Entrepreneurial Employees

Abstract

The concept of “entrepreneur” has traditionally been associated with that of “business person”. However, although they may be related, these two concepts are absolutely independent of each other. This chapter aims to address the variables associated with entrepreneurial behaviour inside the organization, among employees, as a positive and enriching characteristic of those employees. Entrepreneurship is an attitude, a way of understanding the environment and acting accordingly. It is a quality, a characteristic associated with the person who lives it. As a characteristic it is therefore linked to a noun, in short, a person (business person, employee, a volunteer in an NGO, etc.). The nature of entrepreneurship is therefore not associated only with businesspersons even though there are clearly many entrepreneurial businesspeople (as there are also many businesspeople who are not entrepreneurial and whose activity is exclusively focused on managing their business). “Businessperson” and “entrepreneur” therefore are two differentiated concepts. While the former refers to ownership of a commercial activity, the latter describes a type of leadership, a way of relating to and understanding the world around us, in short, a type of behaviour. Bearing in mind these characteristics, in recent years entrepreneurial employees have started to be defined as “intrapreneurs” in contrast to businesspeople, who were classified as “entrepreneurs”.