Effect of diversity management on intrapreneurship: A study in automotive industry

With globalization in recent years, the current economic environment has become increasingly competitive and challenging for most corporations. Corporations have to constantly innovate in order to maintain their existence and gain competitive advantage. One of the most important strategies that corporations can implement for innovation is intrapreneurship. On the other hand, with globalization, differences in labor structure are also increasing. At this point, the diversity management is one of the most important management approaches in order to minimize the potential disadvantages of the differences, to maximize the potential advantages and to gain competitive advantage. In this study, the effect of diversity management on intrapreneurship is examined. In this direction, firstly, diversity management and internal intrapreneurship are tried to be explained conceptually and then the relationship between them is tried to be revealed. Finally, multiple regression analysis was conducted to measure the effect of the dimensions of diversity management on the dimensions of intrapreneurship. The research was conducted on 203 people working in Bursa automotive sector. According to the results of multiple regression analysis, the statistically significant and positive effect of the individual dimension of the diversity management on the innovation, risk taking, autonomy and expansion of individual social networks of intrapreneurship was found. In contrast, there was no statistically significant effect of individual dimension of diversity management on proactivity dimension of intrapreneurship. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant effect of departmental and organizational dimensions of diversity management on the dimensions of intrapreneurship. Keywords: Diversity management, Intrapreneurship, Competitive advantage