Motivation in Entrepreneurship

8 Key excerpts on "Motivation in Entrepreneurship"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Building Businesses in Emerging and Developing Countries

  • Elie Virgile Chrysostome, Rick Molz(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  et al. (2011) on Malaysian university graduates found that there is no strong relationship between entrepreneurial intention and independence.

  Drive can be defined as the willingness to invest effort in thinking of and bringing ideas into reality, and is considered another motivational factor to become an entrepreneur. Shane et al. (2003) mentioned that there are some relations between drive and n-Ach. However, they have used drive in a broader perspective than the need for achievement. They referred to drive as the willingness to make efforts, tangible and intangible, and to bring ideas to reality. They have further explained drive in terms of “ambition, goals, energy and stamina, and persistence” (Locke and Latham, 1990). Ambitions affect the level of desire of entrepreneurs to create something great, eventful and meaningful, and to have influence on others. Higher levels of goal setting will drive entrepreneurs to hard work and better performance; the higher level of persistence will make them more agile in the face of challenges to materializing their ambitions.

  Another human motivational factor that Shane et al. (2003) mentioned in their seminal work is the egoist passion to create an organization and to make it profitable. That means entrepreneurs love their entrepreneurial process passionately and egoistically and work relentlessly toward success of their ventures. True entrepreneurs invest most of their energy and passion in the success of entrepreneurial projects they believe in and they love the process of building an organization and making it profitable (Shane et al. , 2003). Dej (2008: 90) defined egoistic passion as acting in one’s own interests and passion in following own goals and sacrificing other things to follow one’s own priorities. Baum et al. (2001) and Shane et al.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Immigrant Entrepreneurship

  Cases from Contemporary Poland

  • Beata Glinka, Adam Jelonek, Beata Glinka, Adam W. Jelonek(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In most studies, the authors emphasise the huge positive impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth (Acs, 2006; Braunerhjelm, Acs, Audretsch, & Carlsson, 2010; Praag & Versloot, 2007). Different aspirations of entrepreneurs shape their different activities in the context of running a company and thus different effects may emerge (Wiklund & Shepherd, 2003). Motivations are at the heart of aspirations (Amit, MacCrimmon, Zietsma, & Oesch, 2001), and for an individual to set up a business, there must be the desire and opportunity to do so (Praag & Ophem, 1995). The basic division of motives for starting a business is based on opportunity or necessity (“pull” and “push” factors) (Acs, 2006). Considering the types of pull motivation, the most frequently studied is autonomy/independence (Shane, Kolvereid, & Westhead, 1991; van Gelderen, Thurik, & Bosma, 2006). However, people choose the path of an entrepreneur because of life events, not because they dream about this kind of career. For example, people can create a business when they cannot find a job (Amit & Muller, 1995). Entrepreneurial motives can be also analysed from the point of view of psychological theories describing the intention-based model (Krueger, 1993; Shapero, 1975). For the decision to start a business to be made, a person must be convinced that it is highly possible and desirable.

  However, depending on the culture, entrepreneurship is perceived differently and develops differently (Glinka, 2008). In analyses of the entrepreneurship activities of immigrants, these cultural differences can be noticed in values and motives, as well as the strategies applied (Dana, 1993).

  For many immigrants, entrepreneurship is the only way to make money and be able to stay in the host country, hence the analysis of motivation requires a different approach than the classical theories about entrepreneurs in general (Freitas, 1991). In the case of immigrant entrepreneurship, the key factors affecting the reasons for starting a business are market disadvantages and ethnic resources (Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; Light, 1979) and the individual characteristics of an immigrant (Dana, 1997).

  4.3 Immigrant entrepreneurship motivation

  As I mentioned before, one of the most popular theories explaining entrepreneurial motivations is related to “push” and “pull” factors, affecting the choice between self-employment and paid employment (Basu, 1998; Masurel, Nijkamp, Tastan, & Vindigni, 2002; Metcalf, Modood, & Virdee, 1996). “Push” factors to self-employment will include: unemployment (Masurel et al., 2002), lack of education and skills (Kloosterman, van der Leun, & Rath, 1998), low language proficiency (Clark & Drinkwater, 2000) and social exclusion (Ram & Smallbone, 2003). The disadvantage theory is related to “push” factors and suggests that for immigrants, creating their own business is a form of necessity entrepreneurship, as immigrants are forced to do so (Chrysostome, 2010) and explains how discrimination in the job market pushes them into self-employment (Light, 1979).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Entrepreneurial Behaviour

  Unveiling the Cognitive and Emotional Aspects of Entrepreneurship

  • Andrea Caputo, Massimiliano M. Pellegrini(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Ma & Tan, 2006 ; Smilor, 1997 ). Passionate entrepreneurs can utilize their persistency and optimism, in order to achieve success through their entrepreneurial actions, which in turn, can enhance the acquisition of knowledge and skill development that fosters creativity (Martin & Schouten, 2013 ). Within the realm of entrepreneurship, scholars have made an attempt to uncover the importance and influence of passion on entrepreneurial activities (Baum & Locke, 2004 ; Baum, Locke, & Smith, 2001 ; Chen et al., 2009 ; Mitteness, Sudek, & Cardon, 2012 ; Murnieks, Cardon, Sudek, White, & Brooks, 2016 , Murnieks, Mosakowski, & Cardon, 2014 ; Shane, Locke, & Collins, 2003 ). Previous research has addressed the role of passion on venture growth and investment (Baum & Locke, 2004 ; Murnieks et al., 2016 ), decision-making (Chen et al., 2009 ), entrepreneur effectuation and causation (Stroe et al., 2018 ), persistence (Cardon & Kirk, 2015 ) and also assessment and locomotion (Mueller, Wolfe, & Syed, 2017 ). Emotions experienced by entrepreneurs are interwoven into their venture. Entrepreneurs devout themselves heavily to their ventures, in terms of emotional and physical assets (Baum, 2003 ; Shane et al., 2003 ) and experience an intense emotional attachment like a parent and a child (Cardon et al., 2005 ). Entrepreneurs engage in activities that are associated with their self-identity and are meaningful for them (Cardon et al., 2009 ). In this vein, they can be an inventor, developer or founder. Those roles reflect the self-identity fueled by passion that resides within the entrepreneur (Cardon et al., 2013 ). Studies that tackled entrepreneurial passion focused on a certain object that is viewed as the source, target or domain of the aroused passion (Bierly III, Kessler, & Christensen, 2000 ). While the venture is the common focal point of the entrepreneurial passion, the target of passion that reflects what entrepreneurs are passionate about can vary (Cardon et al., 2013 ; 2017 ). According to Vallerand (2015 ), passion may not be only in terms of an activity, but also an object, a person, a concept, an idea or a cause. The extant literature on passion in entrepreneurship addresses extensively passion, however, the target of passion is what is being investigated (Milanesi, 2018 ). While a majority of entrepreneurs have a passion for activities and view entrepreneurship as a means to pursue those passions, some others can pursue entrepreneurship, due to their passion being solely aimed toward the entrepreneurial process itself. In this framework, individuals can become entrepreneurs in ventures involving their hobbies, consumption habits, and their use of leisure time, social missions, growth, etc. (Cardon et al., 2005 , 2009 ; Ranfagni & Runfola, 2018 ). There are various conceptualizations of the targets of entrepreneurial passion in the literature. Cardon et al. (2013 ) proposed a notion that includes passion for “inventing, founding, and developing” by pointing out the three domains of entrepreneurial passion. In addition to this, Cardon et al. (2017

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Small Business in a Global Economy

  Creating and Managing Successful Organizations [2 volumes]

  • Scott L. Newbert, Scott L. Newbert, Scott L. Newbert(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  2 The Motivations Underlying Small Business Formation: An Overview and Empirical Examination of Self-Efficacy and Commitment Narda R. Quigley, Scott L. Newbert, and Kevin D. Clark

  Much has been written about the individual-level antecedents of successful small business creation. In our consideration of past scholarship on this topic, two broad categories emerge: who the individual is (characteristics) and what the individual does (behaviors). Recent research suggests that the latter matters far more than the former in determining which businesses emerge and which do not.1 This conclusion, however, may be an artifact of the types of characteristics that are typically analyzed in empirical work, which has focused on demographic characteristics of the individual (e.g., experience, education, age, etc.).2 In this chapter, we explore the role that personal characteristics play in the small business creation process, but we deviate from the majority of prior work by focusing not on demographic attributes, but rather on the motivational drivers of the individual. In an effort to explore how motivation impacts small business creation at a more fine-grained level, we examine the independent effects of commitment and efficacy, two key concepts in the motivation literature.

  MOTIVATION

  As Shane, Locke, and Collins note, “[A] person cannot win a game that they do not play. In the context of small business ownership, this statement suggests that success depends on people’s willingness to create new businesses.”3 While nonmotivational factors (such as environmental conditions, characteristics of start-up activities, and other environmental factors) certainly play a role in determining this willingness, human motivation plays a critical role.4 Motivation has been defined in a number of ways in prior literature. In the most basic sense, the study of motivation is the study of action, or why individuals behave in certain ways.5 Many modern theories of motivation, such as Locke’s theoretical summary of work motivation, focus on the relationship of needs, beliefs, values, and goals with action.6

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Routledge Companion to Entrepreneurship

  • Ted Baker, Friederike Welter(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part C Reasons and motivations for entering entrepreneurship This section begins to lay out some of the contours that entrepreneurship researchers have started to explore around the question of why people engage in entrepreneurship. Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, the chapters in this section throw into relief the narrowness of explanations that focus on financial concerns and the degree to which entrepreneurial activities appear to offer a financially lucrative payoff. Melissa Cardon (Chapter 5) assesses and builds on her own and others’ work on entrepreneurial passion to show what we know about how passion drives both cognitive and emotional processes that shape both how and why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs and also why and how some entrepreneurs persist despite any form of obvious or immediate payoff beyond that of getting to pursue what one is passionate about. Her chapter makes clear that this continues to be an important new path for entrepreneurship research and she makes cogent suggestions both for questions to ask and for methods to pursue them. Townsend, Mitchell, Mitchell and Busenitz (Chapter 6) chart the course taken by entrepreneurship researchers who are focused on exploring the role of individual differences among entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurs and other people. A frustrating legacy of work focused on personality traits and leading to few robust insights has been supplanted in recent years by a much more promising stream of psychological work studying cognitive differences. Despite this promise, and the strong contributions the authors of the chapter have made to this work on entrepreneurial cognition, they take a critical stance toward the overall direction of this research stream. Instead, they call for a much stronger and more explicit melding of current work on individual differences with work on human agency

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Female Entrepreneurship in Transition Economies

  Trends and Challenges

  • V. Ramadani, S. Gërguri-Rashiti, A. Fayolle, V. Ramadani, S. Gërguri-Rashiti, A. Fayolle(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  In this chapter, we have explored motivations that influence women toward entrepreneurship. To do so, we first compared female and male entrepreneurs. Recent studies, however, have shown that this type of analysis is sub-optimal due to differences in motivations of the two sexes. We observed this in our literature review.

  To combat weaknesses of a comparison between sexes, we performed a review of motives specifically related to female entrepreneurs, independently of what had previously been established with respect to their male counterparts. We thus highlight the main reasons why women undertake entrepreneurial ventures under the framework of two classifications: first distinguishing between extrinsic, intrinsic, and transcendental motivations; second distinguishing between push and pull factors.

  Specifically, two concepts are especially important when seeking to understand the motivations of successful female entrepreneurs. As our analysis shows, these concepts are self-efficacy and a proactive personality. Self-efficacy may have a positive effect on how an individual operates, because that individual will consider all available options before choosing the most suitable one. In this way, people usually assess and evaluate their abilities. For entrepreneurs, an active personality is highly attractive. It represents a link between an individual and his or her influence on the environment. It is therefore said that proactive individuals seek opportunities, demonstrate initiative, and persevere until they achieve whatever change they are pursuing.

  This chapter is not free from limitations, although these limitations pave the way for future research opportunities. Primarily, we chose a typology to classify motivations (extrinsic, intrinsic, and transcendental) from all existing typologies. In future research, our analysis could be enhanced by studying other types of motivation related to female entrepreneurs.

  References

  Akehurst, G., Simarro, E., and Mas-Tur, A. (2012), Women entrepreneurship in small service firms: Motivations, barriers and performance, The Service Industries Journal , 32(15), 2489–2505.

  Anna, A. L., Chandler, G. N., Jansen, E., and Mero, N. P. (2000), Women business owners in traditional and non-traditional industries, Journal of Business Venturing

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Societal Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness

  • Leo-Paul Dana, Vanessa Ratten, Leo-Paul Dana, Vanessa Ratten(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Abdul-Aziz and Wong underscore the importance of the entrepreneurs’ decision in the surveyed firms’ internationalization trajectory. Their study showed that top management’s perception of how their companies might benefit from internationalization was the highest-ranked foreign market entry consideration. They note that top managements’ initial and subsequent motivation also fashioned their companies’ degree of internationalization and tactics for securing contracts. The study goes on to suggest the characteristics of the entrepreneurs which drove their companies to internationalize. Thus, the researchers have highlighted that motivations can change over time, even for the same firm reacting to the external environment and the degree to which the management responds in a calculated, strategic way, or more instinctively. Thus, while some motivations are, indeed, industry-specific, each firm responds to different internal and external stimuli differentially.

  Dana, Hamilton, and Wick (2009)

  This study adopts an approach that classified entrepreneurs as either “opportunity seeking” or “reactive.” In the study, export triggers were either “pull,” negative “push,” or positive “push.” The authors find that those who were opportunity seeking at start-up were more likely to have responded to export “pull” forces. It was rare indeed for a reactive founder to have been “pulled” into exporting. Among this group of entrepreneurs, “push” forces dominated the decision to export according to Dana et al.

  The Context of Global Business Environment

  Understanding the entrepreneur’s decision to “go global” involves the need to study the cognitive elements of the entrepreneurial process (Liñán & Fayolle, 2015 ). At the same time, the influence of contextual variables (cultural, administrative, institutional, geographic, and economic) is also relevant, as the individual decision is surely affected by these elements (Liñán & Chen, 2009 ; Liñán & Fernandez-Serrano, 2014 ). As part of “TE” and growth strategy, many firms go global and orient themselves more and more internationally (Paul & Gupta, 2014 ). Therefore, concepts such as internationalization, globalization, international Entrepreneurship, born global, network and resource-based view of firms have been used to examine SE.

  Globalization

  Globalization can be defined generally as the growth of economic activity spanning politically defined national and regional boundaries (Agnihotri & Santhanam, n.d.). It represents an increasing trend for the worldwide integration of markets. As a result, there is an increase in trade flows and the prices of imports and exports tend to be more tightly together. An example is financial markets which are completely integrated across geographic boundaries to the point where this is one price for an asset category (SBS Strathclyde, 2012 ). As shown in Table 1

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Social Intelligence, Leadership, and Problem Solving

  • M. Afzalur Rahim(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In a broader sense, Liles (1974) has shown that job dissatisfaction, or deterioration of satisfaction in the pre-entrepreneurial job, is a fundamental factor that motivates an individual to become an entrepreneur. A recent study from Noorderhaven, Thurik, Wennekers & Stel (2004) emphasizes the fact that the level of self-employment in 15 European countries is partly explained by dissatisfaction with life and the way democracy works. These two aspects of dissatisfaction, according to the authors, are close to professional dissatisfaction.

  The “pull” (opportunity) motives refer to a set of positive motives such as economic opportunity, development of a new idea, self-realization and so forth. These “pull” motives correspond to the case where new entrepreneurs are positively drawn into entrepreneurship. More precisely “Pull entrepreneurs are those who are lured by their new venture idea and initiative venture activity because of the attractiveness of the business idea and its personal implication” (Amit & Muller, 1995, p. 65).

  One implication from this distinction among entrepreneurial motivations would be that entrepreneurs sensitive to opportunity motives as compared to necessity ones are more prone to succeed in their proactive strategies.

  Conversely, since the “push” motive is associated with a lack of alternatives in a salaried or unemployed position, the entrepreneurial choice does not necessarily reveal very profitable business opportunities. Thus we can infer that a new firm with entrepreneurial orientation is a priori more prone to be successful when the founder is motivated by “pull” motives rather than “push” motives. Nevertheless, push entrepreneurs are more prone to be financially constrained. They probably set up their firm at a lower scale than the Minimum Efficient Scale (MES) which is defined, in industrial organisation, as the smallest output that a firm can produce such that its long run average costs are minimized. The entrepreneurial orientation is probably a way to reach quicker this MES which favors survival.

  So some indetermination remains about the effects of entrepreneurial orientation on duration.

  The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 presents the “pull” and “push” motives to go into entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial orientation of the new entrepreneurs. Section 2 examines the performance of the product market orientation of the new firm according to pre-entry motives. The conclusion involves a discussion of the results and directions for future research.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book