ABSTRACT

The current business environment moves individuals to involved in the execution of an intrapreneurial process to seek new business opportunities, in order to respond to the enormous competitiveness of the market. To encourage this intrapreneurial behavior, it is necessaryto adopt certain tools related to organizational design and HR practices in the company. The HR practices are fundamental to encourage an innovative, proactive and risk-taking behavior, which is supposed to lead to an increase in innovation results and a greater competitive advantage to the company. In this sense, the objective of the paperis to analyze the employees’ perception of the HR practices system applied in their company, to confirm if it is coherent, consistent and if it contributes to boost their intrapreneurial behavior. In addition, it is analyzed if this relationship varies according to gender, given that, traditionally, literature attributes different roles to men and women regarding intrapreneurial behavior. The hypotheses were contrastedusing structural equation models (SEM) with a sample of 297 employees, working in intensive knowledge positions, of six companies located in the Valencian Community. The results show the positive relationship between perceptions of HR practices and intrapreneurial behavior.Significant differences related to gender were not found.

KEYWORDS: Intrapreneur; HR practices; strength of the HR practices system; gender