Abstract

Entrepreneurial endeavors are not limited to individual efforts in matching environmental opportunities and resources to create wealth. Since “entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors are necessary for firms of all sizes to prosper and flourish” (Barringer and Bluedorn, 1999: 256), modern corporations are systematically challenged to find new ways of serving markets, innovating new products, and dynamically organizing resources and capabilities in order to foster entrepreneurship as an enduring organizational behavior (Busenitz and Barney, 1997). In the domain of entrepreneurship, scholars are increasingly interested in investigating the phenomenon of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) as the set of entrepreneurial activities and strategies that firms can leverage to prosper and grow, developing from start-up to the maturity phase when the firm has to rejuvenate itself to survive (Kuratko, Hornsby, and Montagno, 1990; Markides, 1998; Hitt et al., 1999; Stringer, 2000). The overarching framework of CE, as suggested by Sharma and Chrisman (1999), comprehensively integrates innovation, corporate venturing, and strategic renewal. These entrepreneurial activities also have positive effects on firm performance (Kuratko, Hornsby, and Montagno, 1990; McGrath, Venkataraman, and MacMillan, 1992; Knight, 1997; Zahra, Nielsen, and Bogner, 1998). Most important, CE represents a source of constant renewal and allows repeated acts of entrepreneurship through a firm’s development pattern.