Human capital and employee entrepreneurship: The role of skills, personality characteristics and the work context

The aim of this thesis is to create more insight into the interplay between individuals’ human-capital characteristics and characteristics of the work context in explaining employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour within organisations. The results show that individuals with intrapreneurial talent are attracted to different organizations and jobs as compared to those individuals without this talent. In addition, the results of this dissertation show that the importance of intrapreneurial skills differs across occupations and suggest that employees’ skills are not always optimally used for innovation. Moreover, the results of this thesis show that intrapreneurial individuals have personality traits that resemble both other employees and entrepreneurs, but intrapreneurs have the highest levels of Openness to Experience. Finally, the results show that several firm and work characteristics are important for stimulating intrapreneurship in firms. Intrapreneurial behaviour is higher in firms in which employees perceive higher levels of support for intrapreneurship, transformational leadership and autonomy.