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Knowledge and entrepreneurial employees: a country-level analysis

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Abstract

According to the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship, knowledge created endogenously results in knowledge spillovers, which allow independent entrepreneurs to identify and exploit opportunities (Acs et al. in Small Bus Econ 32(1):15–30, 2009). The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship ignores entrepreneurial activities of employees within established organizations. This ignorance is largely empirical, because there has been no large-scale study on the prevalence and nature of entrepreneurial employee activities. This article presents the outcomes of the first large-scale international study of entrepreneurial employee activities. In multiple advanced capitalist economies, entrepreneurial employee activity is more prevalent than independent entrepreneurial activity. Innovation indicators are positively correlated with the prevalence of entrepreneurial employee activities, but are not or even negatively correlated with the prevalence of independent entrepreneurial activities.

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Notes

  1. With some exceptions, such as Hornsby et al. (2002) on corporate entrepreneurship activities of middle managers, Parker (2011) on individuals starting a new venture for an employer, and Martiarena (2013), which is based on data from one country (Spain) of our research sample.

  2. The exception being the literature on dispersed corporate entrepreneurship (e.g., Birkinshaw 1997; Belousova and Gailly 2013).

  3. Previous large-scale research on entrepreneurial employee activity (Bosma et al. 2010) has shown that higher educated individuals are more likely to be intrapreneurs than lower educated individuals, and that lower educated individuals are more likely to be independent entrepreneurs than higher educated individuals. This has been confirmed in follow-up research by Bosma et al. (2012). Research on intrapreneurship has shown that higher educated employees are more likely to be involved in intrapreneurship than lower educated employees (Stam et al. 2012, chapter 3). So both within society and within organizations, education seems to be positively correlated to entrepreneurial employee activity.

  4. This is a much more narrow definition than that of Martiarena (2013), which includes all employees that have been involved in the development of new business activities for their employer, irrespective of whether they had a leading role in this.

  5. As Morris et al. (1994, p. 84) mention, entrepreneurial employee activity is unlikely to be a completely individual exercise: ‘The key is to balance the need for individual initiative with the spirit of cooperation and group ownership of innovation. This balance occurs over the entrepreneurial process, not all at once, and as micro-level innovation evolves into macro-level organizational change. Individuals are needed to provide the vision, unwavering commitment, and internal salesmanship without which nothing would be accomplished. But as the process unfolds, the entrepreneur requires teams of people with unique skills and resources’ (cf. Bartlett and Ghoshal 1997).

  6. The 25 countries are: Australia, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Korea (Rep.), Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, and USA.

  7. Given that the dependent variables are positive, we also ran Tobit regressions as a robustness check. This delivered the same outcomes. We also performed a linear regression with new technology based TEA: this type of independent entrepreneurship is not (statistically significantly) related to the innovation indicators. Results are available upon request.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments. A previous version of this article was presented at the Academic Policy and the Knowledge Theory of Entrepreneurship Workshop, University of Augsburg, 20–21 August 2012. In addition I would like to thank Olivier Paling and Niels Bosma for research assistance and obtaining access to data.

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  1. Utrecht University School of Economics, Kriekenpitplein 21-22, P.O. Box 80125, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Erik Stam

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Stam, E. Knowledge and entrepreneurial employees: a country-level analysis. Small Bus Econ 41, 887–898 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-013-9511-y

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