Summary:
The purpose of this paper is to present advances towards a social intrapreneurship department within energy corporations. By drawing on the literature on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory, this paper provides a conceptual proposal for an organisational structure. This paper builds on the notion of bridging and boundary organisations, to suggest an organisational innovative structure as a social intrapreneurship endeavour focussing on the increasing salience of weak stakeholders in energy corporations from the energy justice approach.
This paper draws on the literatures on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory, to provide arguments and an organisational proposal to alleviate energy poverty in energy corporations.
The results are presented in a conceptual process model for the development of Social Energy Department units within large energy companies, illustrating their embeddedness in both societal and company-level processes to facilitate social intrapreneurship initiatives that would alleviate energy poverty in the just transition.
The paper promises novel insights at the nexus of social enterprise and organisational change. The practical applicability is particularly promising, as it focusses on integrating novel units in energy companies and stimulates further research on models of social intrapreneurship to tackle energy poverty.
The paper offers both practical and theoretical contributions to the stakeholder theory field with insights from social intrapreneurship and organisational stakeholder theory in the context of a specific social problem – energy poverty, energy justice and the just energy transition.
Spanish layman's summary:
El propósito de este artículo es sugerir una estructura organizativa innovadora a través de un departamento de intraemprendimiento social dentro de las corporaciones energéticas, partiendo de la literatura organizacional de intraemprendimiento social y la teoría de los stakeholders. Un enfoque de justicia energética dirigido a la creciente relevancia de las partes interesadas débiles en las corporaciones energéticas para aliviar la pobreza energética.
English layman's summary:
The purpose of this paper is suggesting an organisational innovative structure through a social intrapreneurship department within energy corporations by drawing on the literature on social intrapreneurship and stakeholder theory. An energy justice approach towards the increasing salience of weak stakeholders in energy corporations to alleviate energy poverty.
Keywords: Organisational change; Stakeholder theory; Energy poverty; Bridging departments; Just energy transition; Social intrapreneurship; Social entrepeneurship; Boundary spanning;
JCR Impact Factor and WoS quartile: Q3 (2020)
DOI reference:
https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-11-2020-0103
Published on paper: October 2021.
Published on-line: August 2021.
Citation:
M.J. Manjón, A. Merino, I. Cairns, Tackling energy poverty through social intrapreneurship in large-scale energy companies. Social Enterprise Journal. Vol. 17, nº. 4, October 2021. [Online: August 2021]
