Understanding social intrapreneurship in the light of the psychological contract: A challenge for CSR?
Gatignon-Turnau
Understanding social intrapreneurship in the light of the psychological contract: A challenge for CSR? - 2018.
3
This paper aims to shed light on the employment relationship of the social intrapreneur, who is a central figure in the implementation of “bottom up” CSR practices. Through these practices, the organization encourages citizens’ initiatives taken by collaborators on its behalf. To better understand the relationship between the intrapreneur and their organization, we adopt an exploratory qualitative methodology and analyze our data through a coding process derived from the psychological contract theory developed by Rousseau (1995). We apply this theoretical framework to a French insurance company, which has deliberately chosen to launch a citizen project based on social intrapreneurship. Having followed the project over two years, we were able to analyze the relational dynamic between the organization and its collaborators, who became “social intrapreneurs.” We show that the psychological contract of the intrapreneur adds new reciprocal obligations to that of the employee, to which employees principally give an ideological meaning. Moreover, when these new reciprocal obligations are not observed, this weakens the psychological contract and undermines the sustainability of social intrapreneurs’ commitment to the organization. These results enable us to contribute to the literature on intrapreneurs’ human resources management, and to formulate suggestions to improve the implementation of bottom-up CSR policies.
Understanding social intrapreneurship in the light of the psychological contract: A challenge for CSR? - 2018.
3
This paper aims to shed light on the employment relationship of the social intrapreneur, who is a central figure in the implementation of “bottom up” CSR practices. Through these practices, the organization encourages citizens’ initiatives taken by collaborators on its behalf. To better understand the relationship between the intrapreneur and their organization, we adopt an exploratory qualitative methodology and analyze our data through a coding process derived from the psychological contract theory developed by Rousseau (1995). We apply this theoretical framework to a French insurance company, which has deliberately chosen to launch a citizen project based on social intrapreneurship. Having followed the project over two years, we were able to analyze the relational dynamic between the organization and its collaborators, who became “social intrapreneurs.” We show that the psychological contract of the intrapreneur adds new reciprocal obligations to that of the employee, to which employees principally give an ideological meaning. Moreover, when these new reciprocal obligations are not observed, this weakens the psychological contract and undermines the sustainability of social intrapreneurs’ commitment to the organization. These results enable us to contribute to the literature on intrapreneurs’ human resources management, and to formulate suggestions to improve the implementation of bottom-up CSR policies.
Réseaux sociaux