Quantitative, cross-sectional survey utilising the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument (CEAI) to describe middle managers’ perceptions of a South African firm’s internal environment in 2018

Abstract

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is critical to a firm’s success, particularly in today’s dynamic environment (Kontic, et al., 2017). The Corporate Entrepreneurship assessment Instrument (CEAI) is an instrument that was developed to measure the key internal organisational factors that influence a firm’s entrepreneurial activities and outcomes. During the last decade, the role of the middle manager in corporate entrepreneurial activity has been recognised in the literature (Hornsby, et al., 2002). The empirical research on the internal organisational factors that may foster middle manager activity converges on five factors: management support, work discretion, rewards/reinforcement, time availability, and organisational boundaries (Hornsby, et al., 2013). The aim of this study was to conduct a quantitative assessment of middle managers perceptions of their internal environment within a South African firm through the use of the CEAI tool. The results confirmed that the CEAI maintained an acceptable level of reliability for the statistical analyses, and contributed to confirming the validity of the CEAI tool. Through the statistical analysis it was found that middle managers within the South African firm perceive their internal environment as being conducive for corporate entrepreneurial activity. From the findings, recommendations for management and for future research concerning corporate entrepreneurship and the CEAI tool were formulated.