"Do as we say and you’ll be successful": Mundane power in corporate entrepreneurship

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

Corporate entrepreneurship is infused with power. Prior research has begun to shed light on the role of power in innovation contexts. Yet, we know much less about the day-today enactment of mundane power in corporate entrepreneurship, which, despite its partial subtlety, is no less consequential regarding decisions on pursuing or abandoning innovative ideas. This article extends the literature on corporate entrepreneurship and power by exploring
the discursive practices through which managers and employees of a corporate accelerator disciplined venture founders in the pursuit of innovative ideas. Based on a Foucauldian discourse analysis of ethnographic data, we show how a clash of entrepreneurship discourses invokes the day-to-day performance of three discursive practices—observing, exercising, and punishing—through which the accelerator’s staff ensured that venture founders would adopt a dominant entrepreneurship discourse, with important implications for decisions on pursuing innovative ideas or not. These findings deepen our understanding of enacting mundane power in corporate entrepreneurship as well as the enablers and outcomes of such power enactment. We also outline the practical implications for emerging corporate innovation settings such as accelerators.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftJournal of Product Innovation Management
Jahrgang41
Ausgabenummer3
Seiten (von - bis)623-643
Anzahl der Seiten21
ISSN0737-6782
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 04.2024

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
The authors declare that they received funding from the Dieter Schwarz Foundation for this research.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Product Innovation Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Product Development & Management Association.

DOI