context

“…A growing body of research investigates the organizational and job characteristics that drive intrapreneurial behaviour (Rigtering and Weitzel, 2013; Gerards et al , 2020). This is because the environment within the organization can either promote or impede the intrapreneurial activities.…”