The Conflict Between Intrapreneurial Intention and Intrapreneurial Competence: An Analysis of Influence of Antecedences

• In Event: 65.078 - "Context Matters!" Antecedences of Vocational Education and Training Competencies

Abstract

Correspondingly to developments at commercial workplaces “intrapreneurship”–competence is set as goal within official curricula and final oral examinations of several commercial apprenticeships in Germany. While entre-/intrapreneurship education (:=EP/IP) often reduces its goal dimension using the concept of “intention” for curricular, instructional and evaluative efforts (e.g. Fayolle & Gailly, 2009; Liñán & Chen, 2009) we propose to measure IP-competence “directly” as a more comprehensive behavioral dimension. Within a governmentally driven initiative Weber et al. (2014) constructed a technology-based assessment for measuring IP-competence of industrial clerks at the end of their three years of apprenticeship. On the basis of this pilot-study database we examine antecedences of IP-competence in contrast to those of IP-intention and demonstrate how context matters.

For classifying relevant antecedences as independent variables we use the configuration-approach of Mugler (1998) and its adaptation to intrapreneurship by Korunka and colleagues (2009):
(A) individual prerequisites:
1. (educational) biographies
2. professional aspirations
3. self-reported knowledge, skills and attitudes
4. content-knowledge test
(B) workplace factors:
5. training settings,
(C ) organizational factors:
6. firm size, innovative climate
(D) further context factors:
7. regional labor market, branches

The dependent variables “intrapreneurship-intention” (:=IP-I) are operationalized according to Liñán und Chen (2009) as well as Korunka et al. (2009). The dependent variable “intrapreneurship competence” was won by a technology-based test (58 items) simulating authentically real workplaces (Janesick, 2006). It was modelled in accordance with Perlman et al. (1988), Pinchot (1985) and Wunderer (2011). For securing a reliable and valid assessment design we followed the Evidence-Centered-Design approach (Pellegrino et al., 2014; Shavelson, 2010). Corresponding to the theoretical assumptions a two-dimensional model fits the data best: “idea generation” (IP-C_Dim 1) and “planning and implementing a project idea” (IP-C_Dim 2). The items hold (regarding their wMNSQ-values) a high to very high quality (Adams & Wu, 2002).

A survey in autumn 2013 was voluntarily attended by 340 industrial clerks. The competence-test took 100 minutes. Intentions and antecedences were measured by an online-questionnaire (with the seven types of antecedences and intention items). For analyzing the influence of relevant antecedences we use multiple stepwise regressions on intention resp. IP-competence (Bühner & Ziegler, 2009).

The results show that apprentices with high degrees in IP-intention do not show in the average high performances in IP-competence:
• IP-Intention (R2=.251) is significantly influenced by self-reported and given individual prerequisites (like “self-reported skills and attitudes” or ”gender”). Organizational and regional factors play a tangential role.
• In contrary the IP-competence dimensions IP-C_DIM1 (R2=.188) and IP-C_DIM2 (R2=.132) are influenced by individual prerequisites like “educational background” and “performance in the content-knowledge test”. Regional aspects are additionally significant. In case of DIM2 this can be explained by the fact that more often innovative companies with innovative apprenticeship programs (like junior firms) are located in large cities.

This conflict between “intention” and “competence” depending on antecedent variables stimulates the theoretical clarification and measurement of intention as well as of competence, but has also consequences for domain specific VET at commercial workplaces: context matters!

Authors

• Sandra Bley, Ludwig-Maximilians. University Munich

• Susanne D.E. Weber, University of Munich