Profiling Intrapreneurs to Develop Management Interventions: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Abstract

Intrapreneurship, defined as the entrepreneurial behaviour of employees in established firms, has received growing research and practitioner attention. Despite increased efforts to develop and promote intrapreneurial behaviour, little is known about characteristics differentiating high intrapreneurs from low intrapreneurs. This research attempts to understand if and how intrapreneurs differ based on their demographic characteristics. Using intrapreneurship data collected from 329 middle level employees from Sri Lanka, we first carried out K-mean cluster analysis. The results suggest that the respondents belong to two significantly different (p = 0.000) clusters. Around 65% of our respondents belong to high intrapreneurship cluster while the remainder belong to low intrapreneurship cluster. We then carried cross tabulation analysis to derive demographic profiles for each cluster based on age, years of experience, industry, educational qualifications, and gender. The standardized residuals revealed that females are significantly higher (than expected frequency) in low intrapreneurship cluster and significantly lower in high intrapreneurship cluster. Overall, gender reveals to be a significant differentiator between intrapreneurship clusters. Our findings contribute to theory by providing novel insights on demographic profiles related to intrapreneurship. From practitioners’ perspective, it suggests that management interventions promoting intrapreneurial behaviour in organisations should specifically target females.