Who Wants to Be an Intrapreneur? Relations between Employees’ Entrepreneurial, Professional, and Leadership Career Motivations and Intrapreneurial Motivation in Organizations

Abstract

This paper reports an empirical study conducted to examine the relationship between employees’ Entrepreneurial, Professional, and Leadership (EPL) career motivations and their intrapreneurial motivation. Using data collected from 425 working adults in the research/innovation and healthcare settings, we develop a self-report measure of employee intrapreneurial motivation. We also adapt an existing self-report measure of E, P, and L career motivations (previously developed and used with university students) for use with working adult organizational employees. Confirmatory factor analysis indicate that E, P, and L motivations and intrapreneurial motivation can be measured independently and reliably, while regression analyses show that the employees’ E, P, and L motivations all contribute to explaining variance in their intrapreneurial motivation. Individuals with high E, P, and L motivational profiles are also found to have the highest intrapreneurial motivation scores, while those low on E, P, and L motivations have the least intrapreneurial motivation. Our findings suggest that the potential for intrapreneurship is not unique to only entrepreneurial employees. Instead, one can find intrapreneurs among employees with strong leadership and professional motivations as well. We discuss the findings in the context of generating more research to address the challenges of talent management in the 21st century knowledge economies where there is greater career mobility and boundarylessness in the workforce.

Determining employee satisfaction, intrapreneurship and firm growth among managers of Pakistan

“…Nonetheless, these studies addressed only partially the association between intrapreneurship and ES. More specifically, in the context of investigating Pakistani firms, we found no connection between intrapreneurship, JS, and FG ( Antoncic and Antoncic, 2011 ; Ahmed et al., 2013 ; Chan et al., 2017 ; Saks, 2019 ).…”

“…In the opinion of Gawker and colleagues ( 2017 ), a positive change within an organization can bring out the more stable experiences of work engagement and employee intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship can have a positive effect on FG, wealth, and profitability ( Chan et al., 2017 ). In the Pakistani context, the development of a moderate association between intrapreneurship and JS has exposed the experience ( Ahmed et al., 2013 ).…”

“…Consequently, entrepreneurship has remained a brilliant concept over many years. However, intrapreneurship is a somewhat new notion and, despite the novelty, has not been investigated as much ( Chan et al., 2017 ). Intrapreneurship is a sub-field of entrepreneurship that has increased in importance.…”

“…Despite a growing interest in this arena, intrapreneurship still lacks a precise arrangement of the allied thoughts since previous studies have used various theoretical styles ( Delić et al., 2016 ; Blanka, 2019 ). Therefore, thus far in various contexts other than Pakistan, the researchers have focused their investigations on personality traits, motivational factors, JS, professionalism, leadership, the propensity to risk, positive change, and employees' resources ( Stefanovic et al., 2010 ; Chan et al., 2017 ). More specifically and particularly in Pakistan, there is limited evidence available in the literature regarding the association between intrapreneurship, JS, and FG ( Antoncic and Antoncic, 2011 ; Ahmed et al., 2013 ; Chan et al., 2017 ).…”

Cultivation of Intrapreneurship: A Framework and Challenges

“…Namely, involvement, empowering employees, job autonomy, and appropriate reward system allow employees to produce innovative ideas and pursue innovation opportunities which strengthen firms’ long-term strategic performance ( Adeyeye et al, 2015 ). Academic interests in intrapreneurship increase over the last decade with a diverse focus ( Chan et al, 2017 ; Alam et al, 2020b ). Intrapreneurship in practice, however, is not as wide-spread as expected.…”