Servicios personalizados
Inglés (pdf)
Articulo en XML
Referencias del artículo
Enviar articulo por email
Citado por SciELO 
Similares en
SciELO 
Permalink
Introduction
In line with global economic developments and the changing business environment based on rapid technological and globalization developments, firms have been forced to bring in internal developments to enhance their performance and competitiveness. The new economic approach has also led organizations to embark on a new entrepreneurial spirit, which has become a prominent source of value and wealth creation and an important factor in organizational development. Entrepreneurship is a process in which entrepreneurs pursue opportunities regardless of the source that is currently under control. The two main components of this process are identifying opportunities and utilizing the resources needed to exploit those opportunities. Some scholars have put forward the idea that entrepreneurs predict the future of markets to meet the needs of future consumers, state or social requirements or improve social well-being.
Timmons (1999), describes most entrepreneurship as a process of creation and not a vision of anything. In his view, entrepreneurship is a fundamental human creative activity that involves the ability to create a concept or strategy through a perspective that will include but is not limited to, the willingness to take calculated risks, develop and build a management team with supplements skills and ability to control resources. Rae & Caresol (2001), acknowledged that entrepreneurship is a way of identifying opportunities for creating or releasing value and creating an investment that gathers resources to exploit those opportunities. Hisrich, & Drnovsek (2002), speak of entrepreneurship as the process of creating new valuable something and entrepreneur as a person who invests time and energy and taking responsibility for psychological, financial, and social risk to achieve money and the desired outcome. Shane, Locke & Collins (2003), stated that entrepreneurial process occurs because people are looking for opportunities and entrepreneurs envision new products or services and then develop them through the launch and exploitation of new ventures. In this sense, entrepreneurs are an active element in creating a new investment. In Goncharova, Kartashov & Gavrilova (2009), view entrepreneurship is presented as the activity of individuals at their own risk for profitability. In another definition, Acs, et al. (2004), wrote that entrepreneurship should be regarded as the realization of one's particular abilities, which is expressed by the rational combination of factors of production based on an innovative risk approach. It is worth noting that in all definitions, it highlights the risky nature of the entrepreneurial activities. Burns (2012), defines corporate entrepreneurship as a term used to describe entrepreneurial behavior in a larger organization. All firms are in a conceptual chain, from fully conservative to fully entrepreneurial.
Entrepreneurial firms are risky, innovative and active. In contrast, conservative firms are less risk-averse and more "wait-and-see". The position of a firm in this conceptual chain is strongly called entrepreneurship. Covin & Slevin (1989), initially stated that the entrepreneurial status of the organization is reflected in the aggressive competitive nature, innovation, and serious tendency towards risk-taking. In 1991, they refined their conceptualization of the entrepreneurship of a start-up company and defined it as a leader in the organization, relying on innovation and risk orientation.
Recently, Ireland, Kuratko & Morris (2006), echoed the idea, stating that corporate entrepreneurship is reflected in the attitude of members towards (a) predictive planning (ie, being progressive). (b) creative, new problem solving (ie innovation); and (c) calculated experimentation (eg, prudent solution). Zahra, Nielsen & Bogner (1999), stated that entrepreneurship may be a formal or informal activity aimed at creating new jobs in established companies through product innovation and market processes and developments. These activities may be at the corporate, sector level, functional or project, to unify to improve a company's competitive position and financial performance. Guth & Ginsberg (1990), emphasized that corporate entrepreneurship involves two major types of phenomena creating new investment in existing organizations and transforming organizations through strategic restructuring.
Because of the importance of corporate entrepreneurship, scholars study the effect of different factors on it. For example, Morrison, Rimmington & Williams (1999), discuss several key factors that constitute entrepreneurial traits including making change, employee commitment, creative resources, entrepreneurial learning, innovation and creativity, knowledge leadership, opportunity awareness, relationship management, risk and uncertainty management, integration time, vision and strategic orientation. Tang, et al. (2015), using data from a survey of 201 Chinese manufacturing firms confirm a significant relationship between strategic human resource management and corporate entrepreneurship and that the relationship is partially mediated by a devolved management style. In their study, Lerner, Azulay &Tishler (2014), found the significance role of compensation methods in the process of fostering corporate entrepreneurship. Tur-Porcar, Roig-Tierno & Llorca Mestre (2018), indicate that business factors (job management, job satisfaction, and profit), as well as behavioral factors (ethics, competitive intelligence, intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, empathy, and social motivation) and human relationships (leadership), are key drivers of business entrepreneurship. Urbano & Aparicio (2016), found that countries with greater social progress orientation stimulate productive entrepreneurial activity (for example, innovative and opportunistic entrepreneurship). Besides, leadership is another factor in which some scholars study the effect of it on entrepreneurship and this study focus on it.
Scholars have examined leadership from a variety of perspectives. In the early 1930s, scholars saw leaders as having specific personality traits such as intelligence, self-esteem, ability to communicate, birth order, socioeconomic status, and childbearing and their impact on one's ability to influence others was examined. The focus of research has shifted from traits to behavioral leadership between 1950 and 1960. Leadership behaviors are classified into two common dimensions: beginning structures (task-oriented behaviors) and attention initiation (people-centered behaviors). The first class involves activities such as planning, organizing, and assigning tasks and tasks to individuals. The initiative examines attention to recognizing one's social and emotional needs, job satisfaction, and self-esteem as a way to influence one's performance.
By introducing this model, it has been shown that effective leadership behavior is associated with high performance whether one exhibits task-oriented or person-centered behaviors, leading to the belief that effective leaders can integrate both the task and the human aspect of the organization to fix it. In the effect of leadership on entrepreneurship, Yan & Sorenson (2003), found that relations-oriented, participative and task-oriented leadership have significant effects on collective entrepreneurship. Boukamcha (2019), highlights the relative relevance of transformational leadership's components in triggering the corporate entrepreneurship’s patterns. Chang, Chang & Chen (2017), found that unit-level transformational leadership was positively related to unit corporate entrepreneurship, and unit-level collective efficacy mediates this relationship.
Although there are some studies about the effect of leadership on entrepreneurship, these studies do not address the high tech industry and do not consider the human factors of employees. To cover this gap, this paper studies the effect of ambidextrous and transformational leadership on entrepreneurship by considering the role of employee manual factors. This paper is structured as follows. It opens with a general discussion of leadership and entrepreneurship, then the hypotheses are presented. This section is followed by the conceptual model, the methodology and the analysis of empirical findings. Finally, the paper outlines the conclusions.
The entrepreneurial concept is rooted in the works of Mintzberg (1973). Miller & Friesen (1983), outlines entrepreneurship as a strategic position, in which the organization engages in product market innovation, undertakes some risky investments. Proactiveness refers to an organization's efforts to capture new opportunities a forward-looking and opportunistic perspective that anticipates future market demand, providing the organization with an advantage over competitors' actions. Innovation refers to the desire of the organization to engage and support new ideas, innovations, experiments and creative processes that may lead to new technology products, services or processes and means a desire to stay away from existing technologies or practices and invest beyond the current state of the art. The risk-taking is associated with uncertain returns on an organization's willingness to make bold commitments to organizational initiatives.
Burns (1978), described transformational leadership as relationships that lead each other to a higher level of ethics and motivation. This was in contrast to a transactional leadership style with relationships that are based on continuous economic exchange or the highest common. He explored the mechanisms that underlie transformational change and leadership, including individual attention, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and ideal influence. According to Bass (1985), transformational leaders motivate their subordinates to go beyond their interests for the benefit of the group. As a result, transformational leaders can more closely examine inputs and efforts made by their subordinates at the unit level. Bass (1985), also stated that transformational leaders can persuade their subordinates to think creatively and look for new ways to accomplish their tasks.
Duncan (1976), first invented organizational ambidexterity in the context of the duality of organizational structures to support innovation. Twenty years later, the idea was highlighted in Tushman & O'Reilly (1996), in organizational learning. They proposed two ways of discovering and exploiting organizational learning so that organizations can use their resources. Ambidexterity refers to an organization's ability to simultaneously exploit current organizational capabilities and explore future opportunities. Exploitation is concerned with refinement, efficiency, selection, and execution, while exploration relates to search, diversification, experimentation, discovery. The ambidextrous leadership paradigm has been developed by Vera & Crassan (2004), who claim that there is a need for a hybrid leadership style because sometimes the organizational learning process is transacted under the leadership and in some cases benefits from transformation leadership. The ambidexterity leadership theory for innovation suggests that leaders involved in bidirectional leadership behaviors, namely opening and closing, are complementary to innovation requirements because they incorporate exploration and exploitation behaviors in an individual and group worker.
In his study to examine the relationship between leadership and entrepreneurship, Damenpour (1991), found that innovation, one of the key aspects of corporate entrepreneurship, relates to the manager's attitudes (i.e., support for innovation). Pearce, Kramer & Robbins (1997), found that managers who exhibit entrepreneurial behavior had a positive effect on their subordinates. Ireland, et al. (2006); in developing their models for guiding the dissemination of entrepreneurial activity, explicitly stated how support should be demonstrated, indicating that leaders should set goals, a positive feedback and reinforcement system, emphasis on individual responsibility, and employee rewards. Luu, Dinh & Qian (2019), proved the positive relationship between ambidextrous leadership and entrepreneurial orientation, also the mediation role of entrepreneurial orientation for the positive link between ambidextrous leadership and job crafting. Based on the previous literature about the effects of transformational leadership and ambidexterity leadership on entrepreneurship, we propose these contrasting hypothesis:
H1.1: Transformational leadership affects corporate entrepreneurship
H2.1: Ambidextrity leadership affects corporate entrepreneurship
Evidence is reviewed concerning the role of behavioral and cognitive factors in entrepreneur’s performance. For example, in their study, Rokhman & Ahamed (2015), find that both social factors such as family background, education system, and social status and psychological factors like the need for achievement, the propensity to risk and locus of control are quite prominent and significant indicators to become entrepreneurs. Karabulut (2016), finds that personality traits such as locus of control, need for achievement, risk tolerance, and entrepreneurial alertness affect entrepreneurial intention. Sarmin & Ashrafuzzaman (2017), found that personality traits such as risk-taking propensity, autonomy, locus of control, need for achievement, tolerance for ambiguity and self-confidence affect entrepreneurial intention.
So, in this study, the moderating role of some behavioral and cognitive factors on the relationship between leadership and corporate entrepreneurship is studied. Therefore, we propose this contrasting hypothesis:
H1.2: Behavioral and psychological factors moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and corporate entrepreneurship
H2.2: Behavioral and psychological factors moderate the relationship between ambidexterity leadership and corporate entrepreneurship
Figure 1. Shows the research model of this study, in which transformational leadership and ambidexterity leadership directly affects corporate entrepreneurship and behavioral and psychological factors moderate this relationship
Materials and methods
The population of the study consisted of all employees of firms in the high tech in Iran, a sample was selected based on Cochran formula with an infinity statistical population. The electronic questionnaires and a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study were uploaded in Google Form. Respondents were invited to participate depending on their willingness to take part in the survey. in his study to examine the relationship between leadership and entrepreneurship, until the 384 completed questionnaires were achieved.
The questionnaire comprised two sections. The first section consisted of 49 items covering the open ambidexterity leadership (items of 1-7), close ambidexterity leadership (items of 8-14), open transformational leadership (items of 15-20), close transformational leadership (items of 21-24), perceived behavioral control (items of 25-27), herding behavior (items of 28-30), risk-taking (items of 31-32), resilience (items of 33-35), motivation (items of 36-38), and corporate entrepreneurship (items of 39-49). These items are measured based on a researcher-made questionnaire which is designed based on variable conceptualization in previous literature. The second section collected demographic information such as gender, age, organizational position, and work experience.
Results and discussion
The general information about the characteristics of respondents, including their age, gender, organizational position, and work experience is shown in Table 1. In this study, the majority of respondents were female (220), between 30-40 years old (243), expert (166), and had between 10 to 15 years of work experience (142).
The descriptive statistics for the research constructs in the conceptual model and the bivariate correlations between them are shown in Table 2. This bivariate correlation analysis has been carried out to test the correlations between the independent variables indicated as a need for an SEM-type analytical approach to test the hypotheses.
Table 1 - Sample demographic characteristics.
| Demographic profile | Category | n | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age | <30 | 77 | 20.1 |
| 30-40 | 243 | 63.3 | |
| 40-50 | 51 | 13.3 | |
| >50 | 13 | 3.4 | |
| Gender | Female | 220 | 57.3 |
| Male | 164 | 42.7 | |
| Org Position | Supervisor | 13 | 3.4 |
| Expert | 166 | 43.2 | |
| MA | 63 | 16.4 | |
| Responsible Expert | 52 | 13.5 | |
| Employee | 90 | 23.5 | |
| Work Experience | <5 | 38 | 9.9 |
| 5-10 | 140 | 36.5 | |
| 10-15 | 142 | 37 | |
| 15-20 | 25 | 6.5 | |
| >20 | 39 | 10.2 |
Table 2 - Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.
| Variable | Mean | Std | amop | amclo | transop | transclo | overcon | behavcon | herdbeha | risktak | empres | empmot | corpent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| amop | 3.15 | 0.74 | 1 | -.152** | .657** | -.122* | .384** | .121* | -0.081 | .190** | .120* | .111* | .546** |
| amclo | 3.04 | 0.73 | - | 1 | -.249** | .725** | -.102* | -.196** | .108* | -.120* | -.507** | -0.012 | -.390** |
| transop | 2.96 | 0.89 | - | - | 1 | -.521** | .523** | 0.052 | -0.024 | .124* | .170** | .145** | .500** |
| transclo | 3.14 | 0.82 | - | - | - | 1 | -.302** | -.206** | .171** | -0.04 | -.388** | -0.09 | -.568** |
| overcon | 3.66 | 0.65 | - | - | - | - | 1 | .541** | -0.086 | .360** | .424** | -.114* | .282** |
| behavcon | 3.60 | 0.60 | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | -.178** | .495** | .516** | -0.1 | -0.051 |
| herdbeha | 2.64 | 0.84 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | -.218** | -0.004 | 0.059 | 0.092 |
| risktak | 4.04 | 0.59 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | .248** | .325** | -.152** |
| empres | 3.70 | 0.56 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | .320** | .163** |
| empmot | 3.70 | 0.51 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | 0.098 |
| corpent | 2.71 | 0.67 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 1 |
Path analysis
To test the research hypotheses, we used PLS software to investigate the causal relationships among the variables. The factor loading, composite constructs reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) for the scales were computed and are shown in Table 3. The results of relationship coefficients and t-values are shown in Table 4.
Table 3 The factor loading, CR and AVE indexes.
| Construct | Item | Factor loading | AVE | Composite reliability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open ambidexterity leadership (AMOP) | Allowing different ways of accomplishing a task | 0.696 | 0.630 | 0.910 |
| Encouraging experimentation with different ideas | 0.851 | |||
| Motivating to take risks | 0.837 | |||
| Giving possibilities for independent thinking and acting | 0.914 | |||
| Giving room for own ideas | 0.766 | |||
| Allowing errors | 0.409 | |||
| Encouraging error learning | 0.670 | |||
| Close ambidexterity leadership (AMCLO) | Monitoring and controlling goal attainment | 0.870 | 0.612 | 0.887 |
| Establishing routines | 0.735 | |||
| Taking corrective action | 0.827 | |||
| Controlling adherence to rules | 0.768 | |||
| Paying attention to uniform task accomplishment | 0.385 | |||
| Sanctioning errors | 0.175 | |||
| Sticking to plans | 0.723 | |||
| Open transformational leadership (TRANSOP) | A vision that motivates exploratory behavior | 0.859 | 0.766 | 0.908 |
| Stimulation of thoughts in very new directions | 0.885 | |||
| Communication of the values of openness and tolerance | 0.883 | |||
| Close transformational leadership (TRANSOCLO) | A vision that motivates confirmatory behavior | 0.705 | 0.747 | 0.897 |
| Stimulation of small improvements and enhancement of efficiency | 0.945 | |||
| Communication of the values of conscientiousness and rules adherence | 0.924 | |||
| Overconfidence(OVERCON) | I can perform my task in a new method | 0.952 | 0.715 | 0.882 |
| I can design a new instrument that is related to my job without error | 0.740 | |||
| I do things proactively | 0.814 | |||
| I have a strong mental capacity | 0.017 | |||
| Perceived behavioral control (BEHAVCON) | I have control on conditions around me | -0.555 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
| I don’t react quickly to new information until it is analyzed | 0.431 | |||
| I rethink before telling my idea | 0.622 | |||
| Herding behavior (HERDBEHA) | I make my decision based on the majority of the population | 0.933 | 0.751 | 0.900 |
| I don’t try to shape an idea that is conflicting the previous idea | 0.904 | |||
| I don’t like to do my job in an innovative way | 0.743 | |||
| Risk-taking (RISKTAK) | I like to meet the challenges | 0.999 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
| I think that success is needed to take risks | 0.371 | |||
| Resilience (RES) | Facing setbacks, I am not discouraged | 0.829 | 0.644 | 0.783 |
| I keep an optimistic attitude towards life | 0.771 | |||
| I think that I need great courage | 0.246 | |||
| Motivation (MOTIV) | The entrepreneurship is my dream | 0.397 | 0.559 | 0.727 |
| I have no dull attitude towards life | 0.675 | |||
| I am willing to work longer to achieve success | 0.661 | |||
| Corporate entrepreneurship (CORENT) | My organization is quick to use improved work methods | 0.681 | 0.576 | 0.908 |
| My organization is quick to use improved work methods that are developed by workers | 0.672 | |||
| In my organization, developing one's ideas is encouraged for the improvement of the corporation | 0.593 | |||
| Upper management is aware and very receptive to my ideas and suggestions | 0.674 | |||
| A promotion usually follows from the development of new and innovative ideas | 0.720 | |||
| Those employees who come up with innovative ideas on their own often receive management encouragement for their activities | 0.722 | |||
| The '' doers on projects'' are allowed to make decisions without going through elaborate justification and approval procedures | 0.665 | |||
| Senior managers encourage innovators to bend rules and rigid procedures to keep promising ideas on track | 0.529 | |||
| Many top managers have been known for their experience with the innovation process | 0.856 | |||
| Money is often available to get new project ideas off the ground | 0.708 | |||
| Individuals with successful innovative projects receive additional rewards and compensation beyond the standard reward system for their ideas and efforts | 0.721 |
According to the results, the factor loadings for all items except items of 6, 12,13, 24-26, 32, 35, 36 were higher than 0.5, indicating the importance of the items for explaining the variables currently associated with them. The items were extracted, then The AVE and CR indexes were calculated. The value of the CR index for all the variables studied was higher than 0.9 and the index value of AVE was higher than 0.9, indicating the reliability of the questionnaire for measuring the variables studied.
Table 4 - The path analysis results.
| Dependent variable | Coefficient | T-Value | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMOP | 0.167 | 8.774 | Accepted |
| AMCLO | -0.009 | -0.581 | Rejected |
| TRANSOP | 0.757 | 32.359 | Accepted |
| TRANSCLO | -0.558 | -20.165 | Accepted |
| AMOP*OVERCON | 0.290 | 11.716 | Accepted |
| AMCLO*OVERCON | -0.445 | -29.599 | Accepted |
| TRANSOP*OVERCON | 0.360 | 17.442 | Accepted |
| TRANSCLO*OVERCON | -0.036 | -1.476 | Rejected |
| AMOP*BEHAVCON | 0.158 | 8.631 | Accepted |
| AMCLO*BEHAVCON | -0.259 | -40.292 | Accepted |
| TRANSOP*BEHAVCON | 0.034 | 1.909 | Rejected |
| TRANSCLO*BEHAVCON | -0.028 | -0.980 | Rejected |
| AMOP*HERDBEHA | -0.157 | -14.407 | Accepted |
| AMCLO*HERDBEHA | -0.120 | -17.923 | Accepted |
| TRANSOP*HERDBEHA | -0.210 | -15.326 | Accepted |
| TRANSCLO*HERDBEHA | -0.149 | -17.620 | Accepted |
| AMOP*RISKTAK | -0.190 | -6.443 | Accepted |
| AMCLO*RISKTAK | -0.226 | -16.842 | Accepted |
| TRANSOP*RISKTAK | -0.184 | -6.569 | Accepted |
| TRANSCLO*RISKTAK | -0.458 | -24.680 | Accepted |
| AMOP*EMPRES | 0.188 | 11.450 | Accepted |
| AMCLO*EMPRES | -0.229 | -18.257 | Accepted |
| TRANSOP*EMPRES | 0.684 | 74.077 | Accepted |
| TRANSCLO*EMPRES | -0.369 | -18.931 | Accepted |
| AMOP*EMPMOT | 0.364 | 18.211 | Accepted |
| AMCLO*EMPMOT | -0.267 | -21.026 | Accepted |
| TRANSOP*EMPMOT | 0.839 | 42.498 | Accepted |
| TRANSCLO*EMPMOT | -0.613 | -19.851 | Accepted |
Based on the results, transformational leadership and ambidexterity leadership affect corporate entrepreneurship and behavioral and psychological factors moderate this relationship. So, we can say the research hypothesis was accepted.
Conclusions
In the present study, the effect of ambidexterity leadership and transformational leadership on corporate entrepreneurship was examined considering the moderating role of the behavioral and psychological factors of employees. To investigate relationships, 384 questionnaires were collected from employees of high tech companies in Iran. Structural equation modeling and PLS software were used to investigate the relationships.
The results of this study showed that open ambidexterity leadership and open transformational leadership affect corporate entrepreneurship positively and close ambidexterity leadership and close transformational leadership hurt corporate entrepreneurship. The positive behavioral and psychological such as overconfidence, motivation, perceived behavioral control and resilience can increase the positive effect of open ambidexterity leadership and open transformational leadership on corporate entrepreneurship.
The negative behavioral and psychological such as herding behavior and risk-taking affect the relationship between ambidexterity leadership and transformational leadership on corporate entrepreneurship negatively. According to the results, when employers try to do an open behavior with their employees and create an open work environment for their employees, employees show entrepreneurship behavior and people can put forward their ideas and implement them if appropriate.
If they are well-positioned in their work environment and supported by their organization and employer, then they can respond to events around them with greater rationality. When the employees are overconfident, motivated, control their behaviors, good leadership can affect the entrepreneurship better.
