Corporate entrepreneurship strategy: extending our knowledge boundaries through configuration theory

Abstract

Corporate entrepreneurship strategy (CES) represents a firm’s coordinated efforts towards entrepreneurship and is an over-arching strategic approach that may be suitable for diverse types of organizations and industries. Yet, it remains on the knowledge frontier because the actual implementation of this strategy remains a challenge for many organizations. CES is built upon three internal elements: an entrepreneurial strategic vision, a pro-entrepreneurship organizational architecture, and entrepreneurial processes and behaviors. We integrate CES with the precepts of configuration theory to extend our knowledge boundaries in order to suggest a proper alignment of these elements for successful CES implementation. By examining the relationship between external CES fit (conceptualized and operationalized as ‘matched’ linkages between the external environment and the internal elements of CES) and internal CES fit (conceptualized and operationalized as aligning the internal elements of CES in a manner consistent with a specified ‘ideal’ profile), as well as the relationship between internal CES fit and firm performance, our results suggest that the fit of these elements is associated with greater financial performance.