engleski

Corporate Entrepreneurship – a Way How Big Companies Can Deal with Challenges of Global Economic Crisis

Economic crisis of such magnitude and intensity, as it is this one which started to spread globally in 2008, will affect everyone, from individuals to governments, from business sector to education, health and culture. Lower demand caused by lost jobs, savings, wealth, and fear of the uncertain future will pressure business sector to be more productive and innovative. There are two survival divides: first, the ability to use own and other’ s people knowledge in looking for new solutions and second, the speed at which businesses respond to those challenges. In "normal" times abilities of adaptation, creativity, flexibility, aggressiveness, speed and innovativeness are the needed characteristics of entrepreneurial capacity, which must be applied at the individual, organizational and societal level, as the response to the increasing level of uncertainty and complexity of the environment we live in (Gibb, 2000). But, in times of the global economic crisis entrepreneurial capacity is "to be or not to be" for any system, because the rising uncertainty will require new set of competences and new approaches in looking for solutions for new sources of sustainable business performance and competitiveness. Smaller businesses usually react faster on changes, but bigger businesses are usually more bureaucratic, what makes them slow in reacting on changes in its environment (Kanter, 2008). The concept of corporate entrepreneurship (Morris, Kuratko et Covin, 2008) is identified as a major organizational innovation which contributes to building capacity of large business systems for taking advantages of fast changes instead of being victims of them. Large business systems are characterized by bureaucratic zed organization, which discourages entrepreneurial behavior both at individual and organizational level, and without creative and innovative potential, large companies are becoming calcified, which disenables moving the organization from stalemate. The consequences manifest in choking of entrepreneurial initiatives of self-motivated employees and ultimately in loss of enthusiasm by enterprising individuals, who represent a true endemic species in such systems. This paper will present the case of Allianz Zagreb d.d. who "trained" itself in good, normal times, for challenges in ever increasing complexities and changes in the business, technological and societal environment. Working on building its internal entrepreneurial capacity, determined by the innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk-taking, Allianz Zagreb d.d. started with the implementation of different activities and programs for establishing such working environment in which employees will be motivated for taking initiatives, to see connections between own performance and company’ s results, and to become accountable for the company’ s business sustainability. The case described confirms how important is to activate and build entrepreneurial capacity on all organizational levels, as the response on pressures and challenges coming from environment, especially in the times of globally disturbed economic environment.

corporate entrepreneuship; employee motivation; entrepreneurial intensity; learning organization; system theory

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