Connect the unconnected: digital human resource management and corporate entrepreneurship

Abstract

Individuals play a decisive role in Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE). However, organizational decision-makers face challenges in integrating them effectively. Digital human resource management (dHRM) enables organizations to analyze and control individual determinants beyond core functions, including those relevant to CE. Yet a foundational understanding of this connection remains lacking in both practice and theory. This study addresses this issue and aims to understand how dHRM can contribute along the CE process. Given its novel, exploratory nature and reliance on prior related insights, the study adopts a flexible pattern-matching approach based on semi-structured interviews with 31 experts from CE and HR. Consequently, it first derives theoretical patterns from the existing literature and then matches and enriches them with empirical findings using a grounded theory approach. Findings indicate that CE activities can benefit from dHRM contributions in various ways, including ideation, planning and execution. Several tools and analytics approaches enable more holistic and objective decisions, process optimization and the effective use of human capital in the CE context. Organizational decision-makers could thus consider a more integrated approach between CE and HR, based on new digital technologies, within their own setups. This study contributes to the CE discourse by advancing a process and mechanisms perspective through the specific integration of dHRM. By doing so, it establishes a foundational connection between the two related functions, which are often analyzed and managed separately, and offers CE practitioners several starting points for their own consideration and future decisions.