| Course | DBA-8050 Seminar in Marketing and Entrepreneurship |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 2 |
| Paper type | Article analysis 2: understanding entrepreneurship |
| Length | About 918 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Thomas Edison State University |
| Program | Doctor of Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for DBA 8050 Module 2
The Employee Who Starts Something: Blanka's Intrapreneurship Review and a Nursery Manager's Native Plant Program
Student Name
Doctor of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University
DBA-8050: Seminar in Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Mentor Name
Month Day, Year
The Employee Who Starts Something: Blanka's Intrapreneurship Review and a Nursery Manager's Native Plant Program
The Article
Blanka (2019) reviews research on intrapreneurship, the entrepreneurial behavior of employees inside existing organizations, and argues that the field has studied the topic mostly at the level of the firm. Corporate entrepreneurship research asks how organizations renew themselves and start new ventures; Blanka asks instead what is known about the individual employee who notices an opportunity and acts on it, often without being told to.
Purpose, Method and Organizing Framework
The purpose is to gather a scattered body of individual-level studies, show what they have found and set out directions for further work. The method is a systematic literature review: the author searched academic databases with defined terms, screened the results against inclusion criteria and coded the remaining studies by what they examined.
The review organizes the findings around three questions. The first concerns the person: which traits, skills, prior experience and attitudes are associated with intrapreneurial behavior. The second concerns the context: how the organization's structure, leadership, rewards and climate encourage or block that behavior. The third concerns outcomes: what intrapreneurial behavior produces for the employee and for the firm. A recurring point is that intrapreneurship is often bottom-up and proactive, so an employee may act before management has asked for anything, and this makes it different from corporate entrepreneurship programs designed at the top.
Critique
Any verdict on a review begins with the studies inside it. Its strength is breadth and structure. By sorting a fragmented literature into person, context and outcome, it gives researchers and managers a map they did not have, and it makes visible how little work has followed employees over time.
The weaknesses lie partly in the review and partly in the underlying field. Many of the studies it gathers are cross-sectional surveys in which employees report both their own behavior and their view of the organization, so the same respondent supplies cause and effect. Definitions vary from study to study, which means findings about "intrapreneurs" may not refer to the same behavior. Search terms and database choices also shape any systematic review, and studies that used neighboring words, such as employee innovation or proactive work behavior, may have been missed. Finally, much of the research comes from large firms in Europe and North America, so a five-store family business sits at the edge of the evidence. None of these points makes the framework wrong, but they warn against reading any single association as a law.
Relation to Corporate Entrepreneurship Research
The review complements organizational-level work rather than replacing it. Antoncic and Hisrich (2003) defined intrapreneurship at the level of the firm through new business venturing, innovativeness, self-renewal and proactiveness. Their view explains what an entrepreneurial company does; Blanka's explains who inside it starts things.
The bridge between the two is the internal environment. Hornsby et al. (2002) tested a scale, since called the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument, that asks middle managers how far five conditions favor new ventures in their firm; in plain terms, whether bosses back new ideas, whether people may decide how to work, whether initiative pays, whether time exists for it and whether limits are clear. Kuratko et al. (2014) showed how managers can use such a diagnosis to find which conditions are missing before launching an initiative. Read together, the three sources suggest that a capable employee with an idea still needs a context that gives time, room and recognition.
| Internal condition (Hornsby et al., 2002) | State at our garden centers | Effect on the native plant program |
|---|---|---|
| Management support | Owner approved it informally | Allowed, but never discussed in planning |
| Work discretion | High for nursery managers | Let the manager choose plants and signs |
| Rewards and reinforcement | None tied to new programs | Effort unpaid and unseen |
| Time availability | Almost none from April to June | Program work done after closing |
| Organizational boundaries | Clear by store, unclear across stores | Idea stayed in one store |
Implications for the Garden Centers
In 2024 the nursery manager at our Flemington store built a native plant and pollinator section on her own initiative, writing the signs, choosing the stock with a regional grower and running two Saturday talks. The section's sales grew each month of the season, yet the program never reached the other four stores. The review and the instrument explain why. The manager had the traits the review associates with intrapreneurs: experience, initiative and close knowledge of customers. What was missing was context: no reward, no protected time in the busy months and no channel to carry the idea across store lines.
Three actions follow. First, recognize employee-led programs in the annual review and with a share of first-year margin, so initiative is reinforced. Second, protect time by scheduling program work for the slower weeks of late summer and early winter. Third, give each successful store program a sponsor at the chain level who can test it in a second store. Because the evidence is mostly cross-sectional, I would treat these steps as a trial for one season and then ask whether new programs appear in other stores.
Conclusion
Blanka (2019) turns attention from the entrepreneurial firm to the entrepreneurial employee and organizes a scattered literature into person, context and outcome. Read with care about its survey-based evidence and alongside Antoncic and Hisrich (2003) and Hornsby et al. (2002), the review explains a real pattern at our garden centers: the people who start things are already on staff, and the organization decides whether their ventures spread.
References
Antoncic, B., & Hisrich, R. D. (2003). Clarifying the intrapreneurship concept. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 10(1), 7-24. https://doi.org/10.1108/14626000310461187
Blanka, C. (2019). An individual-level perspective on intrapreneurship: A review and ways forward. Review of Managerial Science, 13(5), 919-961. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-018-0277-0
Hornsby, J. S., Kuratko, D. F., & Zahra, S. A. (2002). Middle managers' perception of the internal environment for corporate entrepreneurship: Assessing a measurement scale. Journal of Business Venturing, 17(3), 253-273. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0883-9026(00)00059-8
Kuratko, D. F., Hornsby, J. S., & Covin, J. G. (2014). Diagnosing a firm's internal environment for corporate entrepreneurship. Business Horizons, 57(1), 37-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2013.08.009
What the DBA 8050 Module 2 instructions ask for
Module 2 of DBA-8050 places a second article analysis beside a discussion on entrepreneurship and the first synchronous event; the syllabus lists three analyses and three briefing notes without assigning each to a module, so this page pairs Module 2 with the required Blanka reading. The analysis asks you to report the article's purpose and method, explain its main framework, judge the strength of the evidence behind it, connect it to other entrepreneurship research and draw implications for an organization. For a review article, the method is the search and screening process, and the evidence is the set of studies it gathered. Show that you know the difference between intrapreneurship as an employee's behavior and corporate entrepreneurship as a firm's strategy, since that distinction is the point of Blanka's piece.
How this DBA 8050 Module 2 example is built
The paper opens by stating what sets the review apart: its focus on the employee rather than the firm. A method section explains the systematic search and the three questions of person, context and outcome that organize the findings. The critique asks what the gathered studies can carry, naming self-report, uneven definitions, search limits and the large-firm samples behind most findings. A section joins the review to Antoncic and Hisrich's firm-level concept and to Hornsby, Kuratko and Zahra's five internal conditions, and a table rates those conditions at the garden centers. The case is a Flemington nursery manager whose pollinator section sold well but never left her store. Three actions follow, framed as a one-season trial.
DBA 8050 Module 2 rubric: what earns full marks
Mentors judge DBA-8050 article analyses on four things: whether the summary captures the article's purpose and method accurately, whether the critique weighs the quality of the evidence, whether the article is placed among other research and whether the implications follow from it. For a review, credit goes to analyses that critique both the review process and the studies beneath it. Separating individual and organizational levels of entrepreneurship shows command of the concept. Using an established measure, such as the five internal conditions, to examine a real organization shows applied judgment. Writing that keeps claims proportionate to cross-sectional evidence and cites each source in APA style meets the doctoral standard the seminar sets.
DBA 8050 Module 2 help: mistakes that cost marks
Weak analyses retell the review section by section and never say how far its conclusions reach. Some treat intrapreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship as the same idea, which misses Blanka's purpose. Others criticize the review only for being long or old instead of naming design limits such as self-reported data or narrow search terms. Implications that call for a culture of innovation without saying who does what by when earn little credit. Pick one employee-led venture you have seen, explain what helped or stopped it and connect those conditions to a measured framework. Keep the critique specific and the recommendations testable. Ask for a free first sample built on the venture or reading you are analyzing for DBA-8050.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
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DBA 8050 Module 2 questions, answered
Where can I find a free DBA 8050 Module 2 sample paper?
The analysis above applies Blanka's intrapreneurship review to a nursery manager's native plant program at a five-store garden center chain.
What is the difference between intrapreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship?
Intrapreneurship usually means an employee acting entrepreneurially, often unprompted, while corporate entrepreneurship describes a firm's strategy of venturing and renewal.
What are the five internal conditions in the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument?
Hornsby, Kuratko and Zahra measure management support, discretion over one's work, rewards, available time and clear organizational boundaries.
How do you critique a systematic literature review?
Judge the search and screening choices, then the quality of the studies gathered, since a review cannot be stronger than its sources.
What readings does DBA-8050 assign?
There is no textbook; the syllabus lists articles instead, Blanka's intrapreneurship review among them.