Fostering intrapreneurship and innovation through cultural transformation

Abstract

In search for innovation in the global economy, large corporations are striving to become more intrapreneurial. Organizational culture is widely recognized as a source of influence either enabling or impeding intrapreneurship and innovation in organizations, and corporations commonly engage in culture management and transformation programs targeting at developing more intrapreneurship-supportive organizational cultures. However, these programs have demonstrated high failure rates, indicating a lack of understanding of what organizational culture is and how culture creation occurs.

The objective of this study was to discover how large corporations can foster intrapreneurship and innovation through cultural transformation, and how organizational culture influences intrapreneurship and innovation. The research was conducted in form of literary review and analysis, combining the literature branches of organizational culture and cultural transformation with those of intrapreneurship and innovation. As a result, integrated models of intrapreneurship within a cultural framework and of transforming organizational culture towards more intrapreneurial were suggested.

The model suggests that organizations should aim at developing a culture for change, firstly through providing a sociostructural framework supporting intrapreneurship, and secondly through encouraging certain cultural behaviors with management practices or organizational members acting as change agents. Through mechanisms of producing culture — attributing and renegotiating meaning — the underlying, deepest assumptions are being altered, which is then manifested at the more superficial levels of values and products of behavior.

This study integrates two literature branches and proposes integrated models of intrapreneurship in the cultural framework. Further, it provides managerial implications on both strategic and operational level, introducing concepts and a framework for fostering intrapreneurship in organizations. This research calls for empirical data to validate the findings in future research.