Corporate entrepreneurial identity and practices construction

Biniari, Marina (2010) Corporate entrepreneurial identity and practices construction. In: 2nd International Symposium on Process Organization Studies, 1900-01-01. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

While existing literature assumes that organizational members can be corporate entrepreneurs and champion entrepreneurship initiatives, little is known of how they become corporate entrepreneurs and how entrepreneurial behavior practices develop within an organization. The paper draws from the identity work practices literature to argue for the mediating role the construction of an entrepreneurial identity by organizational members has in the development of entrepreneurial practices within an organization, in the absence of prior entrepreneurial experience by the organization. Two instrumental cases, exploring the identity work practices the champions of two corporate venturing programs employed to reconstruct their identity and to project elements of entrepreneurial behavior, are presented. We aim to illustrate how these identity work practices resulted in the creation of a new community of practice within the parent corporation, which other organizational members recognized as entrepreneurial.