Entrepreneurship by Circumstances and Abilities: The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction and Moderating Role of Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Prior studies have found that job dissatisfaction and self-efficacy are significant factors influencing individuals' entrepreneurial propensity. Existing literature on entrepreneurship often regards job dissatisfaction as an entrepreneurial push factor and self-efficacy as an entrepreneurial pull factor. The argument is that individuals who are dissatisfied with their jobs are more likely to seek alternative mode of employment such as self-employment. In other words, poor job circumstances may push individuals to leave their paid employment to start their own businesses. On the other hand, personal abilities such as self-efficacy may pull individuals toward starting their own businesses in areas where they are confident and competent in. Despite the importance of job dissatisfaction and self-efficacy for new venture creation, few if any studies have examined the entrepreneurial phenomena from a holistic perspective. Utilizing concepts from the P-E fit and self-efficacy literatures, this paper argues that the path to entrepreneurship is a multi-faceted interactive process between individuals' personal attributes and their work environment. We specifically examined how IT professional's personal attributes such as innovation orientation and self-efficacy condition individuals for an entrepreneurial career in unsatisfactory work environments.

Entrepreneurial Motivations: What Do We Still Need to Know?

“…These scales tap into some underlying motivational characteristics of the entrepreneur. The motivational concept of “mastery” has a great deal in common with the concept of self‐efficacy, which is a key antecedent of entrepreneurial intentions (Bandura and Locke 2003; Krueger, Reilly, and Carsrud 2000; Wong, Lee, and Leung 2006; Zhao, Seibert, and Hills 2005). Self‐efficacy is one example of where motivation has been assumed in entrepreneurial intentions research but not directly and empirically studied.…”

Entrepreneurial Product Innovation: A Second-Order Factor Analysis

“…Despite contested merits of incubators (Chan & Lau, 2005), the analysis (Wong et al, 2006) reveals that the resources of a business incubator have a strong positive effect for innovative small ventures. This is consistent with the World Bank's study that business incubators have positive effects both for creating viable, innovative, highgrowth enterprises and for the broader innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem (Khalil & Olafsen, 2010).…”

“…The incubator centre can provide a nourishing environment for business and technological assistance; however, there is much evidence of a high failure rate among incubated ventures. One reason for this failure is that the incubatees overestimate their personal strengths while underestimating their weaknesses (Wong et al, 2006). In this study, need for achievement, locus of control, and risk-taking propensity are represented as key entrepreneurial personalities.…”

“…In this regard, for many years, researchers have studied characteristics or specific personality traits that entrepreneurs possess as one of the most empirically researched topics in the field of entrepreneurship (Vecchio, 2003). Moreover, entrepreneurs are significantly more innovative than non-entrepreneurs (Ho & Koh, 1992;Robinson & Sexton, 1994), and their personality traits have a direct effect on firm performance (Wong et al, 2006;Cantner et al, 2007). They often have greater difficulty in relation to innovation activities and face several challenges in commercializing their innovations (Fiates et al, 2010).…”

Predicting the Entrepreneurship Intention of Undergraduate University Students in Malaysia: A Comparison Study

“…Ajzen (1991), Mwiya, Wang, Shikaputo, Kaulungombe, andKayekesi (2017), andPaço, Ferreira, Raposo, Rodrigues, andDinis (2011) have confirmed that perceived behavioral control predicts entrepreneurial intention. Lortie and Castogiovanni (2015), Urban and Pendame (2015), and Wong, Lee, and Leung (2006) strongly believed that perceived behavioral control could acts as the strongest predictor as compared to the subjective norm and attitude towards the behavior. For instance, research confirms that strong financial support could affect the success of business initiation (Gimmon & Levie, 2010).…”