A Relational View on Intrapreneurial Behavior : A social cognitive Framework of employee´s individual level entrepreneurial behavior for the SME-context

The paper discusses a social cognitive framework of how employee´s entrepreneurial behaviour (EB) could be influenced in SMEs. The model suggests, individual-level EB mainly to be influenced by processes of social exchange and social learning. That means organizational level with individual level to be conceptually linked by relationships of exchange and learning between the employee and the organization. The employee´s perception of the quality of these relationships is suggested to directly influence individual level EB: the personnel´s motivation for EB can be fostered via social exchange; the personnel´s abilities for EB might be fostered via social learning. Because of the SMEmanagement´s fundamental influence with regard to establishing high quality relationships with their employees, fostering EB is regarded a top-down process. To test the propositions, an experimental study design is proposed.