Motivation and participation in corporate entrepreneurship : the moderating effects of risk, effort, and reward

We integrate research from entrepreneurship, occupational choice, and employee involvement literatures to explain what encourages participation in new corporate ventures. We propose that an employee’s basic decision to participate in a corporate venture project is based on the expected utility of the project’s incentive package, and that these perceptions are moderated by personal motivations to make that decision, as explained by the concept of valence in expectancy theory. We test our hypotheses through a conjoint-based experiment with 61 part-time MBA students. Our results show that venture characteristics, personal motivations, and interaction effects should be considered in designing new corporate ventures