Engagement of family executive members in intrapreneurship in the family business

Intrapreneurship is key for driving new knowledge creation and innovation. We seek to answer a major question concerning the motives underlying intrapreneurship, and particularly regarding what motivates the engagement of family executive members in intrapreneurship in family businesses. We expand social identity and role theories to explain the different social identification mechanisms that link family-family business identity (in)congruence to family executive members’ engagement in intrapreneurship. We also specify individual differences as boundary conditions—proactive personality and entrepreneurial mindset, knowledge and, tenacity—for the pathways that link identity incongruence and intrapreneurship. Our work contributes to the literature by advancing a social identity lens of intrapreneurship—explaining not only why identity drives intrapreneurship but also why identity incongruence may lead engagement in the pursuit of new venture initiatives within an organization, and further, by focusing on family businesses, contextualize research on intrapreneurship. Finally, we offer some important implications for practice.