Organizational Antecedents: Insights from Corporate Entrepreneurship and Organizational Culture

While individual and team mindsets are important as the microfoundations of entrepreneurial behavior, the structural antecedents given by organizations may facilitate or hinder the translation of mindsets into actual work behavior.

In a comprehensive study of middle managers' perceptions of an enabling environment for entrepreneurial behavior in organizations, five overarching orga­nizational factors were identified: management support, work discretion, rewards, time availability, and organizational boundaries (Hornsby et al. 2002). Manage­ment support describes senior managers' fostering behaviors of entrepreneurial behavior involving, for instance, the receptiveness of new ideas, quick adoption of improved working methods, support of cross-functional collaboration, and support for “experimental” projects (with the knowledge that some will inevitably fail). Work discretion refers to being granted high levels of autonomy in one's work, which is exemplified by allowing the usage of one's own work methods, discretion in judgment, and freedom from “double checking” all decisions. Rewards describe the reinforcement of high performance and innovation by one's leaders, such as, for instance, results-based rewards, increased job responsibilities following high job performance, and the recognition for high performance by one's managers. Time availability refers to having time not only for pressing issues and routine work, but also for thinking about wider organizational problems, for long-term problem solving or developing new ideas. Finally, the dimension of organizational boundaries captures the presence of clear expectations of work outcomes and performance, such as standards for evaluation of innovativeness, agreements on expected outputs, and performance feedback (Hornsby et al.

To measure the five factors mentioned above in teams and organizations directly, Kuratko et al. (2014) provide a readily available diagnostic tool, namely the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument (CEAI). Using this instru­ment, teams or business units may calculate their scores and compare them with other teams/units or the entire organization to identify gaps that need to be closed in terms of the structural facilitators. Another possible mode of administration of this instrument would be to answer the questions twice: first, regarding the current state (which is the way the CEAI is usually administered), and second, regarding the preferred state for fostering individuals' entrepreneurial or innovative behaviors.

By doing so, teams can identify gaps between current and preferred states, which in turn can be used as a basis of discussion within the team and with managers to prepare potential structural change.

A related measurement instrument that can be used to assess dimensions of structural antecedents for team innovation is the Organizational Culture Assess­ment Instrument (OCAI) developed by Cameron and Quinn (2006). Despite the reference to organizations, this instrument can also be applied to teams, units, departments or other parts of an organization. The OCAI covers six central dimensions, namely the dominant organizational characteristics, organizational leadership, employee management, organization glue, strategic emphases, and criteria of success. The obtained scores (to be rated in a current state and preferred state format) will give teams an indication of their dominant culture which can then be gauged regarding its fit with desired entrepreneurial or innovative behaviors. Specifically, four archetypes of cultural orientations can be assessed: clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market (for a detailed account see Cameron and Quinn 2006). A recent meta-analysis supports the notion that these cultural orientations are differentially associated with relevant organizational outcomes, such as innovation, product quality, growth, and employee job satisfaction (Hartnell etal. 2011).

In sum, as described above, management research provides ample evidence­based indications for fostering entrepreneurial behavior in teams and organizations. To put all the presented insights in a coherent and deployable framework, we will use the notion of the co-creative enterprise to describe how the principles in terms of individual mindsets and structural conditions can be put to work.

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