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Intrapreneurship in Australian Firms
Jason R Fitzsimmons
Brisbane Graduate School of Business, Queensland University of Technology, QLD
Evan J Douglas
Brisbane Graduate School of Business, Queensland University of Technology, QLD
Bostjan Antoncic
Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana
Robert D Hisrich
Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management
Abstract
This paper reports on the nature and extent of intrapreneurship (or corporate entrepreneurship) practiced by Australian businesses.
We examined the relationship between measures of corporate entrepreneurship and firm growth and profitability, and utilised measures devised by earlier researchers attempting to assess corporate entrepreneurship, viz: new business venturing, innovativeness, self-renewal, and proactiveness.
Control variables included industry, firm age, and firm size. Interestingly, we found that the items measuring corporate entrepreneurship loaded onto not four but five factors, effectively splitting the self-renewal measure into two distinct elements.
Profitability was significantly correlated with self-renewal (negative) and organisational support (positive) while growth was found to be significantly and positively related to both new business venturing and environmental munificence.
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