Salutogenic approach to corporate entrepreneurship: What organizational learning?

Summary Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is an entrepreneurial process involving one or more individuals - corporate entrepreneurs - conducted with or within an existing organization, with the aim of driving renewal or innovation within the organization. Few studies address the individual-level impacts of CE processes. This is why, in an effort to improve the organizational performance of companies, we asked ourselves the following question: What are the impacts of an EC experiment, conducted within large French companies (Insee, 2019), on the dimensions of well-being at work (Biétry and Creusier, 2013) of corporate entrepreneurs? To answer this question, we mobilized qualitative research and its methods by interviewing 70 corporate entrepreneurs and analyzing 15 EC schemes from 12 large French companies. The results show that the well-being at work of corporate entrepreneurs is impacted differently depending on the context in which they find themselves, but also according to two moderating factors, which are (1) the management of the works council schemes and (2) the intrinsic characteristics of corporate entrepreneurs. Finally, this research work has also made it possible to highlight (3) the difficulty for internal corporate entrepreneurs to reintegrate the organization after this experience. However, managing the exit from the CE process is a major challenge for the organization. The original approach of this thesis, which borrows theories and concepts from the field of psychology to feed knowledge in management sciences, allows us to answer the research problem posed and also opens up numerous avenues of research in management sciences and, in particular, in human resources management.