Panel Presentation
An exploratory investigation into how internal and external factors change an entrepreneur’s motivations for exit during an entrepreneurial life cycle.
What is Entrepreneurship?
- “my own experience was that for ten years we ran a research centre in entrepreneurial history, for ten years we tried to define the entrepreneur. We never succeeded. Each of us had some notion of it – what he thought was, for his purposes, a useful definition. And I don’t think you’re going to get farther than that.” (Cole 1969 contained in Cooper and Komives 1970)
- Research through the decades has continued to demonstrate the ambiguity in definition. “The dominant paradigm of entrepreneurship research practices, positivism, has brought about a fundamental paradox: researchers often try to analyse a phenomenon that cannot be properly defined” (Anderson & Starnawska, 2008, p1)
- ‘Entrepreneurship is a parallel marriage between an “economic process”, a result of a series of commercial mechanics, and “motivators”, a series of individual drivers influenced by time and social position, in which one should not be discounted at the expense of the other.’ (S.Kidney definition)
Reasons for Entry
- Push and Pull Theory (Gilad and Levine 1986) –
- Push Theory, pushed into Entrepreneurship by negative external forces
- Job Dissatisfaction
- Difficulty Finding Employment
- Insufficient Salary
- Inflexible Work Schedule
- Pull Theory, individuals attracted into entrepreneurial activities seeking
- Independence
- Self-Fulfilment
- Wealth
- Other desirable outcomes
Segal et al proposed model of motivation
- (1) Individuals compare the desirability of self-employment with the desirability of working for others.
- (2) Individuals assess whether they possess the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the tasks and activities necessary to become an entrepreneur.
- (3) Individuals determine whether they are willing to accept the inherent risk of entrepreneurial activity.
What are the Motivators for Exit – The Whys
- Price’s (Price, 2012) theory “…. every stage of the entrepreneurial life cycle becomes clearer and easier to take if you know precisely what you plan to do with the business in the end”
- Influence on family life
- Work life balance
- Fatigue
- Emotional engagement
The Influence of Factors – introduction of a shock comparator.
A construct of consideration is a comparable of the Model of Voluntary Employee Turnover (Lee et al., 1999) which followed on from earlier work, including the 1994 paper, which considered a shock model and its influence on voluntary employee turnover. The empirical findings demonstrate a specific salient event, a shock, being more likely to result in an employee change of job.
Research Question from Deliverable 1.
How do internal and external forces change an entrepreneur’s motivations for exit during the entrepreneurial life cycle?
Post Scoping Study Questions for SLR
How does the role of the shock function in entrepreneurial exit?
What multi pathway exit models currently exist in the entrepreneurial life cycle?
How do timelines for entrepreneurial exit differ?