Directing Corporate Entrepreneurship Strategy in the Public Sector to Public Value: Antecedents,Components, and Outcomes

ABSTRACT

Over the last three decades, organizations worldwide have used corporate entrepreneurship (CE) as a means of building new competencies, revitalizing operations, achieving renewal, and/or creating value for stakeholders. However, little is understood about factors triggering corporate entrepreneurship strategy (CES) within organizations not driven by profit motives. The purpose of this article is to conceptualize CES in the public sector in order to synthesize, integrate, and link the key concepts within the CE domain, thereby creating new public value and generating new economic activity for the benefit of multiple stakeholders. The public sector CES model includes (1) the antecedents of public sector CES (external environmental conditions that generate entrepreneurial activity); (2) the key components of CES (entrepreneurial strategic vision, organizational conditions that support entrepreneurial processes and behavior, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) that reflects the overall level of such processes and behavior, and individual levels of entrepreneurial behavior); and (3) outcomes of CES within the public sector (organizational outcomes resulting from entrepreneurial actions, including the development of venturing and renewal that, in turn, leads to enhanced public value). We discuss how our model contributes to the CE literature, followed by implications for scholars and practice and future research directions.