PDF Ebook Corporate Entrepreneurship: a Strategic and Structural Perspective
corporations to enhance the innovative abilities of their employees and, at the same time, increase corporate success through the creation of new corporate ventures. However, the creation of corporate activityis difficult since it involves radically changing internal organisational behaviour patterns. Researchers have attempted to understand the factors that stimulate or impede corporate entrepreneurship. They examined the effect of a firm’s strategy, organisation and external environment. It appears that the environment plays a profound role is influencing corporate entrepreneurship whereas here is consensus that the external environment is an important antecedent of corporate entrepreneurship.
Focus on the environment, the literature highlights two research questions that deserve examination. First, how do firms that compete in different environments vary in the corporate entrepreneurship activities? Second, which corporate entrepreneurship activities are conductive to superior performance in different environments? This paper develops the theoretical foundation of theses questions and focuses on the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and strategic management in a integrating model of corporate entrepreneurship, giving special attention to the strategic behaviour, corporate context and organisational types.
Corporate entrepreneurship is an evolving area of research. Today, there is no universally acceptable definition of corporate entrepreneurship (Gautam & Verma, 1997). Authors use many terms to refer to different aspects of corporate entrepreneurship: intrapreneurship (Kuratko et al., 1990), internal corporate entrepreneurship (Schollhammer, 1982), corporate ventures (Ellis and Taylor, 1987; MacMillan et al., 1986), venture management (Veciana, 1996), new ventures (Roberts, 1980) and, internal corporate venturing (Burgelman, 1984).
For despite the growing interest in corporate entrepreneurship, there appears to be nothing near a consensus on what it is. Some scholars emphasising its analogue to new business creation by individual entrepreneurs, view corporate entrepreneurship as a concept that is limited to new venture creation within existing organisations (Burgelman, 1984). Others argue that the concept of corporate entrepreneurship should encompass the struggle of large firms to renew themselves by carrying out new combinations of resources that alter the relationships between them and their environments (Baumol, 1986; Burgelman, 1983). According to Zahra (1991) corporate entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating new business within established firms to improve organisational profitability and enhance a firm’s competitive position or the strategic renewal of existing business. Burgelman (1984: 154) conceptualises the definition of corporate entrepreneurship as a process of “extending the firm’s domain of competence and corresponding opportunity set through internally generated new resource combinations”. The term “new resource combinations” is interpreted to be synonymous with innovation in the Schumpeterian sense. Thus corporate ntrepreneurship is conceived of as the effort to extend an organisation’s competitive advantage through internally generated innovations that significally alter the balance of competition within n industry or create entirely new industries. Corporate entrepreneurship is a process of organisational renewal (Sathe, 1989) hat has two distinct but related dimensions: innovation and venturing, and strategic stress creating new business through market developments on by undertaking product, process, technological and administrative innovations. The second dimension of corporate entrepreneurship embodies renewal activities that enhance a firm’s ability to compete and take risks (Miller, 1983). Renewal has many facets, including the redefinition of the business concept, reorganisation, and the introduction of system-wide changes for innovation.
According to Kuratko et al. (1990) the need to pursue corporate entrepreneurship has arisen from a variety of pressing problems including: (1) required changes, innovations, and improvements in the marketplace to avoid stagnation and decline (Miller and Friesen, 1982); (2) perceived weakness in the traditional methods of corporate management; and (3) the turnover of innovative-minded employees who are disenchanted with bureaucratic organisations.However, the pursuit of corporate entrepreneurship as a strategy to counter these problems creates a newer and potentially more complex set of challenges on both a practical and theoretical level. The identification of the various dimensions or factors of corporate entrepreneurship, of course, is a broad arena to consider and the principal objective of this paper is to extend the theory of entrepreneurship by providing a conceptual model on corporate entrepreneurship in organisations and on strategic process.
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PDF Ebook Corporate Entrepreneurship: a Strategic and Structural Perspective
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