Intrapreneurship is key for driving new knowledge creation and innovation. We seek to answer a major question concerning the motives underlying intrapreneurship, and particularly regarding what motivates the engagement of family executive members in intrapreneurship in family businesses. We expand social identity and role theories to explain the different social identification mechanisms that link family-family business identity (in)congruence to family executive members’ engagement in intrapreneurship. We also specify individual differences as boundary conditions—proactive personality and entrepreneurial mindset, knowledge and, tenacity—for the pathways that link identity incongruence and intrapreneurship. Our work contributes to the literature by advancing a social identity lens of intrapreneurship—explaining not only why identity drives intrapreneurship but also why identity incongruence may lead engagement in the pursuit of new venture initiatives within an organization, and further, by focusing on family businesses, contextualize research on intrapreneurship. Finally, we offer some important implications for practice.

内部创业是推动新知识创造和创新的关键。我们试图回答一个关于内部创业动机的重大问题，特别是关于家族高管成员参与家族企业内部创业的动机的问题。我们扩展了社会认同和角色理论，以解释将家族-家族企业身份与家族高管成员参与内部创业联系起来的不同社会认同机制。我们还将个体差异指定为边界条件——积极的个性和创业心态、知识和坚韧——作为连接身份不一致和内部创业的途径。我们的工作通过推进内部创业的社会身份视角为文献做出贡献——不仅解释了为什么身份驱动内部创业，还解释了为什么身份不一致可能导致组织内追求新的创业计划，并进一步通过关注家族企业，将内部创业研究置于情境中。最后，我们提供了一些对实践的重要启示。