 Three chronological steps toward encouraging intrapreneurship: Lessons from the Wehkamp caseJana Deprez, Hannes Leroy and Martin Euwema Business Horizons, 2018, vol. 61, issue 1, 135-145 Abstract: In today’s turbulent business environment, innovation and organizational renewal are key. Employees are encouraged to act as intrapreneurs (entrepreneurs within their employing unit or organization) and instigate change from the bottom up. However, accomplishing this company wide is highly challenging. In this article, we examine the case of Wehkamp, a Dutch e-tailer that overcame these challenges and succeeded in creating a flourishing climate for intrapreneurship. We describe the three-step chronological process for intensive change wherein the initiatives of some intrapreneurs can produce widely held organizational value for intrapreneurship. Key to this change process are three insights: (1) Team leaders can feed the incremental and radical initiative of the few; (2) top management can give meaning and guard fairness to stimulate overall intrapreneurship; and (3) corporate entrepreneurship can be used to continuously revive widespread intrapreneurship. Organizations seeking to encourage intrapreneurship from their employees can benefit from these guidelines. Keywords: Intrapreneurship; Corporate entrepreneurship; E-business; Wehkamp; E-tail (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:61:y:2018:i:1:p:135-145 DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2017.09.013 Access Statistics for this article Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier |
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