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The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and intrapreneurship within the context of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

This conceptual paper builds on a historical review of the two main currents of the corporate entrepreneurship literature and the distinction established by French scholars between “traditional SMEs” and “miniature large firms”.

The paper summarizes various findings regarding the antecedents of EO and intrapreneurship in SMEs and elaborates a series of testable propositions linking EO to intrapreneurship.

The paper posits the existence of different types of SMEs and suggests that the organizational and managerial antecedents of EO differ by type.

The paper explores the relation between intrapreneurship and EO, thus connecting two unrelated streams of literature within the field of corporate entrepreneurship.

Management practices and education are presently in a stage of reappraisal and a growing number of scholars and experts are suggesting that managers should be taught and adopt the approach and methodologies of designers. The purpose of this paper is to imagine the impact of this move and to try and foresee whether “management as design” is an inescapable evolution or just another management fad.

Once the notion of management as design is defined, a thought experiment is proposed to the reader under the guise of a forged business case whose various implications are progressively exposed and discussed.

The adoption of a design approach holds profound transformative potential for the positioning, offer, value chain and processes of firms but it also implies a substantial re‐arranging of the relations between co‐workers, and between managers and subordinates. Beyond the initial shock that the introduction of a radically different approach inevitably entails, management as design is exposed to three perils: the reduction of design approaches and methods to a mere set of tools in the hands of self‐appointed experts; the rejection of its open‐ended and inclusive methods on account of their lengthy and time‐consuming nature; the inherently hard‐to‐manage relations between traditional managers, on the one hand, and managers as designers, on the other.

The article uses the power of a fictional narrative to explore and draw some of the firm‐level and individual‐level implications of the adoption of “management as design” approaches and methodologies by a hypothetical company.

In a context of great complexity, many authors have focused on the beneficial effects of leadership flexibility (Denison et al., 1995), a capacity theoretically associated with mindfulness. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the relationship between mindfulness and behavioral flexibility in leaders.

Data were collected from two samples: 100 active leaders from diverse economic sectors and 62 students pursuing an executive MBA degree.

The results show that mindfulness is positively associated with the overall score for leader flexibility, and with its two dualities: self-assertive and directive vs collaborative and supportive, and long-term strategy vs short-term execution. Specifically, four of the five dimensions of mindfulness (nonreactivity, nonjudging, acting with awareness and describing) were positively correlated with the overall flexibility score.

The results suggest that by developing mindfulness, managers might be better able to adapt their leadership style to the demands of different situations. To that end, interventions based on mindfulness are worthwhile options for use within organizations, particularly in the context of leadership development programs.

While most models of leadership assume a linear relationship between certain leadership behaviors and performance, other voices suggest that effective leaders need to possess great behavioral flexibility so that they can adapt with agility to the multiple needs of the people and situations around them. Few studies have examined the factors that may play a role in leadership flexibility.