Navigating the Opportunities and Threats in Constructing Corporate Entrepreneurs’ Role Identity

Abstract

Established organizations increasingly rely on employees who span work boundaries to engage in entrepreneurial activities on their behalf. However, the ambiguity and uncertainty entailed by corporate entrepreneurial activities may challenge employees’ work-related identity once they act autonomously. We draw on the identity and emotion work literature to understand how employees navigate their role as corporate entrepreneurs in developing a positive work-related identity. Based on the narratives of 25 corporate entrepreneurs, our qualitative analysis reveals that employees’ entrepreneurial role simultaneously generates a threat as well as being an asset in constructing a positive work-related identity. Corporate entrepreneurs combine emotion and identity work to fashion a distinct and sometimes unfamiliar role —both to themselves and others—while reducing the downsides of its enactment. Our grounded theoretical model contributes to the extant corporate entrepreneurship and identity work literature by explaining how emotion and identity work can help employees cope with the threats and opportunities that permeate entrepreneurial roles in organizational settings.