Organizational Support and Intrapreneurship: A Study with reference to Software Development Industry in Sri Lanka
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Date
2013
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Intrapreneurship is also known as corporate entrepreneurship and corporate venturing
(Burgelman, 1983; Burgelman, 1984; MacMillan et al., 1986) and it is the practice of
developing a new venture within an existing organization to exploit a new opportunity and
create economic value (Pinchot, 1985). More specifically, this refers to both creation of new
ventures within existing organizations and transformation of these organizations through
innovation and strategic renewal. There are evidences that intrapreneurship helps managers to
renew and revitalize their businesses, to innovate, and to enhance their overall business
performance (Kuratko et al., 1990, Antoncic and Hisrich, 1990). Organizational support is of
greater importance for intrapreneurship since the organizational supportive environment, as an
internal climate factor is described as a facilitator for organizations to spur organizational
entrepreneurial activities (Miller and Friesen, 1982). Previous researchers have found that the
organizational support plays a major role for the accomplishment of intrapreneurship (Lutfihak
et al., 2010). Large number of Sri Lankan patents has been secured by the software industry
according to the Intellectual Property Rights Office in Sri Lanka. Further, Meyer (2003) argues
that the software development sector has many entrepreneurial opportunities and they have
exploited those entrepreneurial opportunities by using their employees’ ideas and by using the
commitment of employees. Accordingly, the first objective was to assess the level of
intrapreneurship and the level of organizational support for intrapreneurship in software
development sector in Sri Lanka. Second objective was to identify whether there are differences
of the level of intrapreneurship in terms of organizational support.
Methodology
The population of this study was software development firms which have got registered in Sri
Lanka Association of Software Industry (SLASI). Further, there are 70 software companies
which have got registered under SLASI and the aim was to study the whole population.
However, only 42 firms responded making a response rate of 60%. Data was collected by using
a structured questionnaire. In addition, Cronbach Alpha reliability test was employed to assess
the validity of the questionnaire. Thus, organizational support was measured by using Corporate
Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument developed by Kuratko et al. (1990), which has shown
reliability level of 0.88in the study context. The questionnaire items to measure intrapreneurship
developed by the researcher have shown a reliability level of 0.89 confirming that these levels
are exceeding the general acceptable level. Hence, it is suitable for the further processing. Data
were analyzed using Kruskal Wallis test.
Results and Discussion
Mean values for the dimensions of main two variables namely, Organizational support and
intrapreneurship can be summarized as follows (Figure 1, 2). Accordingly, it can be observed
that mean value of the proactiveness level of the surveyed firms is at a higher level with
compared to maximum level a firm can be proactive (Figure1). Further, innovativeness and new
business venturing are at a relatively low level. Considering the mean value of level of
organizational support, except management support (70.02), all other four dimensions are
operating at a considerably lower level than the maximum level a firm can do. Rewarding or
reinforcing (19.14) is at the highest low level out of the weak four dimensions mentioned above
which can be graphically illustrated as follows (Figure2). According to the descriptive statistics,
it was found that nearly 64.3% of the sample (27 firms) was accounting for low intrapreneurship
level and the rest 35.7% of the sample (15 firms) showing a high level of intrapreneurship.
Description
Keywords
Entrepreneurship and management, Entrepreneurship, Software Developing, Software Industry, Patents