Organisational Bottlenecks of Corporate Entrepreneurship: A Necessary Condition Analysis

Abstract

Scholars frequently describe organisational enablers of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) as necessary conditions for its existence, yet these claims are rarely tested with empirical methods designed to assess necessity. This study addresses the resulting theory-method mismatch by examining whether organisational enablers that are frequently described as essential for CE actually function as necessary and non-substitutable conditions. Utilising Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), the research examines three key enablers: top management support, financial slack, and rewards & reinforcement. This study adopts a quantitative, cross-sectional design using a sample of 808 firms from the Dutch private sector via the Netherlands 2020 Enterprise Survey. The results of this research demonstrate that top management support and financial slack are not necessary conditions for the occurrence of CE. Rewards & reinforcement exhibit a small necessity effect, functioning as a bottleneck only for achieving the highest levels of CE. These findings suggest that while these factors may enhance CE performance, they do not act as necessary building blocks for the creation of CE