How to detect potential sport intrapreneurs? Validation of the intrapreneurial intention scale with sport science students
| Published date | 11 March 2019 |
| Date | 11 March 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEPP-D-18-00093 |
| Pages | 40-61 |
| Author | Maria Huertas González-Serrano,Ferran Calabuig Moreno,Irena Valantine,Josep Crespo Hervás |
| Subject Matter | Strategy,Entrepreneurship,Business climate/policy |
How to detect potential sport
intrapreneurs? Validation of the
intrapreneurial intention scale
with sport science students
Maria Huertas González-Serrano and Ferran Calabuig Moreno
University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Irena Valantine
Lithuanian Sports University, Kaunas, Lithuania, and
Josep Crespo Hervás
University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –The sport sector is a very competitive and dynamic industry, son intrapreneurial employees are
needed. However, although entrepreneurial intentions in sport sciences students have been studied, less is
known about intrapreneurial intentions. It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to validate a scale to
measure the intrapreneurial intentions of sports science students from two different countries.
Design/methodology/approach –A sample of 304 final-year students from the sport sector of two
different countries (Spain and Lithuania) was analyzed. First, an exploratory factorial analysis of the two
samples was performed separately, and then a confirmatory factorial analysis was carried out to performed.
Finally, in order to check the invariance of the measuring instrument, a multi-group analysis was performed
with the constraints of all factors variances and all factors loading.
Findings –The entrepreneurial intentions scale works well both in its English version in the Lithuanian sports
students’and in its Spanish version with the university sports students from Spain. Therefore, it can be said that
thereisametricinvariance.However,thescalepresentsbetter fit indexes, reliability and validity in its English
version. Lithuanian sports students scored significantly higher on the risk-taking dimension than Spanish students.
Research limitations/implications –The scale has only been validated with final-year sport science
students from two countries. It is necessary to test this scale with a larger sample of students from different
fields and countries.
Practical implications –This scale canbe used in both in Spanish and Englishversions to detect potential
entrepreneursin the sportssector, so it can helpuniversities and employersto detect futureintraentrepreneursin
the sports secto r.
Social implications –Social implication of this paper is the detection of potential entrepreneurs who can
improve economic, social or sports performance in organizations or sports companies.
Originality/value –A new tool to detect the potential sport intrapreneurs in university students has been
created. Moreover, a cross-cultural validation of the intrapreneurial intentions scale (in English and Spanish
version) with sport sciences students from two different countries has been performed.
Keywords Intrapreneurial intentions, Sport science students, Sport intrapreneurs, University policies,
Employability, Risk taking, Innovation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In times of globalization and economic crisis, business environments have become dynamic
and uncertain, due to rapid technological changes, so innovative products and services are
of vital importance for companies if they want to gain competitive advantage (Borza and
Maier, 2012). Therefore, due to the importance of innovation, job profiles have changed, and
employees are now required to possess new skills (Humburg and van der Velden, 2015). As a
result, the labour market is showing a growing interest in entrepreneurial staff, specifically
the so-called intrapreneurs (Wiethe-Körprich et al., 2017), as they contribute to innovation
and business growth (Sinha and Srivastava, 2013).
Journal of Entrepreneurship and
Public Policy
Vol. 8 No. 1, 2019
pp. 40-61
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2045-2101
DOI 10.1108/JEPP-D-18-00093
Received 1 December 2018
Revised 14 January 2019
Accepted 15 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2045-2101.htm
40
JEPP
8,1
According Vargas-Halabí et al. (2017), intrapreneurship is a process in which an individual
or group of individuals, within the boundaries of an existing organization or enterprise, identify
and encourage innovative opportunities, introducing new product and process innovations or
renewing the organization. However, until now, most studies on entrepreneurship have focused
simply on analyzing the owner of the companies (Woo, 2018), leaving the figure of the
intrapreneur a little neglected. Moreover, it is important to highlight that universities are an
important focus of generation of entrepreneurs, and this is the reason why in the last years the
study of entrepreneurship with university students has deepened (González-Serrano et al., 2018;
Gorgievski et al., 2018; Marín et al., 2015). The entrepreneurship literature in university students
has focused mainly on the entrepreneurial intention of an individual as the intentions to create
or start their own business (Bird, 1988; Krueger and Brazeal, 1994; Liñán and Chen, 2009;
Thompson, 2009), and they didn’t take into account the entrepreneurial intentions within an
established business (intrapreneurial intentions).
Intrapreneurial intentionsrefer to the intention to carryout entrepreneurial activities in an
existing company (Wu, 2009). Identifyinghow intrapreneurial intention developscan lead to a
better understanding of intrapreneurship-related behaviours ( Fitzsimmons and Douglas,
2011). However, at present, there is little r esearch analyzing the concept of intrapreneurial
intentions, which turns out to be a strong predictor of intrapreneurial behaviour (Razavi and
Ab-Aziz, 2017).
In the same vein, little is known of how the managers or the employees could select better
the employers that have a high propensity to intrapreneurship (Douglas and Fitzsimmons,
2013). Moreover, these same authors emphasized that employees need to comprehend that
employing individuals with high entrepreneurial intentions may not be the best option,
because they are not going to stay for a long in an enterprise as they want to create their
own business. So, it is important to recognize and to distinguish entrepreneurial intentions
from intrapreneurial intentions. In addition, it is important this issue because maybe publics
politics are fostering entrepreneurial intentions to create enterprises and they are pushing
people who are better in intrapreneurship into the creation of their own business and by this
way they are wasting public resources (Shane, 2009). Only two scales (Douglas and
Fitzsimmons, 2013; Lans et al., 2010) have been found that analyze the intrapreneurial
intentions of university students. Both of them are unidimensional, composed by three and
two items. However, they have not been validated or cross-culturally tested. This is in line
with Slavec and Drnovsek (2012) that highlights that small emphasis in the field of
entrepreneurship has been put on the development of valid measures.
Moreover,the sports sector is one of the most globalized industries in the world, and it has
experienced the greatest growth in recent years (Eurostat, 2018); therefore, employees with
entrepreneurial orientation are needed, especially for the small companies (Núñez-Pomar et al.,
2016) being, therefore, vital, the figure of the intrapreneur within the sports sector. In addition,
within the sports sector, the need for both entrepreneursand intrapreneurs has been highlighted
for some years now (Ball, 2005; Calabuig and Gonzalez-Serrano, 2017). At the end of their
university career, students can either choose to create their own companies or be employed, in
which the sports sector is currently demanding them with entrepreneurial skills (Ball, 2005;
González-Serrano et al., 2017). Moreover, although Krueger et al. (2013) affirm that a culture can
affect entrepreneurship, making the entrepreneurial career more or less valued socially and thus
creating a favourable institutional environment, no cross-cultural difference studies that analyze
intrapreneurial intentions with university students, in general, and sports science students, in
particular, have been found.
Therefore, the objectives of this study are as follows: to create and validate a
multidimensional scale to measure intrapreneurial intentions in university students,
specifically in sports science students, to check the metric invariance of the scale in Spanish
and Englishlanguage with studentsfrom different countries (Spain andLithuania) and to test
41
How to detect
potential sport
intrapreneurs?
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