Corporate Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship in Nigerian Banking Institutions: A Management Perspective

This study examines corporate entrepreneurship and intrapreneurial practices in Nigerian commercial banking institutions, investigating how selected banks cultivate internal innovation, new product development, and entrepreneurial employee behaviour as competitive strategies in a rapidly evolving financial services landscape. The Nigerian banking sector faces disruption from fintech competitors, changing customer behaviour, and regulatory transformation, making the cultivation of internal entrepreneurial capacity a strategic imperative for banks seeking to remain relevant. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining a survey of 200 middle and senior managers from five major commercial banks including Zenith Bank, Access Bank, and GTBank with in-depth interviews with 15 product development and strategy executives. Survey data examine the prevalence and perceived support for intrapreneurial behaviour, while interviews explore the institutional structures, incentive systems, and cultural conditions enabling or constraining corporate entrepreneurship. Findings reveal that banks with dedicated innovation labs and internal startup programme structures show significantly higher intrapreneurial activity across departments. However, bureaucratic approval processes, risk-averse organisational culture, and short-term performance incentive structures are consistently identified as barriers to sustained intrapreneurship in the majority of surveyed institutions. Digital banking unit employees show markedly higher intrapreneurial behaviour scores than colleagues in traditional banking divisions. Recommendations include the adoption of dual operating system models that allow entrepreneurial teams to operate under different governance rules than the bank's core operational units. Keywords: corporate entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, Nigerian banking, financial services innovation, management.