Abstract: As a critical means to promote organizational strategy renewal and develop new business, intrapreneurship has attracted extensive attention from both practical and theoretical circles. How organizations can enhance the effectiveness of intrapreneurial activities to achieve sustained success has become the core issue. Among the various factors influencing intrapreneurial success, the growth aspirations of intrapreneurs play a pivotal role. Intrapreneurial growth aspirations (IGAs), often manifesting as a vision for scaling and expanding new business initiatives, are instrumental in driving proactive behaviors and shaping the trajectory of intrapreneurial ventures. Despite this, academic inquiry into IGAs remains conspicuously limited, with the majority of studies disproportionately focused on growth aspirations within the context of independent entrepreneurship. Such a focus has left significant gaps in understanding the distinct dynamics of IGAs, particularly given the structural and operational differences between intrapreneurship and independent entrepreneurial endeavors. Increasingly, scholars have emphasized the necessity of differentiating these two forms of entrepreneurial activity. To address these gaps, there is an urgent need to prioritize the exploration of IGAs. Specifically, identifying ambitious intrapreneurs—those who possess a strong drive to achieve growth—and investigating the contextual and individual factors shaping their aspirations are crucial steps. Intrapreneurs, as key agents in driving organizational innovation and fostering new business development, have increasingly captured the attention of scholars. Among the various individual characteristics, intrapreneurs’ entrepreneurial experience has been identified as particularly critical, often surpassing other individual characteristics in relevance to intrapreneurial activities. This prior experience profoundly influences how individuals perceive, confront, and adapt to their current organizational context, enabling them to integrate their functional roles seamlessly into their existing knowledge structures. More interestingly, differences in entrepreneurial experience imply different antecedent identities for intrapreneurs. Individuals with entrepreneurial experience often undergo a significant identity shift—from that of an independent entrepreneur to an intrapreneur—which can profoundly shape their behaviors and attitudes in intrapreneurial endeavors. To better understand these dynamics, this study examines IGAs by comparing former entrepreneurs to intrapreneurs without prior entrepreneurial experience through the lens of role identity theory. Moreover, this research focuses on two key contextual dimensions: task context, represented by the innovativeness of intrapreneurial programs, and social context, illustrated by the presence and influence of intrapreneurship role models. Hypotheses in this study were tested using data from 11921 intrapreneurs spanning 50 countries. The empirical results find that intrapreneurs with entrepreneurial experience exhibit lower levels of IGAs compared to their no-entrepreneurial counterparts, and this negative relationship is weakened when the intrapreneurial project is of higher innovativeness and when the intrapreneurial role model holds higher scale. The theoretical contributions of this study are manifold. First, this study addresses the lack of intrapreneurial research in terms of IGAs, thereby providing useful additions and expansions to the research in intrapreneurial field. Second, this study profoundly reveals the entrepreneurial identity of intrapreneurs who differ in terms of their entrepreneurial experience, which helps to advance and deepen role identity research in the field of intrapreneurship from an identity perspective. Lastly, this study integrates contextual research in the fields of entrepreneurship and organizational behavior, which can enrich and expand contextualized research in the field of intrapreneurship. In summary, this study provides fresh perspectives on leveraging the entrepreneurial skills of former entrepreneurs within the corporate context and offers valuable insights into the potential pathways to intrapreneurial success.

摘要： 内创业者的成长期望对于其采取积极措施和行动以推动新业务成长至关重要，是决定内创业成功概率的关键因素之一。然而，当前对内创业成长期望的研究却严重不足。基于身份认同理论，本研究探讨了内创业者先前创业经验对内创业成长期望的影响，并分析内创业的任务情境特征（即内创业项目创新性）和社会情境特征（即内创业角色榜样）的权变效应。实证结果发现：有创业经验的内创业者比无创业经验的内创业者具有更低的内创业成长期望水平，而当内创业项目具有更高的创新性和内创业榜样具有更高的规模时，这种负向关系会被削弱。本研究不仅弥补了内创业研究在内创业成长期望方面不足的缺憾，而且从身份认同视角推进和深化了内创业领域的角色身份研究，进而为探索并预测内创业成功的潜在路径提供新视角。