intrapreneur

Strategic intrapreneurship stands out as an emerging concept especially in recent years since it plays a crucial role for both large and small and medium-sized enterprises. In this scope, the strategic intrapreneurship concept refers a vision-oriented, organization-wide reliance on intrapreneurial behavior that consciously and continuously revitalizes the corporate and shapes the scope of business activities through the identification and utilization of entrepreneurial opportunity. From this point of view, this study aims to review the recent conceptual framework of strategic intrapreneurship and the intrapreneurs' characteristics with regard to the significance and the meaning of creating a strategy for businesses' corporate existence and long-term survival. In this frame, it has been seen that the concepts of strategic intrapreneurship which has been conceptually and terminologically confused with entrepreneurship in several ways, has a positive impact on internal development within an existing organization since it is a process that systematizes set of activities that form strategic vision or include actualizing a corporate strategy.

The complexity of business dynamics demands that companies search for alternative ways to ensure their growth and survival. Thus intrapreneurship emerges as an ad-hoc strategy. For this behaviour to develop, it is necessary to have favourable external and internal environmental conditions. Hence, the objective of this study was to explain the influence of environmental and organisational factors on intrapreneurial behaviour in the software sector in the north of Mexico. To fulfil the objective of the study, methodological triangulation combining qualitative and quantitative research techniques was used. In the qualitative study, eight business leaders were interviewed who contributed to the enrichment of the proposed research model. Finally, an instrument was constructed and validated to analyse factors affecting intrapreneurship in software companies in Northern Mexico with 190 valid observations. The quantitative analysis consisted of the evaluation of the model using the covariance structural equation technique. It is concluded that the external elements that most explain intrapreneurial behaviour are hostile conditions; likewise, the internal factors related to intrapreneurship are formal controls, time availability, and the company's entrepreneurial vision. The importance of the valorisation of this behaviour by the company's top management in terms of probable results that contribute to the development of their respective industries is discussed.