A Process Model of Social Intrapreneurship within a For-Profit Company: First Community Bank

Abstract

This chapter develops a model and provides an exemplary case study of social intrapreneurship within a for-profit organization. The model has two components. The first looks at the antecedent conditions enabling social intrapreneurship, identifying three deinstitutionalizing mechanisms that ready a traditional for-profit organization to embrace a social enterprise: (1) changes in extra-organizational environment that disconnect sanctions and rewards; (2) disassociating existing institutional norms and practices from their mooring in a moral foundation; and (3) undermining core assumptions and beliefs. The second component of the model suggests that the social intrapreneurship process unfolds in four phases associated: (1) socialization (conception of social enterprise idea), (2) externalization (development), (3) integration (implementation), and (4) the internalization (institutionalization). We use the model as a lens to examine the history and development of the First Community Bank in Boston and end with a discussion of the implications of our research for theory and practice.

Citation

Summers, D.B. and Dyck, B. (2011), "A Process Model of Social Intrapreneurship within a For-Profit Company: First Community Bank", Lumpkin, G.T. and Katz, J.A. (Ed.) Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship (Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 139-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1074-7540(2011)0000013010