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This study aims to develop theoretical arguments about the factors promoting nascent intrapreneurship relative to role theory. These arguments principally draw on contributions from interactional and structural sociology. Fixed theoretical tools for intrapreneurship are not quite enough. So, structural and interactionist perspective of sociology is necessary to understand the intrapreneurship concept because intrapreneurs live in a society and shape their course per the expectations of others. Previous approaches depend on individual, organizations or environment to push potential employees to be intrapreneurs. Expectations may be a keystone for intrapreneurship because intrapreneurs have been trying to explain or make progress about what is seen as crucial; more importantly, they learn their roles.

This is a conceptual paper about explaining intrapreneurship. Foregoing literature has been trying to explain the phenomenon by individual, organizational or environment endeavors to transform employees to be intrapreneurs. Role theory stems from interactional and structural sociology. Promoting the internal entrepreneur process by overcoming resistance to switching to a more structured management approach and adopting management systems and processes in a timely way is still a vague approach. So, the structural and interactionist perspective of sociology is necessary to understand the concept because intrapreneurship is a contextual factor rather than activity.

Expectations can convey what others consider particularly important or necessary. Intrapreneurship is a type of personal entrepreneur role influenced by expectations.

Intrapreneurship is not solely entrepreneurship in organizations but is also governed by the specific combinations of circumstances generally outside of the organizational environment, such as families, coworkers and friends.

The present paper seeks to answer three primary research questions: how differentiation among subunits changes intrapreneurship role expectations, how the intrapreneurs’ role has been affected from unlike expectations and are group or team-level expectations on intrapreneurs’ roles distinctive than organization and individual levels.

This study aims to develop conceptual arguments about intrapreneurship relative to role theory.

The challenge to the intrapreneurship concept is that no single or combination of personality traits, individual characteristics or attitudes can fulfill the causes of the phenomenon, as these factors are context-bound. One explanation for individual- and macro-level contrasting outcomes is the diverging effect of expectations. The structural and interactionist perspective of sociology is used to understand the intrapreneurship concept because intrapreneurs live within a society and shape their course per the expectations of others.

Intrapreneurs have been trying to infer about what is seen as crucial individually related to interactions within the existing context; more importantly, acting in an intrapreneurship role can be defined and learned by expectations.

With the convenient expectations from other members, families or environments, organization members will value the innovation and self-direction of intrapreneurship more highly that such a taste for an acting role may be an important factor in the decision to become an intrapreneur.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper emphasized for the first time that the consequences of exposure to social expectations for the development of intrapreneur roles, particularly the broad portfolios of skills and motivation, are relevant to intrapreneurship. Previous approaches depend on individuals, organizations or the environment to have different approaches to likely employees to be intrapreneurs. The paper first argues that context is important for understanding how and why context can be linked to individual intrapreneurs and how intrapreneurship can be defined as roles rather than a task or unique potential entrepreneurs.

Change is normal in a healthy economy, and is intrinsically driven by continued acquisition of new knowledge – both scientific and otherwise (Drucker, 1985). Continued acceleration of knowledge attainment provides context for what is arguably the twenty-first century’s single most critical socioeconomic characteristic: rapid change and continuous disruption of the free market (Carlson and Wilmot, 2006). In this unstable landscape, even the most resilient and successful companies, despite applying sound business management principles, are not immune to gradual erosion of their positions of growth and dominance (Christensen and Raynor, 2003). The life span of the average organization is shrinking, and a mainstay of past generations – “lifetime employment” – is no longer the status quo (Carlson and Wilmot, 2006, pp. 34-35).

Employees who wish to become leaders in the twenty-first century must develop the capability to exploit opportunities generated by the external pace of change and turn those opportunities into growth avenues for their organizations. Employees who master this process, and adopt the behaviors that drive it, will find themselves highly desirable to employers and in possession of a new version of the lifetime employment guarantee that stems from continuously creating value for their organizations. By understanding the relationship between innovation and organizational growth, organizations can better cultivate and leverage the multifaceted role that intrapreneurs can play in understanding the market, delivering value to the customer and formulating strategy.

Many organizations do not have the human resource capacities needed to create new growth. Managers at most established organizations have focused by necessity mainly on current operations. Doing this allows them and their employees to develop operational skills for solving problems related primarily to quality and cost-control, or to process implementation – but not for starting new growth areas (Christensen and Raynor, 2003, p. 179). While managers’ current responsibilities are important, this workload draws them away from focusing on new opportunities for the sake of monitoring current ones. The problems encountered and skills required for intrapreneurial action are very different from those needed to conduct “business as usual” operations; however, the capacity and skillset is critical to develop so that the organization as a whole can experience long-term growth. Therefore, organizations need intrapreneurial leaders who have learned and practiced these skills through experience – leaders who demonstrate not only a deep knowledge of their market and how to create new customer value, but also a sustained commitment to turning that knowledge into a real source of growth for their organization. Fortunately, there is incentive for both organizations and employees to progress in this direction.

Organizations will benefit from the longevity provided by new growth if they make efforts to promote and foster intrapreneurial behavior by their employees and managers. Managers and employees, in turn, will benefit by becoming leaders who find themselves more and more employable, as organizations shift to hiring people who possess intrapreneurial skills. The significant value here is that innovation facilitated by intrapreneurs practically enhances organizational growth overall. The result is a future of growth and opportunity for both individuals and organizations alike, in which both the knowledge and the passion of intrapreneurial leadership light the way through the unfamiliar business environment of the twenty-first century.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper insight into the organizational factors and personal motivations of intrapreneurs that may foster intrapreneurial behaviors of employees in a new technology-based firm (NTBF).

The paper takes a qualitative approach to explore organizational and individual antecedents of employees’ intrapreneurial behavior. A single case study was conducted on the basis of semi-structured interviews with the founders and top managers of the firm and with intrapreneurial employees.

Results show that intrapreneurial projects may arise in firms whose top managers support corporate entrepreneurship (CE) in a non-active manner. Intrapreneurial behaviors of employees can emerge despite the lack of time and limited resources available for undertaking projects. Moreover, work discretion and mutual confidence and the quality of the relationship between employees and top managers are the most valued factors for intrapreneurs.

Based on the intrapreneurial projects studied, this paper helps to contextualize intrapreneurs’ perception of organizational support and the personal motivations for leading projects within an NTBF.

Traditionally, the literature has mainly focused on the top-down implementation of entrepreneurial projects within large firms. This paper contributes to the understanding of the combination of firm- and individual-level factors that facilitate intrapreneurial behaviors of employees. It also illustrates the contextual conditions and the firms’ orientation on CE within an NTBF.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the leadership expectations of young employees in intrapreneurial jobs.

Group interviews were conducted with 42 young intrapreneurs and 13 leaders of a Dutch ICT consultancy firm. Data were coded and analyzed using qualitative data analysis software.

The authors find ten different expectations on leadership. Young intrapreneurs expect to have a personal connection, sufficient feedback, ample freedom, and trust, clear directions when asked and a leader who is a role model.

This qualitative study was conducted in one organization. It however sheds a first light on expectations of employees with intrapreneurial job requirements.

In order to motivate and guide young intrapreneurs, direct supervisors should aim not to breach expectations. By getting to know their employees on a personal basis, taking the time to coach them in their career goals, showing intrapreneurship themselves, focusing on an open relationship, and providing a challenging and dynamic environment, direct supervisors build a strong and cooperative relationship.

This paper is one of the first to look at the relationship between direct supervisors and intrapreneurial employees. Doing so, it also expands the current knowledge of Implicit Leadership Theory by exploring expectations of young intrapreneurs and adds to the full-range leadership theory by showing the importance of investigating its subdimensions.

The sport sector is a very competitive and dynamic industry, son intrapreneurial employees are needed. However, although entrepreneurial intentions in sport sciences students have been studied, less is known about intrapreneurial intentions. It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to validate a scale to measure the intrapreneurial intentions of sports science students from two different countries.

A sample of 304 final-year students from the sport sector of two different countries (Spain and Lithuania) was analyzed. First, an exploratory factorial analysis of the two samples was performed separately, and then a confirmatory factorial analysis was carried out to performed. Finally, in order to check the invariance of the measuring instrument, a multi-group analysis was performed with the constraints of all factors variances and all factors loading.

The entrepreneurial intentions scale works well both in its English version in the Lithuanian sports students’ and in its Spanish version with the university sports students from Spain. Therefore, it can be said that there is a metric invariance. However, the scale presents better fit indexes, reliability and validity in its English version. Lithuanian sports students scored significantly higher on the risk-taking dimension than Spanish students.

The scale has only been validated with final-year sport science students from two countries. It is necessary to test this scale with a larger sample of students from different fields and countries.

This scale can be used in both in Spanish and English versions to detect potential entrepreneurs in the sports sector, so it can help universities and employers to detect future intraentrepreneurs in the sports sector.

Social implication of this paper is the detection of potential entrepreneurs who can improve economic, social or sports performance in organizations or sports companies.

A new tool to detect the potential sport intrapreneurs in university students has been created. Moreover, a cross-cultural validation of the intrapreneurial intentions scale (in English and Spanish version) with sport sciences students from two different countries has been performed.

A questionnaire‐based survey of a business school′s MBA graduates draws conclusions on their entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial leanings. The authors suggest that specific combinations of personal characteristics and support systems will make implementation of MBA project findings more likely.

This paper fills a gap in the research undertaken into the role of intrapreneurs in the international franchise process of an organisation. The intrapreneurial role of organisational members in implementing franchising decisions in an international hotel group was investigated. Semi‐structured interviews, observations and document analysis were used as the data collection techniques. Findings suggest that human factors play an important role in the expansion process and, in a culturally diverse context, franchising is very much the concern of the development directors who provide the attributes of intrapreneurs externally in the market.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether innovation talent is predictive of business results. This question is important because companies exist to generate business results such as profitability and market expansion. To study this question, the authors conducted four phases of international research. They found that innovation talent is statistically predictive of business results. The Innovation Profiler (“the instrument”) is a web-based assessment tool based on the research. It was designed to detect the full array of specific innovation skills in individuals, skills that correlate with real-world business results.

The research presented in this paper follows four phases: a qualitative phase followed by two correlational studies; and finally, a validation research phase. The researchers wanted to answer the questions: “Is innovation talent predictive of business results?” “Which dimensions of innovation talent are most predictive of business results?” The research compares the attitudes, value and beliefs of innovators (both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs) to the business results they achieved and compares innovators to the general population.

The research findings are that: innovation talent is highly correlated with positive business results. Innovators have significantly higher Innovation Profiler scores than the general population. Within the population of innovators, top scorers are associated with a larger number of positive business results than bottom scorers. Intrapreneurs, while sharing many characteristics with entrepreneurs, tend to score higher on innovation skills. The Innovation Profiler does not produce adverse selection bias with respect to gender or ethnicity.

Most psychographic instruments are normative, including the Innovation Profiler; they rely on scaled responses that measure the extent to which individuals consider statements to apply to them personally. Normative instruments are faked more easily than ipsative (forced choice) measures, which ask people to choose from two to four answer options that are usually perceived as equally desirable. However, it has also been argued that the relative standing of respondents (i.e. their relative scores) in the samples is relatively unaffected by normative instruments.

This study provides significant statistical support for the validity of the Innovation Profiler as a predictor of innovation talent and of business results from innovation. The authors hope that by identifying the innovation characteristics that correlate with business outcomes, the authors have contributed to the field. Companies can use this knowledge to accelerate their organizational transformation.

This research, and the Innovation Profiler based on it, enable companies to see and measure innovation talent for the first time. This talent is not held by the few and the privileged. In fact, women score as high as men and non-whites score slightly higher than whites. Innovation talent, as measured by the Innovation Profiler, can be an equalizer in the workforce. Finally, we hope that this paper helps companies attract more innovators into their workforce and to recognize and use more of their valuable skills.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to ask. “Can we predict the business results from innovation based on who is involved?” After extensive review of the literature, the authors have not found any other study asking this question. This study is also novel for: including intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs; and for including samples across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. The study demonstrates a strong relationship between innovation talent and positive business results, with effect sizes that appear to exceed personality and other factors.

This study aims to illustrate the current understanding of the concept of intrapreneurship by comparing it with that of a traditional project.

A meta-model was used to demonstrate how the two concepts overlap and what differences exist. Furthermore, a case study was conducted with an IT service provider from the banking sector in which 12 qualitative interviews with intrapreneurs were held and used to summarize the differences between projects and intrapreneurship initiatives from the intrapreneurs’ point of view.

This study identified two major differences: First, unlike in projects, the client has no clear objective in intrapreneurship; rather, only the sponsors maintain a general goal. Second, intrapreneurship allows for circumventing constraints and thus for working with more freedom and the possibility of failure.

This study used an explanatory model to summarize differences and clarify the concept of intrapreneurship.