Corporate Volunteering, Responsibility and Employee Entrepreneurship

Beata Glinka, Aldona Glińska-Neweś

• Publisher: Routledge
• Edition: 1
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Print ISBN:
  9781032048123
  9781032048116
• Subtopic: Negocios en general
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000508444

Supporting employee entrepreneurship is among major challenges contemporary organizations face. Many facets of corporate entrepreneurship are investigated, and the body of knowledge in the field is growing rapidly; nevertheless, there are still knowledge and research gaps to be filled. Notably, while there are studies linking HRM with corporate entrepreneurship, studies on connections between CSR-oriented practices and corporate/employee entrepreneurship are to be developed.

The main goal of this book is to explain relationships between corporate volunteering and employee entrepreneurship in organisations. The book combines two extremely vivid fields of research: entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility. Based on their own research, the authors present how participation in corporate volunteering, as one of the CSR practices in organisations, leads to strengthening employee entrepreneurial behaviour. The book offers a framework showing the role of CSR practices in shaping entrepreneurial and innovative employees' behaviour.

This book is aimed mainly at postgraduates, researchers and academics in the fields of entrepreneurship and corporate volunteering. As it touches vital fields of managerial education and management, it will also be of interest to master level students at universities or business schools as well as business practitioners.

1 Corporate Entrepreneurship

DOI: 10.4324/9781003194750-2

This first chapter offers a review of concepts associated with corporate entrepreneurship (CE). Basing on existing entrepreneurship scholarship (e.g. Burns, 2020; Kuratko et al., 2019; Morris et al., 2010), we discuss different approaches to CE and different forms of CE (including corporate venturing and strategic entrepreneurship). We show how these different strands interconnect and address the challenge of building and sustaining competitive advantage by organisations. We treat CE as an important answer to the great managerial challenge of securing survival and sustainable development of companies.

Traditionally, the concept of entrepreneurship was attributed to newly created ventures, and entrepreneurs were addressed as individuals who spot opportunities and turn them into ventures. Thus, for many years entrepreneurship concepts and studies did not address existing companies. As Gartner et al. (1992, p. 15) claim, ‘entrepreneurial behavior is “different” from organizational behavior’. People in existing organisations do differ in goals, mindsets, and access to resources. Moreover, many definitions of entrepreneurship stress that it is the quest for opportunity recognition (creation) and exploitation, regardless of current resources—against this background, CE may seem, at least partly, a contradiction and ‘one could question the entire premise of the concept of “corporate entrepreneurship” ’ (Phan et al., 2009, p. 198). In existing organisations, people usually have access to resources. However, the quest for opportunities is important for both emerging and existing companies, and novelty connected with opportunity recognition is always associated with risk. Thus entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial orientation, and entrepreneurial behaviour are increasingly associated with existing companies, where it has a significant role to play in building sustainable competitive advantage. For example, Paul Burns (2020), in his book on CE and innovation, entitled one chapter ‘Can big companies survive?’ and claimed that big organisations were finding it more and more difficult to deal with the new age of uncertainty and ‘super-competition’ (Burns, 2020, p. 9). The author claims that CE, innovations, and an entrepreneurial mindset can help to address the challenges companies face.

This opening chapter concludes with a strict definition of our focus: we show that we are interested most in the micro-foundations of entrepreneurship within established organisations. This individual level—employees who innovate, use their creative capacities to spot, and create opportunities important for the whole organisation—directs our analyses within the whole volume.

1.1 The Phenomenon of Corporate Entrepreneurship

As we mentioned above, most scholars do agree that CE is a legitimate field of studies, and the concept of entrepreneurship refers also to existing, often large and mature companies. The phenomenon of CE is multi-faceted and may be perceived and defined in many different ways. This diversity influences both scientific efforts and the practical implications of these efforts.

1.1.1 The Understanding of Corporate Entrepreneurship

The concept of CE evolved in the late 20th century at the crossroads of many fields within organisation and management studies: strategic management, organisational development, entrepreneurship, and others. It applies certain concepts from the field of ‘classical entrepreneurship’ to existing (often mature and large) organisations. Many scholars stress that even though there are numerous differences between entrepreneurship and CE, there are also many quite fundamental similarities—for example, both entrepreneurship and CE refer to opportunity-oriented activities (Vanacker et al., 2021). Such blending has proven quite fruitful and durable.

CE is not perceived as a fad but rather as a lasting and potentially promising tendency. Scholars have been developing concepts connected with CE for the last 50 years (see e.g. Arz, 2017; Burger & Blažková, 2020; Kuratko & Audretsch, 2013). Over 30 years ago, Guth and Ginsberg (1990) were right in claiming that research that contributes to increasing the frequency and success of CE will be highly valued in the academic (and practitioner) communities. As some scholars claim, it was not until the turn of the century that the literature on CE became less anecdotal and testimonial in nature (Hornsby et al., 2002).

Early publications on CE can be traced back to the 1970s (see e.g. Hanan, 1976; Peterson & Berger, 1972). These early works focused on the ways entrepreneurship could be developed inside existing organisations, as well as on venture teams (Kuratko & Audretsch, 2013). Kuratko and Audretsch (2013, p. 325) analyse the changing approaches of researchers towards CE. The authors claimed that, after early works (from the 1970s) that concentrated on developing CE in organisations, researchers turned towards entrepreneurial behaviour as a key factor that could lead to developing different types of innovations. Also, a concept of intrapreneurship was introduced that extended the focus of CE to embrace individuals within organisations (Arz, 2017; Pinchot, 1985). At the same time, researchers discussed whether CE can be developed within bureaucratic structures and how entrepreneurial behaviour can and should be encouraged. As Kuratko and Audretsch claim, during the 1990s, researchers focused on CE as re-energising and enhancing companies’ ability to develop the skills to create innovations; also, more comprehensive definitions of CE began to take shape. In the 21st century, the concept of entrepreneurial behaviour has been developed further and in more detail (encompassing dimensions like pro-activeness, innovativeness, and risk-taking). Also, numerous studies linking CE to sustainable competitive advantage and growth have been published.

All these developments demonstrate that CE is a multi-dimensional, complex, and context-sensitive phenomenon that can be analysed on three major levels: individual, team, and organisational. Figure 1.1 below illustrates the concept of CE.

Figure 1.1Corporate entrepreneurship: the essence of the phenomenon. Source: own elaboration based on Burns (2020, p. 34), Kuratko & Audretsch (2013, p. 329), Sharma & Chrisman (1999, p. 20).

In this book, we apply a broad, classical definition of CE proposed by Sharma and Chrisman (1999, p. 18), according to which CE is ‘the process whereby an individual or group of individuals, in association with an existing organization, create a new organization or instigate renewal or innovation within that organization’. We treat CE as a process resulting from perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours of individuals within a certain organisational and external context. In other words, we agree with Kuratko and Morris (2018), who claim that CE describes entrepreneurial behaviour inside established organisations and that the value of CE lies in the extent to which it becomes a strategy to engage in entrepreneurial actions to achieve a competitive advantage.

CE, as we preliminarily demonstrated above, may refer to many different activities within existing organisations. We will discuss this diversity in Section 1.2.

1.1.2 The Role of Corporate Entrepreneurship

Existing mature organisations face the challenge of survival and building and sustaining competitive advantage. Moreover, in times of uncertainty and growing competition, such challenges are more and more difficult to address (see e.g. Burns, 2020). In time, organisations not only grow but also become more formalised, which often means less responsiveness to external and internal changes, threats, and opportunities. Very often, they also lose at least some of their initial innovative spirit.

The issue of survival and development is a crucial managerial challenge and can be addressed in many different ways. Contemporary management scholarship offers many ideas that can help to cope with this challenge. Many of them are just temporary fashions and fads that offer quick and easy fixes to problems that are deep rooted within organisations. More than 20 years ago, Russell Ackoff claimed that such popular panaceas (and the gurus who produce and promote them) seldom deliver all they promise (Ackoff, 1999). Ackoff himself proposes transformational leadership as a way to tackle complex problems. We believe that Ackoff touched upon a problem that is vital in the 21st century, too, years after his publication on recreating corporations. Discussions and studies devoted to supporting companies’ development in a way that is effective, durable, and universal enough to be applied across countries and industries do not stop. We believe that there are multiple ways to address crucial organisational challenges, but it is not always the solutions and concepts that are most durable and best for organisations that diffuse fastest (see e.g. Abrahamson, 1991; Staw & Epstein, 2000). Thus, managers should be careful in implementation, as only certain concepts may work well in the specific context of their organisations (Birkinshaw, 2014).

CE constitutes one potentially fruitful pathway in coping with building the sustainable competitive advantage and developmental capabilities of a company. This is not an easy way or a ‘quick fix’, as it requires building an appropriate context inside organisations.

Such a context requires openness to change, which ‘for an existing organization is a movement towards equivocality, that is, away from singular interpretations for events and behaviors towards multiple meanings and a repertoire of actions’ (Gartner et al., 1992, p. 26). Such openness is one of the foundations of entrepreneurial behaviour. As Gartner and Brush (2007) claim, entrepreneurship is most often found in the transitional states; ‘transformation is the way that an organization changes its established routines through enactment. Transformation involves a metamorphosis from an existing vision that produces changes in the products and services, customers/clients, channels, skills, margins, competitive advantage, and people’ (Gartner & Brush, 2007, p. 5). Therefore, CE is dynamic and requires changes that bring some novelty to internal processes and/or relations with the environment and external stakeholders. As such, CE requires companies to engage in a learning process, exploration followed by the exploitation of resulting discoveries (of opportunities).

CE requires changes, but it also may help organisations to cope with environmental changes. This, however, requires of existing companies a certain initial potential. A study by Yuan, Bau, and Olson (2017, p. 313) shows that this is particularly visible in companies with strong market capabilities, that ‘tend to adopt CE activities to cope with ambivalent changes’, while companies with weak market capabilities would ‘actually reduce their CE activities in highly ambivalent environment’. In other words, the application of CE activities is not a natural choice for every organisation, as it requires certain internal capabilities. A lack of such capabilities may support existing routines rather than triggering efforts to change them.

Many studies demonstrate that CE may actually help in increasing companies’ performance; firms with a higher degree of CE perform better (Arz, 2017; Rauch et al., 2009). The effects of CE on firm performance have been examined in a variety of organisational forms, including family firms (Soleimanof et al., 2019)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Boxes
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Corporate Entrepreneurship
• 2 Who Becomes a Corporate Entrepreneur, and How?
• 3 Designing the Entrepreneurial Environment
• 4 Corporate Social Responsibility as a Booster of Employee Entrepreneurial Activities
• 5 Nature, Types, and Outcomes of Corporate Volunteering
• 6 Corporate Volunteering and Employee Competency Development
• 7 Volunteering and Entrepreneurship: Case Studies
• 8 Concluding Remarks
• Index