Organisational factors related to corporate entrepreneurship

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Introduction

The demise of apartheid and the concomitant collapse of trade barriers ushered new challenges for South African business organisations. Some of the challenges facing South African business organisations centre around managing in a globalised context. Michie and Padayachee (1997) aver that intensified international competition and the growth of some protectionist measures among some major industrialized countries have combined to make entry into external markets difficult while at the same time pressure is brought to bear on developing countries such as South Africa by institutions such as the World Trade Organisation to open their domestic markets to imports. Competing in global markets will require new ways of managing.

What is Corporate Entrepreneurship?

It was Schumpeter (1934) who defined the entrepreneur as anyone who helps move the economy forward by disrupting the equilibrium of the market through new combinations of resources. What all this amounts to, is that entrepreneurship can occur throughout large corporations involving any number of individuals. A scan of the literature on corporate entrepreneurship suggests that there are differences of views among researchers regarding the attributes that must be present for an organisation to qualify as entrepreneurial. The concept of corporate entrepreneurship was coined and established by Pinchott (1985). Pinchott’s book outlined guidelines and recommendations for people inside organisations to bring forth and develop new ideas into actual business ventures.

What is Market Orientation?

Market orientation is envisaged as the direct linkage between marketing and corporate entrepreneurship and as the basis for a sustainable competitive advantage (Barrett & Weinstein, 1997). Kohli and Jarwoski (1990) aver that market orientation is the firm’s implementation of the marketing concept. Narver and Slater (1995) define market orientation as the organisational culture that most effectively and efficiently creates the necessary behaviours for the creation of superior value for buyers and, thus continuous superior performance for the business. It has three components: customer orientation, competitive orientation, and inter-functional coordination, hence market orientation involves learning about customers and competitors. Kohli, Jaworski and Kumar (1993) define market orientation as the organisation-wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current needs of customers, dissemination of intelligence horizontally and vertically within the organisation, and organisation-wide action or responsiveness to market intelligence.

What is Organisational Flexibility?

Kukalis (1989) suggested that firms in highly complex environments need flexible planning systems due to the frequency of change that occurs in their environments. As the global business environment has become increasingly dynamic, organisations have been looking for ways to increase their flexibility, to be able to react to changing conditions (Reef & Blundsdon, 1998). A firm exhibiting low flexibility is seen as rigid in administrative relations and strictly adheres to bureaucratic practices (Khandwalla, 1977; Barrett & Weinstein, 1998).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABSTRACT
CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING
1.1 Introduction
1.2. Description Of Constructs
1.2.1 What is Corporate Entrepreneurship?
1.2.2 What is Market Orientation?
1.2.3 What is Organisational Flexibility?
1.2.4 What is Job Satisfaction?
1.3 Aim
1.4 The structure of the dissertation
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Corporate Entrepreneurship
2.1.1 Individual factors related to corporate entrepreneurship
2.1.2 Individualism vs. collectivism
2.1.3 Empowerment of individuals to become entrepreneurial and advance CE
2.1.4 Organisational factors related to corporate entrepreneurship
2.2 CE Theories
2.2.1 The CE model of Guth and Ginsberg
2.2.2 The CE model of Covin and Slevin
2.2.3 The CE Model of Zahra
2.2.4 The CE model of Lupkin and Dess
2.2.5 The CE model of Barrett and Weinstein
2.4 Market orientation
2.4.1 External Task environment and internally enacted environment in market orientation
2.4.2 Environmental volatility and market orientation
2.4.3 Antecedents of market orientation
2.4.4 Consequences of market orientation
2.3 Organisational flexibility
2.3.1 Organizational forms and their relationship with flexibility
2.3.2 The relationship between rules/regulations and flexibility
2.5 Job satisfaction
2.5.1 Possible theories underlying job satisfaction
2.5.2 Precipitating factors of job satisfaction
2.6 Empirically investigated relationships between corporate entrepreneurship, market orientation, flexiblitiy, job satisfaction and biographic variables
2.6.1 The relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and market orientation
2.6.2 The relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and organisational flexibility
2.6.3 The relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and job satisfaction
2.6.4 The relationship between market orientation and organisational flexibility
2.6.5 The relationship between market orientation and job satisfaction
2.6.6 The relationship between organisational flexibility and job satisfaction
2.6.7 The relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and biographic variables
2.6.8 Modelling the relationships between corporate entrepreneurship, market orientation, organisational flexibility with job satisfaction as outcome variable
2.7 The research problems
Research problem 1
Research problem 3
Research problem 4
Research problem 5
Research problem 6
Research problem 7
Research problem 8
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1. Introduction
3.2 Research design
3.3 Participants
3.4 Procedures for data gathering
3.5 Measuring instruments
3.5.1 The Corporate Entrepreneurial Assessment Instrument (CEAI)
3.5.2. Assessment of Market Orientation (MARKOR)
3.5.3. Assessment of Flexibility Scale
3.5.4. Assessment of the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire
3.6.1 Procedures For Data Analysis
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The relationship between CE, MO, F and JS
4.3 The relationship between CE and biographic variables
4.4 The relationship between JS and predictor variables
CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION
5.1 Introduction
5.2 First Research Problem
5.3 Second Research Problem
5.4 The Third research Problem
5.5 The Fourth Research Problem
5.6 The Fifth Research Problem
5.7 The sixth Research Problem
5.8 Research Problem Seven
5.9 Research Problem Eight
5.10 Contributions of the current study
5.11 Implications for management
5.13 Directions for future research
REFERENCES