Corporate entrepreneurship strategies and business perfomance in the Zimbabwean agricultural value chain. A Case of Irvine’s Chickens Zimbabwe (2015-2021)

Abstract

Due to prevailing market competition, resourceful organisations have adopted corporate entrepreneurship to expedite their operational processes with onward effect upon the overall performance. The viability challenges faced by Irvine’s Zimbabwe and the absence of empirical data on the role of corporate entrepreneurship on company performance in the Zimbabwean agricultural value chain motivated the current study. The study therefore administered questionnaires and interviews to various company level respondents to gather primary data backed up by secondary data sources from corporate records. This study mixed aspects of both qualitative and quantitative research in order to gather detailed triangulated data on the topic under investigation. The population selected based on non- probability convenient sampling constituted 330 employee respondents from the organisation. SPSS V23 was used for data analysis and the results indicated that CE has positive ramifications upon firm financial performance, firm capacity utilisation, its operational efficiency and competitive advantage. In view of this, the study recommended Irvine’s to expand its corporate entrepreneurship program to the rest of the country to expand reach while collaborating with government on stakeholder capacity building to improve product quality. Future researchers were in turn urged to expand their population through incorporating other organisations in the poultry value chain that had not been part of the current study.