How can local entrepreneurship be fostered in multinational organisations? : a case study in Siemens entitites

• Main Author: Amberg, Joe
• Published: University of Strathclyde 2012
• Subjects: 658
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.675238

Answering the many calls for more empirical research in the domain of corporate entrepreneurship, this thesis presents an exploration of potential activities apt to foster entrepreneurial activity in Siemens AG. Siemens is widely considered an industrial conglomerate and one of the oldest companies among the top global players, ranked 40th in the Global 500 Fortune list of 2010. In 2009, Siemens’ top management identified a severe lack of entrepreneurship throughout the company as a critical issue, and as a new key action in the strategic planning of 2010 to 2014. In this context, this thesis addresses the question: “How can entrepreneurship be strengthened within local Siemens organisations?” Based on a preliminary literature review and pilot study, the research focusses on aspects of structural arrangements, temporal orientation, and mandates granted to local subsidiaries and their relationships in fostering local entrepreneurship among the multinational’s subsidiaries. Within Siemens, three cases were investigated. First, the acquisition and integration of Shinwha Electronics in South Korea, explored in the pilot study, was further analysed. A business venturing endeavour explicitly declared as “entrepreneurial”, sponsored by the top management and taking place entirely in the Siemens existing organisation of Fire Safety was taken as the second case. The carve-out of the security business – consisting, significantly, of two “failed” acquisitions – was selected as the third case. These three cases represent a unique combination :the first case revealed differences in entrepreneurial behaviour by contrasting existing Siemens entities with the entrepreneurial acquired firm; the second case was informative about “genuine” entrepreneurial activity taking place entirely within the Siemens entity; and the third case illustrated the limitations to business opportunity recognition and exploitation in the Siemens context. In the Siemens context, the findings identified five specific areas of practice that were key to fostering or impeding corporate entrepreneurship: (1) a weak emphasis on business innovations and opportunity recognition on the sales side, (2) the insufficient scope of current subsidiary mandates, (3) the need to extend the established Siemens culture of mature, well specified processes of business exploitation to exploration, (4) a revised set of criteria used by human resources in recruitment, promotion, training and rewards, and (5) a greater emphasis on long term orientation and management decisiveness. Contributions to theory include the extension of existing conceptual models on corporate entrepreneurship to offer a more complete picture of factors affecting corporate entrepreneurship at different levels of organisation within conglomerate multinational enterprises.