Intrapreneurship: employees' attitude and the appropriate working environment

Because of its positive impact on organizational growth and innovation, intrapreneurship has attracted interest in recent times. While its positive impact on organizations benefitted from extensive research over the last years, research on the willingness of employees to adopt intrapreneurial behavior remains low. This paper therefore aims to evaluate the attitudes of employees towards intrapreneurial behavior at work and what kind of working environments are suitable to encourage such behavior. Thereby, the potential risk related to such behavior is placed in the wider risk literature and then critically analyzed. The paper provides a theoretical background on intrapreneurship evincing the development of terms and definitions and identifying relevant authors in this research area. Based on previous research, the analysis of data provides new insights on employees' willingness to adopt intrapreneurial behavior and what working environments might be appropriate to support such behavior and enriches and deepens the understanding of these aspects. The findings show most respondents tended to aspire to intrapreneurial behavior and felt positively motivated towards shaping the organization's future. However, the related working environments are not always suitable and supportive for intrapreneurial behavior. Future research and the collection of further data could further enhance the understanding of employees' behavior and motivation related to intrapreneurship and a distinction of employees' and employers' thoughts might help to gain new knowledge in this field.