Exploitation of Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Corporation: An Exploration of Functional-Level Support, Decision Autonomy, and Performance

This chapter examines the role that resource support and decision autonomy play in the successful launch of corporate entrepreneurial initiatives. Specifically, this study assesses whether entrepreneurial initiatives receiving higher levels of support from top management and more resource contributions in key functional areas actually have higher levels of performance. Additionally, this study investigates whether or not the entrepreneurial initiatives that receive greater decision autonomy in the same critical functional areas will experience higher levels of performance. Hypotheses arguing these points are tested using data obtained from the Internet divisions of major metropolitan newspapers. This allows for the discovery and evaluation of an opportunity (i.e., the Internet) to be held constant, so that a better understanding of the exploitation stage of the entrepreneurial process might be obtained. Results suggest the importance of resource support and decision autonomy to initiative performance, but with more importance being placed on the marketing functional group for resource support and the accounting and legal functional areas for decision autonomy.