How do team members’ perceptions of autonomy and control impact corporate entrepreneurship projects?

Abstract

Successful corporate entrepreneurship requires that firms provide their teams with the autonomy needed for recognizing and exploiting new business opportunities. At the same time, also the firms standardize processes to facilitate coordination and realize synergies about projects. These opposing demands give rise to a prevalent, yet poorly understood paradox of autonomy and control in corporate entrepreneurship. Drawing on a qualitative, longitudinal study of seven teams working on entrepreneurial projects within the same large organization, we explore how team members perceive and respond to the autonomy–control paradox. Data from 200 interviews, which we collected over the timeframe of five month, in combination with observational and archival data show that teams differ in their attention to autonomy vs. control, which initiates divergence, competition, and negotiation processes within the team. These different processes determine how effectively teams cope with the autonomy–control paradox and the outcome of their projects. Our inductive model offers three contributions to the literature on corporate entrepreneurship.