Innovation Training and Entrepreneurial Climate in Emerging Market Multinational Corporations

Abstract

Despite their innovation practices, Latin American companies seem to show low levels of corporate entrepreneurship. More research on corporate practices directed at infusing an entrepreneurial climate in the region is needed. This study draws on a recent theory that brings together configuration theory with prior corporate entrepreneurship conceptualizations. With this study, the authors test whether innovation training programs increase the entrepreneurial climate of multinational corporations from Latin American emerging markets. The authors of this study collected data from a sample of 2,796 employees of a Colombian multinational, divided into two groups of trained and untrained staff. They hypothesise that the corporate entrepreneurship climate would be higher in the trained group. They specify and validate a series of multigroup structural equation models to test their hypothesis. The results of this study suggest that some dimensions of entrepreneurial climate are higher when companies implement innovation programs.