Innovation-Driven Intrapreneurship in Large Firms

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade

Innovation-Driven Intrapreneurship in Large Firms: The Role of Middle Managers Zhengwei LI, Jixun LIU1, Feirong WANG

College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang University of Technology

Abstract: A growing body of research is concerned with innovation, entrepreneurship and how innovation influence entrepreneurship. Yet the innovation-driven intrapreneurship (IDI) has been largely overlooked. Furthermore, it has rare literature on IDI at large firms and at organizational level, especially in view of role of middle managers. In an IDI case study at one MNC, we investigate how innovation originated, triggered and evolved for driving intrapreneurship and how the middle managers moderate the effect of IDI in each phase of the whole process at individual, group and firm level. Using Selfdetermination theory, resource-based view and entrepreneurship theory, we generate the research framework. Our results reveal the role of middle managers is continuously changing in action and resource acquisition for intrapreneurial opportunity, more specifically, the middle managers' motivation and the regulatory styles are being de-internalized under innovation-driven intrapreneurship program over time. Moreover, the level of their engagement and autonomy negatively correlated with the elevating legitimacy in consideration of the sense of belongingness and connectedness to their own. So we illustrate the intrapreneurial process and their evolution between creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship as continuum, promote resource-based view for intrapreneurship perspective and propose resolving the paradox of internalization and legitimacy for middle managers as well as establishing organic structure to introduce new pattern with clan control to incentivize the middle managers. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating their continuum of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship and their consequence and their evolution accompanying with resource allocation and middle managers' motivation regulation, and adding the relationship that middle managers' general regulatory style externalization tendency comparing to the legitimacy elevation of innovationdriven intrapreneurship, as important dimensions to entrepreneurship theory, self-determination theory and organizational behaviour theory.

Keywords: Innovation-Driven Intrapreneurship (IDI); Motivation; Legitimacy; De-Internalization; Clan Control; Middle Managers; Methodology: Qualitative Study (Case Study) JEL Classification: L26, O12.

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Corresponding author: Jixun LIU can be contacted at: [email protected]


1. Introduction Today’s organizations face increasingly dynamic and volatile environments, characterized by substantial and often unpredictable political, economic, cultural and technological change. Innovation is regarded as effective approach to overcome the challenging environment (Mortlock & Sherer, 2015). In recent years, researchers have paid great attentions to intrapreneurship in large firms. Intrapreneurship can be considered as a vital corporate strategy (Romero-Martí nez, Fernández- Rodrí guez, & Vázquez-Inchausti, 2010) and a factor key that helps organizations to sustain competitiveness and improve performance (Aktan & Bulut, 2008; Douglas & Fitzsimmons, 2009; Molina & Callahan, 2009). The phenomenon of intrapreneurship has been described in various terms such as intrapreneuring (…), corporate entrepreneurship (…), internal corporate entrepreneurship (…) and corporate venturing (…). Intrapreneurship has been of interest to scholars and practitioners in the past more than three decades. In recent times, organizations are beginning to see the emerging importance of intrapreneurship within organizations, with their four constructed dimensions: the new-business-venturing, the innovativeness, self-renewal and the proactiveness. All these mean that organizations alter their path dependence by transforming their strategic intent and capabilities (Schmitt et al., 2016). The recognition, formulation and execution of these transformation processes are central issues (Basu & Wadhwa 2013; BenMenahem et al., 2013; Kwee et al.2011). Since last century, a stream of intrapreneurship was introduced to represent such regime of autonomy, self-directedness and innovation in the organizations (…). Accordingly, intraprenuers are generally greatly self-driven, hands-on and pragmatic individuals who are feel at ease with inventive moves within the limits of an organization in quest of an innovative product or service (Bushra, Zehra and Ahsan-ulHaq Shaikh 2011). In the challenging environment, continuous innovation is regarded as effective approach (…) for creating new process and product (…). Meanwhile, developing intrapreneurship in organization is a further step forward and crucial too, as it requires an organization to grow and diversify its business (…), to satisfy and retain its best staff’s motivation (…), and to exploit its underused resources in new ways (…). The aim of intrapreneurship is to develop a new venture within organizations, for exploiting a new opportunity to promote economic value and organizational performance improvement. In pursuit of improved performance, firms can benefit greatly from allowing intrapreneurial employees to identify and implement product, service or process innovation in markets. Innovation-driven Intrapreneurship (IDI), referring to the creation for pursuing global opportunities based on bringing new innovations in many varieties including technology, process, business model, and more, to customers through commercialization (…). The notion of being innovation driven is to emphasizes the intrapreneur’s awareness of the need to build competitive advantage, which for an intrapreneur can only be done by taking today’s resources and doing something distinctive with them. When looked back the orientation of innovation, it is clearly retrieved from opportunity identification and exploration (…) in sense of creativity and implemented with resources (…). Due to middle-level managers’ characteristically central roles within the intrapreneurial process (Kuratko et al, 2005), middle-level managers’ intrapreneurial behavior may be most critical to the effective implementation of intrapreneurship, regardless of the primary reason (either the creation of new ventures or strategic renewal) it is being pursued. Middle-level managers can and frequently do play a major role in each of the decision areas. Moreover, of the various managerial levels, middle-level managers are often most responsible for redirecting resources away from existing operations and toward intrapreneurial initiatives appearing to have greater strategic value for the firm (Burgelman, 1994). The literatures also suggest that all organizational internal factors: intrapreneurial opportunity, intrapreneurial resources and managers at all levels (Floyd & Lane, 2000; Irlend, Hitt & Vaidyanath, 2002) play important roles in many varieties of intrapreneurial success. In this study we limit our analysis to the middle managers including their intrapreneurial behaviours and perception, the reason for this is that middle managers interactively synthesize information, disseminate that information to both top- and operating-level managers (Kuratko, Ireland & Hornsby, 2005). Middle managers also reconcile top-level executives’ perspectives with implementation issues surfacing at lower organizational levels (King, Fowler, & Zeithaml, 2001). All these works are significant additions to our knowledge regarding the creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship as well as role of middle manager, they represent a major renaissance in the field. It is distinct that middle managers' intrapreneurial behaviours are positively linked to successful intrapreneurship, the organizational antecedents of middle managers' intrapreneurial behaviors and the action of a set of behaviors and its outcome have been broadly depicted (…). Despite their obvious


contribution, however, the intrapreneurship is long journey executed at project basis and lasting half to three years in average, it leaves a major gap in our understanding of intrapreneurial processes: how innovative opportunities are recognized and innovation-supporting behaviours are generated and directed within intrapreneurial organizations. What is the typical behaviors for middle managers? Are those behaviors volitional and accompanied with the assumed autonomy from middle managers' sense of self? What is the inherent motivation and their motivation can be maintained are the motivation regulated by which kind of mechanism to alter the change tendency? All these contents are locked in the black box and their interlinkage logic are absent. We therefore believe that examining the theoretical tensions could be a powerful way to synthesize prior research and develop it further. A systematic literature review allows us to evaluate the research field’s status quo in a ‘replicable, scientific, and transparent process’ (Tranfield et al, 2003). Such a review ensures that this extensive, yet diverse, body of work becomes more complementary, synergistic and cumulative. Moreover, exploring tensions is an important way of stimulating the development of more encompassing and relevant theories (Lewis & Grimes1999; Poole & Van de Ven 1989). Overall, our aim is thus to take stock of past research of intrapreneurship, resource-based view and self-determination theory to provide future research with a solid foundation that provides theoretical integration and practical guideline. To address the aforesaid limitations of the previous studies, this paper theoretically explores the role of middle managers in intrapreneurship development along with its legitimacy gradual elevation. We progress this paper in five main steps. We begin by introducing the background of our study. In section 2, we introduce the advancement of intrapreneurship in the nature and its relatedness via systematic literature review. In section 3, we shortly report the research methods including data collection and date analysis. In section 4, we figure out the results and findings how creativity occurs and trigger the innovation, then the innovation drive the intrapreneurship in sequence. In the whole process, what are the motivation of middle managers and how are the intrapreneurial behaviours being regulated. In section 5, we perform the intensive discussions why creativity occurs and trigger the innovation, then the innovation drive the intrapreneurship in sequence. In the whole process, how do the motivation of middle managers change and how are the intrapreneurial behaviours being regulated. Further, by introducing self-determination theory as additional, we cross checked the potential obstacles of IDI from middle managers which probably lead to not always successful in intrapreneurship, particularly with consideration of innovation as driven force's intrapreneurship versus de-internalization as middle managers perceived locus of causality, to achieve the final conclusions, including theoretical extensions and contributions. The implication of this research is relevant to large firms for increasing the competitiveness by incentivizing the middle managers, to authorize them more autonomy to being more internalized, enhancing and complementing the knowledge of IDI in theoretical, empirical and practical. 2. Literature Review The phenomenon of intrapreneurship has been described in various terms and intrapreneurship has been synonymized with corporate entrepreneurship, corporate venturing, staying within entrepreneurship domain. Intrapreneurship, i.e. entrepreneurship within existing organization, has been of interest to scholars and practitioners in the past more than three decades. Schumpeter (1934) describes entrepreneurship as the creation of "new resource combinations" through the act of innovation. Burgelman (1984) defines corporate entrepreneurship as "extending the firm's domain of competence and corresponding opportunity set through internally generated new resource combinations". Combining these perspectives, corporate entrepreneurship can be recognized as the improvement of firm competencies and the extension of its opportunity set through internally generated innovation. 2.1 Intrapreneurial process Entrepreneurial process has been an ubiquitous phrase in the organizational entrepreneurship literature and currently ranks as the hottest topic in entrepreneurship research (Kuckertz, 2013). Pioneering scholars placed "process" at the very heart of entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1985; Low & MacMillan, 1988). Increased consensus has been attained on the concept of entrepreneurship as the process of uncovering and developing an opportunity to create value through innovation and seizing that opportunity without regard to either resources (human and capital) or the location of the entrepreneur—in a new or existing company” (Churchill, 1992, p. 586). Variety of processes addressed – from opportunity discovery and creation processes, to firm start-up, growth and exit processes, to broader market and institutional processes (Chiles, Elias & Li, 2015).


The process of intrapreneurship is usually depicted as fundamentally enabled by three factors: an intrapreneur, an intrapreneurial opportunity and resources that are acquired by intrapreneur and deployed by the organization in pursuit of that opportunity (Kuratko et al, 2005). An Intrapreneur is an entrepreneur within a large firm, who uses entrepreneurial skills without incurring the risks associated with those activities. Intrapreneurs are usually employees within a company who are assigned to work on a special idea or project, and they are instructed to develop the project like an entrepreneur would. Intrapreneurs usually have the resources and capabilities of the firm at their disposal. Intrapreneur, refers to individuals who take hands-on responsibility for shaping innovation inside the organization and focus on innovation and creativity and transform a dream or an idea into a profitable venture, by operating within the organizational environment.” (Pinchot, 1988; Arslan & Cevher, 2011). The first written use of the terms ‘intrapreneurship’ as well as ‘intrapreneur’ and ‘intrapreneuring’ date from a paper written by Gifford Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot in 1978, then it was formally introduced into academic study by Howard Edward Haller in June 1982. Recently entrepreneurship scholars have proclaimed "process is our fundamental object of enquiry" (McMullen & Dimov, 2013; Steyaert, 2007; Moroz & Hindle, 2012). Intrapreneurship, specifically as entrepreneurship within an extant organization and with clear organizational boundary, is a dynamic social process (Russell, 1999). Accordingly, intrapreneuring, serving as shorthand for intrapreneurship as process, starts from organizational antecedents including top management support, work discretion or autonomy, rewards or reinforcement, time availability and organizational boundaries etc (…) and end with expected outcome through intrapreneur's effort, interacting with environmental, organizational and individual factors. Intrapreneurship is a type of proactive behavior through which organizations seek several outcomes such as the creation of a new organization, instigation of innovation, and strategic renewal (Sharma & Chrisman, 1999). Constantly, intrapreneurial behaviour, is generated by: (1) strategic posture: strategic management's propensity to support risky ventures, the extent and frequency of product innovation and the pioneering nature of management or their tendency to engage in proactive competitions with industry rivals; (2) organizational variables such as resources and competencies, structure, culture, and top management values; (3) environmental variables through intrapreneurial process (Covin & Slevin, 1991; Russell & Russell, 1992; Zahra & Covin, 1995; Zahra, 1991). Intrapreneurial behaviours, typically take two primary forms: autonomous strategic behaviour and autonomous strategic behaviour. Autonomous strategic behaviour is "bottom-up" approach to engage all employees into firm's success as they are the ones closest to customers, products, business partners and business processes every day and easily generate the great ideas and suggestions, either a kaizen event for daily work or completely out-of-box thinking for innovation (Liu, 2017). Induced strategic behaviour, however, is a top–down process in which the firm’s current strategy and structure shape the entrepreneurial actions taken to develop product, process, and administrative innovations, to tackle the most critical and complex topics via encourage risk-taking and tolerate failure (Kuratko et al., 2005; Liu, 2017). Further, the environment, is strongly associated with intrapreneurship. For external environment, Miller and Friesen (1984) note a positive relationship between innovative activities and dynamic environments in a seminal study of entrepreneurial and conservative firms. Considering organizational internal environment that form the basis of intrapreneurship, the organizational intrapreneurial culture and capability become crucial, intrapreneurial capability, more precisely, equates to and rely on the creativity and innovation (Rule and Irwin 1988). Detailing the activities and its orientation, the pursuit of creative or new solutions to challenges confronting the firm, including the development or enhancement of old and new products and services, markets, administrative techniques, and technologies for performing organizational functions, as well as changes in strategy, organizing, and dealing with competitors, may be seen as innovations in the broadest sense, wisely the intrapreneurship is on the top of all innovative activities' outcome. Bygrave and Hofer (1991) point out, an essential characteristic of entrepreneurial outcomes is that they are non-linear changes of state. In evolving point of view, the intrapreneurship is a long journey started from an idea, matured for innovation with a small team and finally could become intrapreneurship if it is fortunately not killed. Zaltman et al. (1973) conceptualize the intrapreneurial process in three stages: initiation, development and implementation. It can be converted into three action-orientated phases as well: creativity - get the right idea, housed in technology literature; Innovation - do the right idea, housed in the psychology literature; Intrapreneurship - make the idea successful, housed in the business literature. It shall be


recognized of sieving functions that the absolute number is getting fewer due to resources constrain and project enriching. Creativity is associated with the production of novel and useful ideas concerning virtually all aspects of the formation and operation of an organization, such as products, services, work processes, management methods, and business models. Organizational creativity emphasizes two essential elements. First, novelty and usefulness. An idea that is novel but has little value or practicality would not be judged as creative. Second, creativity focuses on idea production. Creativity is often a starting point for innovation (Amabile, 1988; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). Innovation, focusing on implementation of new and useful ideas, is to create business value, either be incremental improvements to existing products, or the creation of breakthroughs such as entirely new products and services, cost reductions, efficiency improvements, new business models, new ventures, and countless other forms. Intrapreneurship is about how to discover, create, develop and refine the ideas into new business venturing through innovativeness and proactiveness, this is the main stream. Aparting from new business venturing, a separate stream of intrapreneurship is strategic renewal that is an integral part of corporate entrepreneurial efforts to revitalize existing firm businesses (Sharma and Chrisman 1999), it clearly differs from corporate venturing activities that focus on the creation of new corporate businesses (Stopford and Baden-Fuller 1994; Zahra 1993). For how organizations renew themselves, some scholars take an organizational learning perspective, arguing that balancing exploration and exploitation effectively is an essential element. Other use a resource-based perspective to argue that dynamic capabilities allow firms to reconfigure their resource base. 2.2 Intrapreneurial opportunity and resource Intrapreneurial opportunity is the core of intrapreneurship research (…), heavily geared up with environment. The external environment has historically been viewed as a determinant of entrepreneurial activity at both organizational level and individual level (Covin and Slevin 1991). Certain environmental characteristics, such as dynamism, technological opportunities, industry growth, and demand for new products, are viewed as favorable (munificent) for intrapreneurship, whereas other variables, such as unfavorable change and competitive rivalry, are viewed as unfavorable (hostile). Environmental conditions present information about intrapreneurial opportunities to organizational agents (Russell, 1999). In Zahra's (1991) terms, information from the environment is presented in the form of "precipitating events" that stimulate entrepreneurial activities. Members of entrepreneurial organizations tend to be sensitive to these events and perceive them as opportunities for pursuing innovative ventures; conversely, members of less entrepreneurial or "conservative" organizations tend not to notice or act upon these opportunities (Miller & Friesen, 1984). In its broadest conception, entrepreneurial behavior is a comprehensive term that captures all actions taken by a firm’s members that relate to the discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Smith & Di Gregorio, 2002). Although firms may pursue entrepreneurial ventures in all types of environments, it appears likely that they will be concentrated in dynamic, heterogeneous, and hostile contexts (Covin & Slevin, 1990; Miller & Friesen, 1984). Dynamic and heterogeneous environments may provide more opportunities for the entrepreneurial firm to exploit while hostile conditions provide a strong incentive for firms to pursue innovation as a source of competitive advantage. In these contexts, it seems clear that the environment presents either a greater opportunity or a pressing need for recognizing the "precipitating events'" that trigger entrepreneurial responses. Dynamic environments are likely to provide many precipitating events as changing conditions displace existing bases for competitive advantage and generate the search for innovative sources of advantage (Khandwaila, 1987; Miller & Friesen, 1984). Utterback (1994) claims that dynamic environments stimulate firms to engage in entrepreneurial ventures in order to take advantage of emerging market opportunities. Khandwalla (1987) finds that "opportunity-rich", dynamic environments provide a match with entrepreneurial goals and policies to produce risk-taking, innovation-directed behaviour. Static environments, on the other hand, tend to reinforce existing sources of competitive advantage, providing few opportunities for innovative change (Covin & Slevin 1989; Miller & Friesen, 1983). Zahra (1991) notes that heterogeneous environments are associated with corporate entrepreneurship. These environments are characterized by multiple market segments with diverse customer needs and characteristics. This diversity provides an expanded scope and multiple opportunities for innovation that entrepreneurial firms tend to exploit. Also. hostile environments have been correlated with corporate


entrepreneurship (Covin & Slevin, 1989; Zahra, 1993; Zahra & Covin, 1995). These environments demonstrate high levels of rivalry between industry competitors within a context characterized by high levels of uncertainty and vulnerability to outside influences. These harsh conditions may impel firms to seek out innovation as a source of advantage over their highly competitive rivals. In a seminal study of entrepreneurial and conservative firms, Miller and Friesen (1984) note a positive relationship between innovative activities and dynamic environments. Conversely, they report a negative relationship between entrepreneurial strategies and relatively benign or stable environments. Covin and Slevin (1990) find that entrepreneurial ventures in emerging industries (characterized by high rates of change and uncertainty) are more successful than those initiated in more mature industries. Zahra (1991) provides an extensive study that combines environmental, strategic, and organizational variables. This study indicates that dynamic, hostile and heterogeneous environments intensify entrepreneurial activities via opportunity detection and utilization. In the face of open and changing environment, how can a firm manage to adapt for survival? The adaption is that a firm's ability to exploit existing assets and positions in a profit producing way and simultaneously to explore new technologies and markets. In short, intrapreneurship is an important means of building and reconfiguring the firm's resource base to capture existing as well as new opportunities. The importance of resources in entrepreneurship is central to implementation of the opportunity (Stevenson & Gumpert, 1985). Indeed, a new organization, be it independent or inside a corporation, cannot survive without resources (Katz & Gartner, 1988; Muzyka. 1988). However, within an organization the capacity to mobilize resources is power (Kanter, 1983) and the shift of power. Therefore, intrapreneurship is a social-cognitive process (Zahra, Kuratko & Jennings, 1999) that how managers spot opportunities and how they go about configuring the intrapreneurial activities involved. Following resource-based theory, a firm is a heterogeneous bundle of resources. Resource categories of human, social, organizational, physical, and financial are found to be theoretically derived, resulting in a model that is both parsimonious but complete enough to provide for the discussion of the entrepreneurial process (Brush & Greene, 1996; Greene & Brown. 1997). In the discussion of the strategic management of existing firms, the organization of resources is largely complete (Ansoff, 1965; Andrews, 1971; Hofer & Schendel, 1978; Dollinger 1995). However, intrapreneurship, as new business venturing, still newly established or formed, request the resources to re-configure and re-deploy, having the crucial influence of the venture founder(s) upon the initial resource collection. Specifically, human resource is located solely in the founder or founding team. This individual(s) is both the foundation and fountainhead for all other resources that will become the organization and thus has an influence on the intrapreneurial process that is instrumentally different from any other members of the organization. Social resources is crucial to intrapreneurs, encompassing both actual and potential resources flowing through a relationship network established either individually or collectively, as well as consciously or unconsciously (Bourdieu, 1983; Coleman, 1988). Relationships may evolve from the intrapreneur's personal developed network (Greene & Brown, 1997). Organizational resources of the venture emerging from the corporate context is in a different resource position because it can draw, at least initially, from the organizational resources of its parent corporation. Physical resources are tangible goods needed to operate the business and include raw materials, plant, property, and equipment (Hofer & Schendel. 1978; Dollinger, 1995). The physical resources is limited at the outset because few tangible resources are controlled by the intrapreneurs in the earliest stages of development. Covin and Slevin (1991) point out, intrapreneurial ventures are resource consuming activities and, therefore, a firm's ability to pursue innovation will be constrained by available resources. Russell (1999) noted that organizational "slack" or free resources is used to support innovative ideas. Slack resources operate in conjunction with discretionary control over resources. Moreover, moving the resources into intrapreneur is marked by power struggles and considered the central dynamic of the venture process (Van de Ven et al., 1989). This power dynamic has the potential for establishing contextual conditions that may differentially affect resources relevant to new ventures. Three specific contextual conditions— time, success hurdles, and boundaries—are posited to have a differential impact on the resource bases of corporate and independent ventures. 2.3 Organizational factors on intrapreneurship There are many conceptualizations of intrapreneurship. Guth and Ginsberg (1990) stressed that intrapreneurship encompasses two major phenomena: new venture creation within existing organizations and the transformation of ongoing organizations through strategic renewal. Strategic renewal describes the process that allows organizations to alter their path dependence by transforming their strategic intent and capabilities (Schmitt et al.2016). As such, strategic renewal consists of distinct renewal journeys or


trajectories describing the underlying patterns of action, which lead to strategic renewal over time (Kwee et al.2011). The recognition, formulation and execution of these transformation processes are central issues pertinent to this literature (Basu and Wadhwa 2013; Ben-Menahem et al.2013; Kwee et al.2011). Intrapreneurship, as a pure of corporate entrepreneurship, with focusing on organizational influences on the process of corporate entrepreneurship within clear organizational boundary. A review of corporate entrepreneurship indicates organizational strategy, culture, structure, and resources shall be considered (Covin & Slevin, 1991; Russell & Russell, 1992; Zahra, 1991). Although individual and environmental elements are not ignored, environmentally based precipitating events may provide opportunities for intrapreneurship but unless the events are noticed and acted upon by organizational participants, entrepreneurship does not occur. At organization level, a set of antecedents influencing intrapreneurship are organizational characteristics (open and quality communication, existence of formal controls, intensive environmental scanning, management support, organizational support) and organizational values that all help an organization become more intrapreneurial (…). Intrapreneurial organizations are those that engage in new business venturing, are innovative, continuously renew themselves, and are proactive (…). Intrapreneurial firms create mechanisms that focus the attention of organizational members on innovative opportunities and generate behaviours that support entrepreneurial venturing. Intrapreneurial behaviour at the firm level is the result of the interaction between organizational characteristics, individual responses and precipitating events. Some researchers claim intrapreneurship is embodying entrepreneurial behavior requiring organizational sanctions and resource commitments for developing different types of value-creating innovations (Alterowitz, 1988; Borch et al., 1999; Jennings & Young, 1990; Kanter, 1985; Schollhammer 1982). Oliver (1997) argued that firm's sustainable competitive advantage depends on both resource capital, or firm-specific value-enhancing assets and capabilities, and institutional capital, the broader industry influences which can enhance or inhibit optimal use of resource capital. It is noted that the internal generation of innovation requires action on the part of motivated individuals and groups and is influenced by organizational and environmental characteristics. In consideration of process dimension referring to the actual manifestation of intrapreneurship, there is a tension between the induced and autonomous perspectives on intrapreneurship reflects the fundamental question of who initiates and implements intrapreneurial activities within organizations. Some scholars take an upper echelons theory perspective to argue that senior managers play an essential role in initiating, enabling and controlling intrapreneurship journeys (…). Other scholars draw on the strategy process literature to claim that lower-level managers and employees are important drivers of intrapreneurial processes within organizations (…). Bower (1970) was one of the first researchers to focus on the importance of middle managers, as agents of change in contemporary organizations. Middle Manager are defined as those “organizational members who link the activities of vertically related to groups and who are responsible for at least sub-functional work flow, but not the work flow of the organizational as a whole” (Floyd & Wooldridge, 2007). Middle managers’ intrapreneurial behaviour therefore requires a dual focus as it consists of their own entrepreneurial actions, such as risk taking, creativity, and opportunity seeking, as well as having leadership responsibility for creating an atmosphere that motivates subordinates to also behave entrepreneurially (Hornsby et al., 2002; Kuratko, 2010; Leitch, McMullan, & Harrison, 2013). Quinn (1985), who identified some of the roles and contributions of middle managers in the innovation process, contended that middle managers use formal and informal approaches to encourage diverse employees to achieve firm goals and innovation. Floyd and Wooldridge (1992) concluded that middle managers frequently play a key role in making strategic innovation accessible to senior executives. Additionally, Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) emphasized the central role of middle managers in creating new knowledge in the innovation process, which, in turn, fuels organizational growth. Zahra et al. (1999) noted the importance of middle managers in facilitating efforts toward corporate entrepreneurship. Middle managers can also create social capital and the trust required to foster the corporate entrepreneurial process. Formalized structures have been found to be negatively correlated with innovation (Tornatzky et al., 1983). A presumed reason for this finding is that in a formalized context, work-related behaviors are largely controlled by strict rules and procedures, allowing little opportunity for creativity and innovation. Informal structures, on the other hand, tend to be characterized by low emphasis on work rules and formal procedures, providing increased autonomy to experiment with innovative solutions and permitting relatively easy exchange of information across organizational boundaries (Zaitman, Duncan & Holbek.


1973). Ideas for new ventures are initiated largely as a result of the "autonomous" activities of individual organizational members (Burgeiman, 1984). The development of these ideas, however, becomes the responsibility of managers and small groups who provide necessary expertise and resources that transform creative ideas into innovations (Mintzberg, 1985; Quinn, 1985). This characteristic is likely to facilitate the openness and exchange of ideas and information among organizational participants that is required for the successful development of innovative ventures (Kanter, 1983; Van de Ven, 1986). For formal and informal approach, Zahra (1991) observed that “corporate entrepreneurship may be formal or informal activities aimed at creating new businesses in established companies through product and process innovations and market developments. The formal activities, under bureaucratic methods of control, is associated with organizational structure are ineffective in managing entrepreneurial activities given the uncertainties inherent in innovation (Kanter, 1983; Russell & Russell, 1992). In the absence of meaningful formal controls, the informal activities are self-motivated and the corresponding control method called clan control (Ouchi, 1980) that operates through internalized values and informal rules that are capable of guiding organizational processes and behaviours in uncertain contexts such as innovation, is effective in managing uncertain social processes. From a strategic perspective, achieving long-term success requires that firms possess not only the operational capabilities and competences to compete in existing markets, but also the ability to recombine and reconfigure assets and organizational structures to adapt to emerging markets and technologies (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2008). Strategic Managers aspire to create competitive advantage based on innovation are more effective by creating local contexts that inspire organizational participants to generate entrepreneurial ideas on their own rather than attempting to directly manage new venture activities. Since the clan control allows high degree of autonomy and decentralize the organizational structure, it distinctly increases the discretionary that champion new ventures through resource support and to use resources to exercise intrapreneurial opportunity. As appropriate, champion projects that are intend to create newness (e.g., a product, service, or business unit), in that research suggests that middlelevel managerial behaviour is strongly linked to effective CE (Hornsby, Kuratko, & Zahra, 2002). 2.4 Theoretical intension and practical gap In the original definition and boundaries, intrapreneurship refers to employee initiatives in an organization, to pursue opportunities and undertake something new, without regard to the resources they currently control (Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990). The intrapreneur focuses on innovation and creativity, and transforms an idea into a profitable venture, while operating within the organizational environment. Thus, intrapreneurs are inside entrepreneurs who follow the goal of the organization. Intrapreneurship is an example of motivation through job design, either formally or informally. Fostering intrapreneurial behaviours and practices has assumed prime importance in the grand strategies of many firms where creating innovation is perceived as an important means of establishing and maintaining competitive advantage as well as a method for initiating corporate renewal (Russell, 1999). Conceptually, the firm that nurture organizational structures and values conducive to intrapreneurial activities are more likely to grow faster than organizations that are low in such characteristics. Hence, all are racing to get more entrepreneurial. Increasing creativity and innovation is not only on the priority list for intrapreneur, but also a strategic goal for CEOs. Instead of conceptualization, what is the appropriate organizational structures and values more likely conducive to intrapreneurial activities for intrapreneurial management in practice? It is quite normally associated with entrepreneurial failure if only capturing a little of the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial management - trying things until successful, learning from failures, attempting to conserve resources, etc., and adds them to the potential of an otherwise static organization, without exposing those employees to the risks or accountability. It leads us to re-consider the nature, process and control method of intrapreneurship. Specifically, innovation may seem like an outlier in economic development to overcome the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) environment and intrapreneurship is the steering mechanism to breakthrough organizational inertia in both procedure and resource allocation, so either the outcome or the means to achieve a desired result cannot be determined in advance. Therefore, the firm and its top management cannot use conventional methods of organizational control such as outcomebased objectives or behaviour regulation through procedures and rules, to manage the intrapreneurial journey. In such circumstances, it brings us to think over three aspects: (1) how to design an organizational context conducive to the autonomous generation of intrapreneurial initiatives—this entails the creation of


structures and a culture that facilitate intrapreneurial behaviour; (2) how to provide a sense of overall direction and light control for innovative initiatives through an intrapreneurial vision; and (3) how to ensure that motivated employee (high potential of being intrapreneur) receive necessary resources when they have the creative idea and generate the intrapreneurial opportunity through the uncertain development process. However, related literature lacks conclusive evidence on the role of intrapreneurship in Organizations innovativeness (Farhad, Khairuddin, & Roohangiz 2011). In order to address the limitations of the previous studies, we will theoretically explore the role of organizational factors in intrapreneurship development with one longitudinal intrapreneurial case, particularly in view of middle managers to establish the strong linkage for better understanding and alignment how to successfully implement "innovation-driven intrapreneurship" as a strategy within organizations. How the middle managers act towards intrapreneurial opportunity and obtain the essential resources from top executives as needed to support the more speculative opportunity. Further, we will use a co-evolutionary perspective to observe the change in intrapreneurship: ownership, legitimacy and assumed rate of return on investment, to understand middle managers' motivation and the regulatory styles accompanying with the progress of intrapreneurship and legitimacy elevation, to deepen how the corporate governance mechanism facilitate the IDI and how the corporate governance components at firm-level differentiate the IDI activities. Last but not the least, we figure out the organizational inertia and propose the appropriate organizational structure and suitable control method, to tailor and maintain the intrapreneurship. 3. Research Methods The research method adopted in this paper is theory building and integration from case study (De Massis & Kotlar, 2014; Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007; Yin, 2003). A qualitative method is chosen as the best way to arrive at an encompassing and co-evolutionary view on intrapreneurial process (creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship), middle managers' intrapreneurial behaviour (tackling of opportunity and resources) and middle managers' motivations with concerns of their interactions. In the meanwhile, with the advantage of the abundant materials on the studied case, inductive as research logic was used to generalize the specific empirics into theorized framework, to increase the conceptual clarity and operational manageability. 3.1 Research Setting The research employed a single in-depth case design that probe all the influential activities and events to figure out the operational frame in a representative firm: a) existence of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship in sequence; b) maturation with long history (min. 20 years) to trace back its movement and transformation; c) availability of several management levels (min. 3 layers) to figure out the organizational hierarchy and inertia which is assumed as neutral derived from procedure; 4) Multinational is required to attain pure effect of middle managers' substantial attribution, the specific culture impact eliminated. The unit of basic analysis is at firm level, while it also extends and cascades down to individual level and group level for complete picture. With the criteria installed for improving the research's reliability, finally, the research was carried out in one large German-based multinational gas and engineering company, The Linde Group which we shall refer to as "Linde". Linde is the world's largest industrial gases company and global player, presenting in more than 100 countries and regions with more than 65,000 staffs, ushering the creation of the supply chain of industrial gases to maintain the profitable growth and excellent performance. Linde was established in 1879 and has survived three technological revolutions. Its founder is Dr. Carl von Linde (11 June 1842 – 16 November 1934), who was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes. These breakthroughs laid the backbone for the 1913 Nobel Prize in physics. In fact, Innovation is a natural part of working at Linde, Linde has several regular initiatives and programs under solid departments with responsibility and accountability for innovation, including scouting & venturing, R&D, Process improvement, IT program etc. In May, 2016, the executive board want to take this one step further and launch "the global innovation challenge" intrapreneurial program with slogan – "Core and More" and by Nov, 2016, three finalist teams present their intrapreneurial projects to get the executive board's approval as legitimacy and investment as buy-in for developing the real businesses out of their ideas.


We chose to study "Linde" for three reasons. First, the case has 'unique' qualities fulfilling the criteria of 'theoretical sampling' on the phenomenon and complete process of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship, for extending the relationships and logic among variables of opportunity, resources and motivation for granting implication. Second, Linde has 137-year history that experienced several economic and business cycle. They maintained creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship continuously but dynamically, so it has very high reliability. Third, as one of authors ever worked at Linde more than 10 years and he still work for Linde issues as external consultant under the protection of installed confidential agreement, Linde provides a very high level of access the resources for this research. 3.2 Data collection Data were collected and obtained through three main channels: Archival documents analysis: the internal news by email, poster, intranet website; the specific database such as GIPP (global improvement project portfolio) and GIC (global innovation challenge) etc. The database administrators provide the statistics upon the confidential agreement. Interview: interviewing of the involved managers at corporate level, subsidiary and program & project manager, total interviewing including formal and informal up to 43 times, the highest level is the member of the executive board and CTO and the lowest level is the designated project manager. Direct on-site observation: The continuous improvement is being observed with 9-year duration, from Jan, 2007 to Dec, 2015. After that time, it is still being updated at irregular basis. For the intrapreneurship, the direct observation lasted 6 months, from May 2016 to Nov 2016, the whole progress and milestone were recorded properly in Table1. ****Insert Table 1**** 3.3 Research process The investigation is informed by three high frequency key words that have been observed as being associated with organization change: challenging environment (Mortlock & Sherer, 2015), organizational ambidexterity (O'Reilly & Tushman, 2013), intrapreneurship, motivation and legitimacy. Along with "mass innovation and entrepreneurship" campaign in China, we paid high attentions to the phenomena. However, intrapreneurship and its corporate transformation are the hottest issues for the practitioners but still lack of research, particularly at firm level. Luckily it finds Linde has emerged in our view as typical case that not only initiate intrapreneurship program but also implement rigorous continuous improvement all the time. Hence we decided to look into what we have accumulated in the past years and get the permission to collect more for this study, all are grouped into time-sequenced arrays to see how the ideas generated, collected, sorted, developed, commercialized. In the entire journey, how the organization, particularly the middle managers tackle the intrapreneurial opportunity and allocate the resource, to turn it into real business project, and how the middle managers' motivation being regulated and what is the root cause in view of intrapreneurial project's legitimacy. It also causes our interest how the organizational structure is altered to provide the flexibility, satisfying the need of intrapreneurship. 3.4 Data analysis We code "We are seeing that our conventional business model is increasing reaching its growth limits" as environment change, "the future of our company depends on innovation" as threat perception, "if we do not wish to lose the ground to the competition, we need to apply our core competencies to new business opportunities" as situation out of control, "no one magic formula to leverage a company's innovative potential" as organizational ambidexterity, "our homecare business or our hydrogen applications – these are prime examples of how we are using our proven expertise in new growth fields" as explorative innovation, "the employee suggestion scheme focuses on achieving concrete process improvement" as exploitative innovation, "We especially want to reach colleagues who are not engaged with innovation on a daily basis" as resources allocation, "what the global innovation challenge to do – overcome organizational barrier to create a place for innovation" as organizational inertia, "…use these trends as springboards to develop ideas with the power to take our business to the next level" as organizational performance and growth. Coding the material is split into three steps: sub-categorizing, core categorizing and theming. Then their relationships are validated and filled in categories that need further refinement and development. Additionally, we also try to identify instances in which field observations do or do not fit these categories for the concept. In the meanwhile, as varying characteristics of data sources and limited sample size,


statistical comparison is not allowed, so we code the material in sequential. One author does the original coding, then another author, who is blind to the original coding, cross-check the original coding efforts over all periods (Miles & Huberman, 1984). No conflict is detected between the second author's coding and the original coding. Then analytical replication is used to determine whether the emerging relationships is confirmed or disconfirmed in the in-depth studies sample (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003). For probing the relationships identified in observations, we follow the techniques for cross-case pattern sequencing (Eisenhardt, 1989b) and tabular displays (Miles & Huberman, 1984) and array the data additionally with an ad-hoc case, lean sigma project with the concept development (idea creation) and technical development (innovation) are same but the business development differ each other (a new real business venturing vs. sound benefit originated from improvement). The formal observations fit a consistent pattern with deductive hypothesis testing, though not always conformed perfectly (Eisenhardt, 1989a; Sutton & Callahan, 1987). Lastly we use the individual observations to construct an interpretive model on intrapreneurial process, intrapreneurial behaviour and intrapreneurial motivation with focus on middle managers' role. ****Insert Table 2**** 4. Results and Findings Oden (1997) point out that corporate shall tailor a well-structured intrapreneurial process. The process can be broken down into three phases: concept development, technical development, and business development. Following this, the essential parts of Linde GIC 2016 intrapreneurial project are two online rounds. In Online Round 1, the 25 best ideas from 1347 idea pool are selected and moved on to Online Round 2. Because an idea is nothing if without a strong team to carry it through, thus during Online Round 2, the owners of the top 25 ideas shall form teams to help shape the ideas into innovation projects for next competition. Lastly, 3 project teams will be chosen and coached for intrapreneurship. At the end, they need to get approval from board executives who act as venture capitalists to fund the intrapreneurship project to generate the new real business segment and obtain the business revenue. In line with their milestone of aforesaid Linde GIC 2016, we split the whole process and sort it into 6 steps and can be staged as creativity (concept development), innovation (technical development) and intrapreneurship (business development). Concept development is concerned only with product ideas, entirely at individual and with tiny resources. While in the technical phase, hardware and software are developed and the certain resources are needed and shall be allocated, including team member's time and engagement as human resources and their social resources and hardware & software as physical resources etc. Business development concludes the process by assuring that the idea will be finally commercialized and succeeded in the marketplace. ****Insert Figure 1**** The results and related analysis led to key insights. Overall, our findings indicate that in the process of intrapreneurship: creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship self, the idea is getting mature while extensively polished with opportunity development and resource allocation. Meanwhile, when the middle managers gradually step out that means the involvement and engagement slowly decline, it appears that the regulatory styles of extrinsic motivation tend to become more externalized over time, departing from the general organismic tendencies toward autonomy and self-regulation (Ryan, 1995) but complying with legitimacy process of innovation-driven intrapreneurship escalation within organization. This has not been anticipated in prior research and literature. We address these aspects in details below. 4.1 Creativity Creativity sounds idea initiation, occurring either the recognition of opportunities for innovation as result of environmental scanning, or the creative acts of organizational members (or combination of both). Although it could be at group level, creativity has been primarily examined at the individual level (Amabile, 1988; Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009). The GIC 2016 direct all employees' attention through the slogan – "how Carl are you" posted in all internal medias: website, email, to recall the founder's entrepreneurial spirit and perseverance, jointly announced by CEO & CTO on May 30, 2016 as soft kicked-off: "…...We want to find out: how much of the inventive spirit of Carl von Linde is in you?......" All intrapreneurial events originate in the creative acts of individuals; Intrapreneurship, as Burgelman (1984) notes, relies upon the "autonomous acts" of individuals for the initiation of new ideas:


"……The Global Innovation Challenge is for all Linde employees across all segments and regions. You will learn how to shape projects and create a business plan from an initial idea. You will get a chance to meet and work with colleagues from across the world, from different departments and at different levels of seniority......" In addition, this campaign introduces the grounded rule to ensure reaching all employees, maximize the creative ideas: "……In this cross-functional innovation contest your suggestions will make the difference, no matter if it is an idea about Linde’s business you have locked away in your drawer or a completely new approach to where we can do much better……" In this concept development stage, what do middle managers do with respect to intrapreneurial opportunities and resources that is assumed and could be understood as essential types or dimensions of their intrapreneurial behaviour? Here is the message from managing director of Linde Engineering China on Jun 1, 2016: "……As the management, we are looking forward to the participation of every Linde engineering china employee and will give you full support……" On launch day of GIC 2016 dated Jun 6, 2016, the similar message was sent out from managing director of Linde AG, Engineering Division: "……I would like to encourage you to participate in the first global contest of its kind……I fully support participation in the challenge and am very much looking forward to seeing a lot of interesting ideas reflecting out -of-the-box thinking from LE colleagues!......" In concept development phase, most ideas and intrapreneurial initiatives emerge from individual at lower organizational levels. Middle managers are assumed in the evaluative or consulting positions. This evaluative or comment role involves the decision if political support, and how much support to offer, and this decision is fully at middle managers' disposition. In an induced sense, middle managers shall endorse the intrapreneurial opportunities and emit the positive single, to responding intrapreneurial perspectives from top executives and selling their valuecreating potential to the first level managers and their direct reports. Nevertheless, the pursuit of intrapreneurial opportunities imply to identify the resources, to convert the intrapreneurial concept into a business reality through technical development. Knowing which resources is needed for the ideation's scope and content is not easy (McGrath & MacMillan, 1995), middle managers tend to be positioned to best know (Kuratko et al, 2005), this is so because they will tend to operate and grow under the purview of middle-level managers (Burgelman & Sayles, 1986; Kanter, 1983). Thus, these managers tend to best appreciate what it will take, from a resource standpoint, to sustain the initiative on its growth path. Theory (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1997) and systematic observation (Burgelman, 1983b) also suggest that in an autonomous context, endorsement behaviours are typically in support of initiatives originating below the middle management level and aimed at influencing the outlook and perceptions of those above the middle management level. A more autonomous, or self-determined by profession and roles that require middle managers to assume responsibility for nonintrinsically interesting task, this is regulated through identification that they have identified with the behavioral importance and thus accept its regulation as their own. 4.2 Innovation The purpose of innovation is “simply” to create business value (simply is in quotes because it’s obviously not so easy to do), the value itself can take many different forms. As noted before, it can be incremental improvements to existing products, the creation of breakthroughs such as entirely new products and services, cost reductions, efficiency improvements, new business models, new ventures, and countless other forms as well. In the round 01, total 1351 ideas are posted and with the criteria - novelty, customer need, growth potential, feasibility setting forth, top 25 ideas have been selected. In development stage, the innovative idea become more structured, more members are aware of their potential and are willing to support by providing affordable resources for further elaboration. "……The topic for this challenge is "Core and More”: how can we build on Linde's core strengths to create new products and service offers for our customers that contribute to our targets? In which areas can digitalisation accelerate our business growth?......"


In this technical development stage, what do middle managers do with respect to intrapreneurial opportunities and resources that is assumed and could be understood as essential types or dimensions of their intrapreneurial behaviour? Intrapreneurial initiatives are inherently experiments that evolve from fundamental business concepts to more fully defined business models (Block & MacMillan, 1993). Middle managers have much to do with how entrepreneurial initiatives take shape. "….. The top 25 ideas have been selected and we will now start the second Online Phase. In this phase……We encourage you……to contribute to the second Online Phase (September 5 to 22) and make it a success by sharing your expertise via online comments or by becoming part of a Top 25 team! The teams formed during this round are the ones who will shape the idea going forward. This is your chance to improve your entrepreneurial skills!……" In short, middle managers serve in an intrapreneurial opportunity refinement capacity, to convert malleable intrapreneurial opportunities into initiatives that fit the organization. Given the organization’s strategy and political structure, their refinement behaviours characteristically involve moulding the intrapreneurial opportunity into one that makes sense for the organization. Idea owner and first level managers often have little sense of what the intrapreneurial opportunity must “look like”, their attention will be more purely focused on the technical merit or market demand for the business concept. By contrast, top managers are far away from the operations and often have a very definite sense of the type of intrapreneurial initiatives fitting the best. "……The idea authors of the top 25 ideas will have the opportunity to announce the kind of team members they are looking for and any interested participants can contact the idea authors if they are interested in joining. Employees that are not interested in becoming part of a team are also encouraged to participate by giving constructive feedback……" When refine the intrapreneurial opportunity, middle managers will acquire resources that of course essential issue that requires a broad array of skills and points of leverage on the part of those leading the initiative. Project leader of initiatives tends to be relatively resource constrained due to the characteristically limited scope of their responsibilities and routine operations. Top managers, by contrast, having more discretionary resources at their disposal, but are responsible for allocating resources in support of established operations as well as toward promising intrapreneurial initiatives. Middle managers operate between these two extremes, they could obtain essential resources from top executives with their persuasion and negotiation skill, and/or access resources from below, for example choosing specific individuals to work on intrapreneurial initiatives. The idea author assembles the team member under middle managers' consent: "……As an idea author you will be responsible for assembling a complete team consisting of four to five people, including you, covering all the capabilities described above. If your team is not complete after the second online phase, your idea cannot proceed to the final……" and "To assemble your team you can: …5) Get help from the Global Innovation Challenge project team: you might find it hard to find team members on your own and you are thus always welcome to contact the project team……" In the stage of technical development, the top 25 ideas are heavily with the idea authors' work circumstance, the innovative solution is often also viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through moreeffective products, processes, services, technologies, or business models that are readily available to markets, governments and society, that bring the middle managers with the feeling of pressure in order to avoid guilt or anxiety or to attain ego-enhancements or pride. Middle managers perform such actions that is still quite controlling, saying introjected regulation (Ryan & Deci, 2000) that represents regulation by contingent self-esteem. A classic form of introjection is ego involvement (Nicholls, 1984; Ryan, 1982), in which a person performs an act in order to enhance or maintain self-esteem and the feeling of worth. 4.3 Intrapreneurship Intrapreneurship is to make the idea successful in commercialization and is indeed a process of business development. All top 25 ideas are enhanced with the structured way to consider the real business case: what is the core aspects of the idea? why this is a great opportunity to introduce to the market? how the idea would be used to meet the opportunity? what is the market and what is the potential value creation for organization? what is the uncertainties relating to the idea? what is the resources required to realise the idea? what is the immediate next steps required and who are the team member assembled for the execution? Bring all these business - related issues and the answers on desk, the top 3 are sieved out:


"…The Jury consist of 8 to10 members at a senior management level including: 1) Representatives from Linde R&D and Innovation; 2) Representatives from Linde Business Units; 3) External representatives from start-ups and institutes……" When innovation is ready, then with the adequate resource support, a core of committed people to coalesce around the idea to contribute to its continued evolution until successful implementation and commercialization that new business venturing or business transformation is ongoing. The top 3 winning projects shift into the pipeline of business development for maturation. "……If selected, you will be invited to a workshop in Munich to receive customized training and the support of a coach to help develop your idea into a solid business plan……" and "……The finalist teams will present their innovation ideas at the Linde Technology Day in November 2016 and will have a chance to develop a real business out of their idea……" By the end of Nov, 2016, after nearly six months long process of find-tuning and selection, the top 3 promising intrapreneurial projects get the opportunity to shape. The team members meet their coaches, receiving high quality training of intrapreneurial course, and equipped with tools and methods, all these are increasing the technical and economic feasibility and improving proximity of approaching market and customers, to make their intrapreneurial projects forward. The representative team members' voices: "……participating in this process creates such a different work and thinking environment. You break out of the work routine. This can broadly change the company spirit. People can join in and can experience how creative thinking can change things……" and “……We came here with a fabulous idea conceptualized by XXX and in our workshops we had to learn how to see it. All of us have a different background……Together, we all contributed towards making the entire project come together……” and “……when you see how many ideas have been placed there and the many discussions being held on the platform, the number of ‘likes’ that have been given - and there were ideas with a lot of likes – it makes you never stop thinking……” and "……I think it's an incredible opportunity to open up our minds to new techniques, to come to these workshops and participate. We're all really excited to get a chance to take our idea further……” It is of course great for the individuals and no doubt benefit for organization too. However, associated with resources limitation, we detect that in the intrapreneurship training course scheduled on Oct 24-26, 2016 in Munich, the top 3 teams, initially consist of 5/4/5 team members and only 3/4/3 attend, the participation rate is about 71.4%, which is relatively low but still at acceptable level comparing to other seminars and workshops. So it directs our concerns why 4 of total 14 are absent. The sounds answer / explanation is that we have the time conflict with other tasks, those team members' regular work. It is foreseeable that intrapreneurial project is not prioritized as the top that still in the middle managers' disposition. With further observation and probe, the middle managers' support towards intrapreneurial project commercialization is in more political, not intrinsic motivated. It comes to our questions again. In this business development stage, what do middle managers do with respect to resources and entrepreneurial opportunities that might be understood as essential types or dimensions of their entrepreneurial behaviour? The middle managers are focusing on the organizational context within which the intrapreneurial opportunity evolves and gathers momentum and perform shepherding function that quite closely correspond to refinement function but more navigate the organizational bureaucracy (Bower, 1970; Floyd & Wooldridge, 1996). Moreover, middle managers' personal networks could support the business development of intrapreneurial initiatives as part of this navigation process. Through the shepherding function, middle managers champion, protect, nurture, and guide the entrepreneurial initiative (Kuratko et al, 2005). Through shepherd, However, theoretically if the intrapreneurial initiatives. These actions will help the project teams felt supportive in the early of commercialization, especially when the team members originating at lower organizational levels. To ensure the realization of intrapreneurial opportunity means resources shall be appropriately deployed, including how amassed resources are configured, how current resources are mobilized, when the resource are allocated and which level and type of resources allocated? Middle managers can play a major role in these decision areas. "……For the individual employee, participation in the Innovation Challenge is free of charge. Any travel costs related to the Innovation Challenge would have to be covered by the employee’s business unit."


Middle managers are often most responsible for redirecting resources away from existing operations (Burgelman, 1994) and toward intrapreneurial initiatives appearing to have greater strategic value in their own territory (still large enough). However, if and will middle managers will do so properly, very much depends on their own judgement if such intrapreneurship is towards their wish in consideration of all aspects including direct benefit, glory, ego etc. In short, it might be argued that the middle management level is where entrepreneurial opportunities are given the best chance to flourish based on the resources likely to be deployed in their pursuit. As intrapreneurship is a set of serial activities and finally reach at firm level by top management, the final determination and consequent outcome are out of middle managers' control, although they have substantial influence and the influence is continuously declining. Precisely, when the intrapreneurial project becomes mature gradually in the process of business development at firm level, middle managers have the least autonomous forms of extrinsic motivation which is labelled as external regulation. Their behaviours are performed to satisfy an external demand or obtain an externally imposed reward contingency only, here is the top management. Middle managers as individuals, experience externally regulated behaviour as controlled or alienated, and their actions have an entirely external perceived locus of causality (DeCharms, 1968). 5. Discussion and Conclusions Given the inherent interrelatedness of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship, one would expect there to have been a natural and conscious blending of research interests, results, methodologies, and diverse applications. In this study, following the structured intrapreneurial process (Oden, 1997) and exampling with one MNC intrapreneurship initiative, we posit stage the whole process characteristically in three: creativity at individual level, innovation at group level and to intrapreneurship at firm level, which are serialized in the aspect of time sequence, opportunity mature, resources escalation, motivation externalization and legitimacy elevation. And we investigate the role of middle managers and the change of role in three stages with concerns of their intrapreneurial behaviours and motivations. To be noted that the three phases of the intrapreneurial process are linked with filtration sieving mechanism. Total 1351 ideas are posted in the creativity. Filtering out ideas which e.g. are not new or don't promise any new revenues is relatively easy but the following steps (down from 300 to 100 and from 100 to 25) are getting harder. At this stage, there is still no market analysis or technical feasibility study available and the hope is that the most promising ideas are selected, but no guarantee that you bid on the best horses. Meanwhile, it shall be recognized that in absolute numbers, there will be fewer projects initiated than ideas generated, fewer projects implemented than ideas initiated. This is subjected to resource limitations and strategic constraints of the firm. All others ideas which have not been selected are still appreciated and could be relevant for other areas of the organization. They will be documented and distributed to the appropriate management throughout the organization. Therefore, the idea still has the chance of being put into practice and if this is the case, the idea author will be informed by the corresponding division. With this as solid foundation in hand, we establish the entire research framework, starting from organizational antecedents and end up with outcome of entrepreneurial behaviour at both organizational and individual level. Meanwhile, we introduce the feedback loops and comparison of expectation theory that may help to explain how non-linear change occurs in intrapreneurial systems. In the body of model, we classify into 4 segmentations and 2 of them are intrapreneurial behaviour and motivations. Intrapreneurial behaviours consist of action towards opportunity and resources allocated for opportunity while intrapreneurial motivations are stratified into regulatory styles for behaviour motivated and perceived locus of causality. See the details in figure 2. ****Insert Figure 2**** 5.1 Theoretical extensions and contributions Continuum of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship. The importance of studying entrepreneurship through the solidification of broader parameters that encase complementary fields cannot be overstated (…). At a minimum, the conceptual exploration of a rudimentary process model may facilitate studies within and across the three arenas of entrepreneurship— creativity, innovation, intrapreneurship with change management and pattern shift. Here we do not intend to create the new terminology and provide the suitable definition, instead, we illustrate the process and their evolution: creativity is to get the right idea, innovation is to do the idea right and intrapreneurship is to make the idea successful. This has been clearly shows their interlinkage and respective differentiation, providing future research a greater conceptual clarity and theoretical integration.


Promotion of resource-based view for intrapreneurship. Creativity is primarily the domain of autonomous individuals or very small groups in the entrepreneurial firm (Burgelman, 1984). Ideas in concept development stage are in an incipient state and have not been accepted by organizational participants as formal. In order to move from concept development stage to technical development stage, innovative ideas must become more structured, more organizational members, normally at group level must become aware of their potential, and they must acquire the resources (human resource and social resources etc.) from support of organizational champions for further elaboration. In business development stage, the intrapreneurial project shall receive more resource supports that enables a core of committed people to coalesce around the idea to contribute to its continued evolution and implement it until successful commercialization either creating the new business or transforming the operations of the organization. Resolving the paradox of internalization and legitimacy for middle managers. In a generalized context, the role of middle managers focus on effectively communicating information between the firm’s two internal managerial stakeholders: top managers and operating managers (Kuratko et al, 2005) and championing the intrapreneurial projects by interactively synthesizing and disseminating information and allocating resources to create the newness, e.g., a product, service, or business unit. However, it shall be emphasized, when intrapreneurial project getting mature, the project legitimacy is elevating and the motivation is being externalized. So how the corporate and the top management teams can lead middle managers (could extend to all employees) to internalize the responsibility and sense of value for extrinsic goals or, alternatively, how they can foster the more typically depicted ‘‘alienated’’ type of extrinsic motivation that is associated with middle managers' persistence, interest, and involvement? Increasing psychological ownership, e.g. intrapreneurial project more relatedness is one of feasible way. Further, in professional style, prompting the role and social demand to increasing the willing of taking over more nonintrinsically interesting tasks, that needs proper setup of organization and culture building, this has been to some extent proven in table 2 with lean six sigma project. Establishing organic structure: Intrapreneurial strategies are unlike conventional planning models. A strategy based on innovation is inherently uncertain - neither the outcome nor the means to achieve a desired result for any given innovative venture can be determined in advance. Therefore, establishing an ecosystem is assumed to achieve organic structure (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Covin & Slevin 1988; Damanpour, 1991; Khandwalla, 1977; Tornatzky et al., 1983) and introduce the clan control mechanism to guarantee the motivation as well as remove or lower the hurdle. The organic structure (including both informal and decentralized structure) will facilitate intrapreneurial processes: (1) Increased levels of autonomy that permit employees and operating managers to propose and test more new ideas (related to both); (2) Increased discretionary control over resources that enable "championing" of innovative ideas (decentralized structure only); (3) The informality of communication facilitates the unfettered exchange of information (informal structure only). (4) Increased participation in the decision process regarding new business venturing and extant operation transforming (related to both). 5.2 Implications and limitations Research limitations/implications –The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating their continuum of creativity, innovation and intrapreneurship and their consequence and their evolution accompanying with resource allocation and middle managers' motivation regulation, and adding the relationship that middle managers' general regulatory style externalization tendency comparing to the legitimacy elevation of innovation-driven intrapreneurship, as important dimensions to entrepreneurship theory, self-determination theory and organizational behaviour theory. However, we realized, although the one longitudinal case can illustrate all the details to probe the generalized rules then conceptualize and theorize the general thing, it still shrinks the reliability of the conclusion, we introduce an ad-hoc lean six sigma project to compensate it to somehow. Practical implications – In times of crisis, innovation becomes even more important since it can play a critical role to escape from it. Many companies have been coping with some problems, for instance, a decline in sales, underperformance of staff, problems in motivating mainly the young workers with a lot of potential (Wim, 2014). The global innovation challenge provides and extends the platform that flourish the corporate level management that covers (a) establishing, nurturing, rewarding, and publicly recognizing change-agent behaviour that fuses outside innovation with inside innovation; (b) encouraging external entrepreneurs to switch career tracks, even acquire their start-ups to boost corporate intrapreneurial culture and promote intrapreneurship popularity, or transfer the high potential to take the role of intrapreneur; and (c) carry out internal trade-off market for innovative solution, to retain the most of innovative talent for the inherent work and professional intrapreneur streamline the intrapreneurship


intensively on business development. While GIC showcases the importance of assimilating innovationdriven intrapreneurship everywhere, even within the framework of an existing job. Social implications – "Mass innovation and entrepreneurship" campaign gets popular in China, intrapreneurship and its corporate transformation are one of the hottest issues for the practitioners. Firms that nurture organizational structures and values conducive to intrapreneurial activities are more likely to grow faster than organizations that are low in such characteristics. In transition economies like China, intrapreneurship may be even more important for the growth and profitability of existing organizations. Firms that wish to enact an intrapreneurial strategy must create systems that focus the attention of individual participants on innovation as an important and expected activity and direct group and organizational behaviours toward intrapreneurial ends. The effective execution of an intrapreneurial strategy is the creation of organic structures (decentralized and informal) to contain innovative processes.

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