Intrapreneurial culture and manager's gender: An empirical study

Nowadays companies move in a very competitive world, which implies the need to be more entrepreneurial in order to identify new opportunities. This behaviour will allow firm to get sustained performance. To achieve competitive advantage employees have to be creative and responsible for their job as if they own the business (Sungkhwan, Mujtaba, Swaidan and Kaweevisultrakul, 2012). A way to reach it is by means of the development of intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship involves organizational learning, collaboration, creativity and individual commitment (Hayton, 2005).

 The entry of women into the workplace has generated studies focused on feminine values within the organizations (Claes, 1999). One interesting question to answer is how women influence changes and developments of the organizational culture, and in particular intrapreneurial organizational culture. In this sense, several papers deal with the cultural characteristics a firm should have to develop an intrapreneurial behaviour and the motivational factors to do it (Suganthi, 2009, Raman, Anantharaman and Ramanathan, 2013; Jennings and Brush, 2013; Popescu, 2012). However, previous literature about the relationship between gender and organizational culture is scarce, and this research gap is even bigger when we talk about intrapreneurial culture. In this sense, Gálvez (2011) and Peris, Rueda and Benito (2012) suggest that future research could involve the analysis about how gender influences on the intrapreneurial culture in a firm which works in social context dominated by male models of success.

 This topic is relevant because women and men have different characteristics, which can be studied from biological and social points of view, and can provide benefits, different skills and ways of achieving success within the organization (Peris, Rueda and Benito, 2012; Garcia, Garcia and Madrid, 2012). The research question we try to answer is the following: Do women managers have a greater impact on the intrapreneurial approach of the organizational culture than men?

 In order to answer the research question we carried out an empirical study on a sample composed by 600 SMEs located in the Región de Murcia (Spain). The results from the univariate and multuvariate models, show that women managers positively influence the development of an intrapreneurial culture in the firms in a larger extent than men managers. This finding is reflected equally in each of the elements that measure the intrapreneurial culture level such as: employees’ autonomy, risk and errors tolerance, compensation and incentives, teamwork, and management support and flexibility in the corporate structure.