Corporate Entrepreneurship: a Strategic and Structural Perspective

Recently there has been a growing interest in the use of corporate entrepreneurship as a means for 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 activity is 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 there 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.