ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAMMES

The Effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Programmes as Recruitment and Retention Tools for Organizations

Abstract

This study discusses the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programmes in modern organizations that are helping them in their recruitment and retention processes. In this study there are multiple definitions of entrepreneurship have been given to cover the broad aspect of it. The introductory part presents the overall picture of the topic and the literature review highlights major points of the entrepreneurship programmes.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT2

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION4

Background4

Entrepreneurship11

Aim of the study17

Research Questions18

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW19

Entrepreneurship: Overview19

Strategic Entrepreneurship32

Entrepreneurial Orientation35

Resistance to change41

Theories of Entrepreneurship45

Theory and Hypothesis Development51

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY67

Methodology67

BIBLIOGRAPHY70

APPENDIX98

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

To date, most theoretical development and empirical research on strategic research has been from the external perspective and has treated the organisation as a black box. In this study, I will try to open up the black box that is the organisation and examine the implications of strategic entrepreneurship inside. In particular, I will investigate in how managers and staff members react to entrepreneurial programmes and what this can tell us in the short term about the longer term future success of strategic entrepreneurship initiatives. Two short-term performance indicators that we investigate in this study are job stress and employee retention. Based on recent research, we know that employee retention, as reported by founders and CEOs of fast-growth firms, is a critical issue for entrepreneurial firms (Henricks, 2006, 2007). This issue is not new. At the height of the Internet boom, Katz, Aldrich, Welbourne, and Williams (2000) similarly reported that “Internet companies fuelling part of the boom are unable to find the managerial and technological expertise they need” (p. 7). Katz et al. further claimed that “it is the human resources that paradoxically spell success or failure for all firms and especially entrepreneurial ones” (p. 7).

Despite increasing research on human resource management (see, for example, Cardon & Stevens, 2004; Hayton, 2005), mid-level managers (Hornsby, Kuratko, & Zahra, 2002; Kuratko, Ireland, Covin, & Hornsby, 2005) and front-line employees (Åmo & Kolvereid, 2005; Kemelgor, 2002; Pearce, Kramer, & Robbins, 1997; Rutherford & Holt, 2007) in entrepreneurial contexts, a substantial amount of work still needs to be done in the area of management and staff turnover, particularly in the area of behaviour, attitudes, and cognition (cf. Ucbasaran, Lockett, Wright, & Westhead, 2003). From entrepreneurship research, we know that the pursuit of entrepreneurship as a corporate strategy creates a potentially complex set of challenges, as “it involves radically changing internal organisational behaviour patterns” (Kuratko, Montagno, & Hornsby, 1990, p. 49).

Instead of certainty and long-term stability, Burgelman (1985) proposes that new venture divisions need to design for ambiguity. In the particular context of strategic entrepreneurship, “managers may feel threatened by the idea of pursuing disruptive innovations that deviate from the firm's current recipes” (Ireland, Hitt, & Sirmon, 2003, p. 982) and their “natural tendency” is “to protect the firm against such 'disruptive innovations'” (Covin & Slevin, 2002, p. 313). In fact, Rutherford and Holt (2007) use change readiness as a proxy for innovativeness and corporate ...