Inhibition and encouragement of entrepreneurial behavior: antecedents analysis from managers' perspectives.
| Autor | Hashimoto, Marcos |
| Cargo | Report |
Introduction
Even though there are not many scientific studies on barriers to and encouragement of practices that promote employees' entrepreneurial behavior, the number is clearly growing, which can be seen from the amount of papers published in the last few years on the topic (Emmendoerfer, Valadares, & Balbi, 2008). This rising interest in the topic can be explained by its interdisciplinary trait, broadening the well-established nature of studies on entrepreneurship by including aspects related to organizations, human resources, leadership, and competitive strategies. Notwithstanding the evidence of the growing interest in the topic, empirical studies about the main barriers and practices adopted by organizations are still incipient in academia.
The seminal study that underlies the present research was conducted by Burgelman (1983a) with the introduction to Autonomous Strategic Behavior and Induced Strategic Behavior as the concepts proposed to explain why some managers generate new Corporate Ventures independently from current corporate strategy. Since then, several Corporate Entrepreneurship studies considered autonomous and induced behavior to explain entrepreneurial behavior among employees (Burgelman, 1983b; Burgelman & Sayles, 1986; Ferreira, 2001; Heller, 1999). While some human resource policies and practices may induce employees to assume entrepreneurial behavior in their job duties, it is not clear why some employees exert autonomous entrepreneurial behavior. Although some employees may have a natural will to act entrepreneurially, we do believe that part of the autonomous behavior is stimulated by managers' attitudes. This has support from Burgelman's (1983b) approach, suggesting that middle management play a crucial role in supporting autonomous initiatives from employees, which is confirmed by Heller's (1999) studies on innovative projects in existing corporations. According to Heller (1999), the capacity to create an independent organizational structure for entrepreneurial initiatives relies much more on management's actions than organizational systems. Nevertheless, we believe that some managers do not serve only as corporate policies executors. Some authors, such as Heller (1999) and Burgelman (1983b) support this idea by stating managers have an active role in influencing employees' entrepreneurial behavior. The same way, we can consider how managers' behavior can also inhibit entrepreneurial attitudes of potential intrapreneurs within their teams. Through a deep analysis of manager behavior and attitudes, we aim, with this study, to empirically analyze the factors that inhibit or encourage entrepreneurial behavior from managers' perspectives. The related assumption is that, despite EO structural efforts to induce entrepreneurial behavior in employees, leaders also play an important role in generating autonomous behavior. Managers have better conditions to understand each team member and use concrete criteria when deciding to whom they should apply corporate policies and for whom these same policies should be bypassed in favor of more independence and freedom. The understanding of the differences of the elements that induce entrepreneurial behavior between organizational structure and leader behavior is highly relevant as it may help managers direct effective actions towards a culture that emphasizes innovation.
Induced or Autonomous Entrepreneurial Behavior
One of the difficulties found in studies about entrepreneurial behavior is that they rely on HR practices, internal culture, corporate strategy and managers' entrepreneurial behavior (Burgelman, 1983a). To better understand these constructs, it is important to mention the work of some researchers who looked for explanations to the reasons that kindle entrepreneurial attitude in employees based on existing organizational environments. Burgelman and Sayles (1986) observed that Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) may be formal or informal. In formal CE, or induced behavior (Ferreira, 2001; Heller, 1999), the organization tries to facilitate, in every way, the generation of entrepreneurs and their initiatives. To a greater or lesser extent, these businesses:
Promote a pleasant working atmosphere, favor new ideas, properly reward entrepreneurs, value trials and experimentations, propose important projects to people who feel stimulated before challenges, eliminate or reduce barriers that may hinder entrepreneurs' initiative, keep broad and open communication structures, and take other actions that favor innovative initiatives from their employees. (Hashimoto, 2006, p. 79).
Informal CE (Burgelman, 1983b), also called employees' autonomous behavior (Ferreira, 2001; Heller, 1999), is when an organization does not favor the creation of a proper atmosphere for corporate innovation. Entrepreneurs that arise under such adverse and aggressive circumstances have their skills shaped by these circumstances (Ronen, 1988). In these cases, intrapreneurs
Are likely to already have some personality traits, such as determination, perseverance, creativity, and boldness because they will put their jobs at risk, face stringent hierarchical structures and lack of support and incentive and they will have to face repeated rejection to their ideas and proposals, overcome bureaucracy and act clandestinely. These intrapreneurs are rare, but valuable to any type of organization (Hashimoto, 2006, p. 79).
Therefore, intrapreneurs in organizations that formally promote entrepreneurial behavior (induced) are different from intrapreneurs in organizations that do not encourage entrepreneurial behavior (autonomous) (Figure 1).
The organization that formally has an internal structure to induce employees' entrepreneurial behavior can adopt known practices and an Entrepreneurial Orientation, covered in the next section.
Entrepreneurial Orientation
During the past 10 years, the literature has developed several lines of thinking to explain the entrepreneurial behavior phenomena. Some of them have explored the concepts of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Intrapreneurship (IP). Generally speaking, we can understand that EO studies the organization, whereas IP studies the individual within the organization. Whereas EO refers to businesses' practices to encourage their employees to adopt entrepreneurial behavior within their activities, IP studies the employees that, regardless of the presence or absence of organizational encouragement, spontaneously adopt entrepreneurial behavior, promoting changes and improvements at all organizational levels. Organizations-related studies exert more interest from scholars than a single employee. On one hand, IP was the subject presented in 48 articles since 2005, in all indexed peerreviewed journals. On the other hand, 21 articles on EO were found since 2005, but only in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, the most referenced journal in the field of entrepreneurship. Additionally, the drop in the publication of articles on IP (42) between 2000 and 2013 contrasts with the growing number of studies on EO (225) in the same period.
The international academic community studies EO as a construct that explains entrepreneurial behavior (Covin & Lumpkin, 2011) in which 'employees pursue opportunities regardless of the resources they run' (Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990, p. 497). The three EO dimensions originated in Miller's studies (1983 as cited in Miller, 2011): (a) Innovativeness--Organizations that promote entrepreneurship innovate by creating or improving products, services, processes, businesses, markets, alternatives to materials, and structural changes in the organization; (b) Proactiveness--Proactive organizations anticipate and take advantage of opportunities to fulfill future needs of a market, leaving competitors behind and making the best use of available resources; (c) Risk taking--Every entrepreneurial initiative involves risks to some level. The higher the innovation factor, the higher the uncertainty, an essential component of risk, along with probability.
The importance of studies on EO as a behavioral phenomenon of organizations is based on recent arguments from Covin and Lumpkin (2011), who mention that entrepreneurial attributes that are present in EO are related to business dimensions such as culture, atmosphere, and organizational behavior as the dominating logic, instead of seeing EO as a dispositional phenomenon (businesses that formally promote activities to encourage an expected behavior). This discussion, among others, has been conducted in the international academic community since the late 1990s. Induced and autonomous behavior, from the EO viewpoint, gains a new nuance. For better understanding, the following table describes the first three components: innovativeness, autonomy, and risk:
Table 1 Induced and Autonomous Corporate Entrepreneurship from the Scope of the Components of Entrepreneurial Orientation Dimensions of Autonomous CE Induced CE EO Innovativeness The idea spontaneously The intrapreneur only has comes to the the idea because the intrapreneur, according organization has created to the needs and a proper environment for circumstances he/she ideas to emerge, faces. The nature of flourish, and turn into these ideas is mostly effective results for the pragmatic and organization. The nature transactional, and is of these ideas is mostly usually of low institutional and complexity. corporate. Proactiveness The intrapreneur does not The intrapreneur only receive any formal follows through with his/ directives from the her idea if the organization to act in organization formally favor of a project. approves of it. From that Instead, he/she takes the point on, he/she has the initiative to initiate an power to execute the idea action that he/she with resources that are believes in, and assumes made available for that the responsibility for end. the success or failure of his/her initiatives. Risk taking...
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