Entrepreneurship talk in the organizational context

In today’s increasingly competitive economy, many claim that corporate entrepreneurship is vital for established firms to grow and survive. To date, however, theoretical conceptualizations of corporate entrepreneurship have failed to explain how individual organizational actors, as hired employees of their firms, implement corporate entrepreneurship in practical firm operations. The main aim of this thesis is to present a new perspective of corporate entrepreneurship by exploring what kinds of practical applications of corporate entrepreneurship individual organizational actors construct in the context of their daily activities. The present thesis presents a discussion of corporate entrepreneurship as a context-specific, relational, and socially embedded phenomenon that does not produce desired business outcomes in isolation. Rather, corporate entrepreneurship is a process that individual organizational actors collectively bring about in their everyday interaction by negotiating together target-specific practical applications of corporate entrepreneurship and establishing internal and external relationships that are necessary to sustain long-term economic behavior. These practices of corporate entrepreneurship are not permanent but must be updated regularly as contexts and target groups in the firm’s business environment change. Firms can support the position of individuals as practitioners of corporate entrepreneurship through proactiveness that invites collaboration. However, problems of implementation may emerge if top management permits internal competitive aggressiveness to undermine the ability of organizational actors to fully realize their entrepreneurial potential.