Validating the corporate entrepreneurial assessment instrument in South Africa

Abstract

The Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument (CEAI) was developed in North America to measure the attractiveness of the internal environment of companies to corporate entrepreneurs. The objective of this research was to validate the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument in South Africa. Data from a study of South African middle managers was analysed to assess the CEAI’s reliability and validity. While the CEAI is reasonably reliable, there are problems with its validity in South Africa. Some of the factors of the CEAI were correlated, contradicting one of the assumptions made by the original authors. Some items did not appear to contribute significantly to any of the factors, while others were ambiguous. The data was examined further, and several options for improving the CEAI were proposed. These included changing the number of factors, changing the number of items in each factor, rewording or removing some of the items, and adding new items.