When control fosters autonomy. A qualitative inquiry into family-owned ICVs

The balance of control and autonomy has been highlighted as a distinguishing characteristic of, and a critical success factor for, internal corporate ventures (ICVs), namely ventures created within an existing firm. How such balance is achieved has been mainly associated to structural characteristics of the dyad, such as the degree of parent-venture relatedness or structural separation, and seen as the consequence of a deliberate choice by the parent company. Yet, the complexity of parent-venture relationships and the power dependencies behind these exchanges, have been left aside in this debate so far. By taking advantage of rich empirical evidence from four parent-venture dyads, we track parent-venture interactions in the first stages of ICV creation. We clarify the autonomy versus control tradeoff as a fundamental tension in the parent-venture relationship, and suggest autonomy and control as the result of exchange-based power relationships. In particular, we identify three mechanisms explaining variation in venture autonomy: restricting the resource reservoir, establishing accountability and codifying roles within the dominant coalition. All three mechanisms highlight that the balance is not about autonomy and control, but rather about configurations of autonomy and control on the one side and types of structuring parent-venture interactions on the other. When parent and venture interact within a trust-based relationship, the unpredictability of informal and ambiguous exchanges in the dyad needs ad-hoc autonomy. Instead, in case of negotiated interactions, the predictability of formal and explicitly codified exchanges in the dyad leads to structured autonomy.