Middle Managers: Victims or Vanguards of the Entrepreneurial Movement?

The purpose of this article is twofold; first, to provide a critical review of a number of approaches to corporate entrepreneurship and second, to do this by focusing on the role and fate of middle managers as corporate entrepreneurs. By concentrating on middle managers it is intended to highlight the contradictions that pervade the literature on corporate entrepreneurship. The article identifies three approaches to corporate entrepreneurship and examines how each provides different views and prescriptions for the middle manager as corporate entrepreneur. This article raises important issues for those seeking to implement entrepreneurial strategies or develop a general framework for innovation in large corporations.