Entrepreneurial Behavior in Managers

Business cultures worldwide are more dynamic than ever due to the rapid development of digital transformation and globalization. Therefore, companies focus increasingly on internal strategies to keep their competitive edge. Entrepreneurial behavior in a company setting can benefit the performance, processes and competitiveness by creating faster decision-making process and successful innovations. Meanwhile, large companies tend to have hierarchical structures that cause extended approval processes and in addition, strict job descriptions which may lead to the entrepreneurial activities to suffer. The aim of this thesis was to investigate if a large size company can own entrepreneurial managers and how companies can use entrepreneurial behavior for their advantage in their management practices and business culture. The theory suggests that the most common themes of entrepreneurial behavior are risk-taking, autonomy, innovativeness, proactiveness and problem solving. These themes were later on used to analyze the empirical research. The empirical part of the thesis was implemented by conducting a qualitative research. Interview method was implemented to present data from three project department managers. The interview questions used incident methodology and presented how managers act in different situations. The objective with the research was to examine which entrepreneurial attributes increase the level of entrepreneurial behavior and what factors decrease the level of entrepreneurial behavior. Essential findings from the research showed that project managers are open for innovativeness and want their team members to be able to have autonomy for creating innovations, nevertheless, at the same time value the company policies and long-term vision. The research proved that the biggest barriers for entrepreneurial activities are in fact company policies, processes and bureaucracy, which may result in long approval processes and decreased autonomy and innovations. The empirical results proved the theory correct and showed that there are significant limits of entrepreneurial behavior inside an organization