UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL INTRAPRENEURSHIP ACCORDING TO PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT: A CHALLENGE FOR CSR PRACTICES?

Abstract

This paper aims to shed light on the employment
relationship of the social intrapreneur, who is
a central figure in the implementation of “bottom
up” CSR practices. Indeed, such ascendant CSR
policy intends to support citizen’s initiatives taken
by collaborators on organization’s behalf. To better
understand the relationship between the intrapreneur
and its organization, we adopt an exploratory qualitative methodology, and analyze our data through
a coding process, coming from the psychological
contract theory developed by Rousseau (1995).
We apply this theoretical framework to a French
insurance company, which deliberately has chosen
to launch a citizen project based on social intrapreneurship. As we followed the project during two
years, we are able to develop the relational dynamic
between the organization and its collaborators,
becoming “social intrapreneurs”. We advance that
the psychological contract of the intrapreneur extends
the employee’s one to new reciprocal obligations,
to which employees especially give an ideological
meaning. Moreover, when these new reciprocal
obligations are not observed, this weakens the
psychological contract, and undermines the sustainability of social intrapreneurs’ involvement into the
organization. These results lead us to contribute to
HRM of intrapreneurs’ literature, and to formulate
suggestions to improve the implementation of bottom
up CSR policies.