Chief Executive Officer Tenacity and Employee Intrapreneurial Behavior: The Mediating Role of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Zheng Huang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.829567

Abstract

Chief executive officer (CEO) tenacity plays an important role in corporate entrepreneurial activity. However, much less is known about its impact on employee intrapreneurship. Drawing from social information processing theory and upper echelons theory, this article examines the hitherto unexplored nexus between CEO tenacity and employee intrapreneurship, as well as the mediating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Quantitative data were collected through a survey administered to 294 employees working in different sectors that engage in CSR activities in China. Data analysis was performed using hierarchical regression method through Stata 16.0. It was found that CEO tenacity was significantly positively correlated with employee strategic renewal behavior (β = 0.523, p < 0.001) and employee venture behavior (β = 0.510, p < 0.001). The positive correlation between CEO tenacity and CSR was also significant (β = 0.578, p < 0.001). Besides, CSR partially mediated the relationship between CEO tenacity and employee strategic renewal behavior (40.0%) or employee venture behavior (50.2%). This study extends research on CEO tenacity, CSR, or employee intrapreneurial behavior by providing a better understanding of the direct effects of CEO tenacity on employee intrapreneurial behavior and CSR. From the perspective of cross-fertilization between psychology and management, this study establishes the interface role of CSR by elucidating the intrinsic mechanism of CEOs with high levels of tenacity to stimulate employee intrapreneurial behavior through CSR.

Highlights

A key aspect of entrepreneurship is chief executive officer (CEO) tenacity (Baum and Locke, 2004; De Clercq and Belausteguigoitia, 2017a; Zeng and Ouyang, 2020)
In contrast to previous studies, which have focused on a single CEO dimension or a single employee dimension, the current study introduces corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a construct of corporate organizational institutional factors that can provide an interface for CEO tenacity to have an impact on employee intrapreneurial behavior with social information processing implications and connects the two theories, creating a crossfertilization perspective of psychology and management
Based on Social information processing (SIP) theory, it proposes that CEOs with tenacity influence employee intrapreneurial behavior through social information processing, and the positive association of CEO with employee strategic renewal behavior (ESRB) (β = 0.523, p < 0.001) and employee venture behavior (EVB) (β = 0.510, p < 0.001) supports this hypothesis

Summary

Introduction

A key aspect of entrepreneurship is chief executive officer (CEO) tenacity (Baum and Locke, 2004; De Clercq and Belausteguigoitia, 2017a; Zeng and Ouyang, 2020). CEO tenacity is meaningful for both CEO themselves and the employees, in that they may enhance employees’ problemfocused voice (De Clercq and Belausteguigoitia, 2017b) and contribute to their occupational innovation (Safavi and Bouzari, 2019; Li et al, 2020b). In the context of COVID-19 and CEO Tenacity and Employee Intrapreneurial Behavior anti-globalization, companies are recognizing the importance of building core competitive advantage through intrapreneurship. The antecedents driving employee intrapreneurship as a focus of internal strategic innovation have attracted much attention at present (Huang et al, 2021), such as employees’ personality (Mahmoud et al, 2020), organizational support (Chouchane et al, 2021), and spiritual leadership (Usman et al, 2021), but empirical studies on CEO psychological traits need to be further developed. It is novel for this study to examine whether and how CEO tenacity can have an impact on employee intrapreneurship

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Discussion

Conclusion