Volition is an important characteristic in the field of training and vocational guidance. Literature on entrepreneurship has focused on this concept to better understand the behavior of the entrepreneur (Achtziger & Gollwitzer, 2008). This study analyzes the personal characteristics involved in the process of transformation of intentions into actions in the field of entrepreneurship. Three categories of people were included in this study, which allowed us to circumvent the methodological problems associated with the implementation of a longitudinal study. Thus, our sample consisted of university and business school students, potential entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs. We conducted a variance analysis after confirming the homogeneity of each group, thus allowing intergroup comparisons. We found that volitional capacities are mobilized in a successive order, one after the other. In addition, this order is determined by the individual's progress on the process of creation.

Developing entrepreneurship among students and helping them to build their career plans and improving their employability is the core of public policy in a lot of countries in Europe (Branchet et al., 2011). Following some empirical researches (Boissin et al., 2009), we do know some predictive factors for the emergence of an entrepreneurial project. But another question remains largely unexplored: What are the psychological mechanisms that may interplay in entrepreneurial intention and career choices? Our research aims to demonstrate that entrepreneurship is an objective which relies entirely on willingness, and therefore, it is much more dependent on interpersonal features than on economic and environmental constraints. In particular, we wish to highlight the personal dynamics in shaping, maturing and implementing a choice of entrepreneurial career in order to extract volitional characteristics of this career choice. The hypotheses are tested using data from interviews conducted with French students in business schools, engineering schools and universities. Our dynamic approach to study the psychosocial processes involved in the definition of an entrepreneurial career helps understand the interest of young people in the entrepreneurial process. This research has demonstrated that volition has a key role in binding an individual commitment to an ambitious career objective.

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