Organizational networks and the process of corporate entrepreneurship: how the motivation, opportunity, and ability to act affect firm knowledge, learning, and innovation

This paper develops a motivation, opportunity, and ability framework to examine knowledge sharing and organizational learning as a mean to drive entrepreneurship and innovation in complex organizational networks. Utilizing the theoretical linkages and antecedents suggested in established corporate entrepreneurship models that identify what is necessary for innovation to occur in existing organizations, we offer both a theoretical model and an additional tool of analysis looking at how corporate entrepreneurial activity emerges in organizational networks. Using survey data collected from 200 franchise operators of a single large hybrid organization, our results demonstrate how knowledge sharing and organizational learning are associated with the motivation, opportunity, and ability to act within the corporate entrepreneurial context. Moreover, this motivation, opportunity, and ability framework was observed to provide a complementary tool to traditional measures of CE (e.g., CEAI from Hornsby et al. in J Bus Ventur 17(3):253–273, 2002) as it provided insights into functional and process variables affecting corporate entrepreneurial activity. As such, this research introduces both practical and theoretical implications that further our understanding of how to develop, manage, and leverage corporate entrepreneurship in a complex organizational network to achieve both operational performance and entrepreneurial innovation.