The Effect of Appraisal and Coping Responses to Errors on Employees’ Intrapreneurial Behaviour: A Parallel Mediation Model

Errors are stressful events, but every cloud has a silver lining. Drawing from the transactional stress model, this study aims to examine the effect of positive error appraisal on employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour via error problem-focused coping strategies. Data were collected from 379 full-time employees of information and communication technology companies at Smart Village in Egypt. Ordinary least squares regression-based path analysis using SPSS macro-PROCESS was used to test research hypotheses. The research findings confirmed that positive error appraisal, “error risk-taking”, significantly affects both problem-focused error coping strategies named error competence, learning from error, error communication and thinking about errors, and the dimensions of employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour. Problem-focused coping strategies partially significantly affect employees’ intrapreneurial behaviours. Problem-focused coping strategies partially mediate the relationship between error risk-taking and employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour. This study contributes to the literature by suggesting that employees who appraise errors as challenging (take the risk to err) use problem-focused coping strategies that affect employees’ intrapreneurial behaviours.