Internal corporate venturing: riding the relational rollercoaster through sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration

Purpose Internal corporate venturing is a vehicle for firms to realize strategic and financial goals through entrepreneurial ventures. Prior research presents a strategic process in which individual managers make rational choices based on their formal roles and top-down corporate objectives. Recent work has challenged this by adopting a relational approach using a macro-level perspective highlighting cultural and institutional logics. This study augments and develops this relational approach by contributing a micro-level perspective by focusing on managers engaged in developing ventures in large organizations. The data show how internal corporate venturing (ICV) actors use discursive practices to make sense of their relationship contexts and develop interpretive repertoires to give sense to their decisions and shape their future strategies. The data illustrate how corporate venturing actors make sense of their uncertain experience and develop insider-outsider strategies by balancing three competing interpretive repertories, which form the basis of strategies supporting an entrepreneurial future in an organizational context. Design/methodology/approach Forty-two interviews were conducted with ICV actors, including senior directors of corporate venturing units in multinational corporations and their venture project leaders. The authors conducted a micro-level study through an interpretive sensemaking analysis of managers' “talk.” Interviews are considered through three lenses: “functional talk” (why they said it), “interpretive themes” (what they said) and “interpretive repertoires” (how they said it). Findings The perceived challenges experienced by the participants through their relationships were identified. Participants emphasized balancing project and organizational role risk in pursuing venture development, leading to a perceived dependent trust relationship between supporters. Three interpretive repertories were identified through which participants positioned their explanations of their relationship contexts in ICV. Participants used these to discursively frame their corporate venturing practices and position their future strategies. Originality/value A new framework of corporate venture sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration is provided to explain how managers discursively resolve conflicting relationship pressures while maintaining personal positioning. The paper shows how conflicting interpretive repertoires and personal interpretations are generated through a discursive practice comprising sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration processes to shape their future strategies. The paper contributes to theory by explicating the relational perspective of ICV at the micro-level and demonstrates how this is influenced by the discursive practices of managers leading the ICV activity.