The focus on environment as an essential element in the entrepreneurial process provides a counterweight to existing research on entrepreneurship that has mainly focused on psychological theories to explain the individual choice of becoming entrepreneur (e.g., Lee & Wong, 2004; Shook et al., 2003). We provide a new point of view of the entrepreneurial process; in particular, we focus on new connections among previous concepts and we explore the practical information of these concepts. In building on career theories, we aim to extend the growing stream of literature that looks at entrepreneurship as a career choice that an individual can choose to pursue during his or her lifetime, and in doing so we make the following contributions.
Our theorizing suggests several elements of the environment that affect the definitive choice of becoming an entrepreneur, including the objective and perceived characteristics of the environment, and the temporal moment in which the environment affects individuals along their development career process. While our theoretical development emphasizes the overall role of the environment in explaining the entrepreneurial choice, it is important to note that we provide a framework that offers a more nuanced view distinguishing different conception of the environment and several characteristics that assume different importance in different phases of the process, from the formation of entrepreneurial intentions to the translation of these intentions into action. This is very important because it shows that there is variance concerning the importance and the conception of the environment across the entrepreneurial process.
intentions is the best predictor of entrepreneurial behavior (e.g., Autio et al., 2001; Guerrero et al., 2008; Krueger & Carsrud, 1993). Our theoretical model takes a step forward; we adopt a career perspective to explore the process of becoming entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship can be studied “using a perspective that explicitly conceptualizes the relationship between entrepreneurial dynamics, labor market processes, and career trajectories” (Burton, Sorenson & Dobrev, 2016, p.239). Starting from this assumption, we emphasize that the choice of becoming an entrepreneur can be analyzed and explored as any other career choices that individuals can decide to pursue during their lifetime.
Our theoretical model offers a look to the extent to which the environment affects individual’s final choice of acting upon opportunities. We take in account recent insights into career theories that consider the development of career actions in the environment in which individuals are nested. In particular, building on SCCT, we consider the role played by contextual influences in the process of translating intentions into action. We show how these influences affect individual entrepreneurial intention and how jointly interact to generate entrepreneurial action. Moroever, we are able to disenatgle the effect of social influences on the individual choice to become entrepreneur, showing how these influences may change across time providing different support in the process of formation career interests and the subsequent enactment of career choices.
Further, we are able to theorize how the environment can be perceived as representative of individuals’ personality and attributes. Building on the Person-Environment (P-E) fit approach (Kristof, 1996; Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman & Johnson, 2005) we provide evidence that a gap exists between the perceived fit (individual preferences) and the actual fit (occupations). Starting by the assumption that individuals form preferences for certain activities, interests, competencies, and values based on their personality, and individuals’ career choice is an expression of their personality (Holland, 1997); we show that the perception of the environment and the actual occupations not always fit and the individuals’ enactment career process is not straightforward.
The process by which an individual enact his or her career preferences is affected by the environment and its characteristics, and by how the individual perceives the environment and then responds to it.
Our finding that the role of the environment can help explain how individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions are translated into actions informs research on the process of starting a new venture. Departing from the idea that entrepreneurship is mainly a planned behavior, and that intentions are the best predictor of this behavior, recent studies have increasingly emphasized that a gap exists between intentions and actions and that the translation if intentions to action is not always straightforward as supposed (e.g. Van Gelderen et al., 2015). This study has focused on some personality traits that may lead the individual to postpone action or to never act at all. Our theorizing suggests that entrepreneurial action is affected by the environment in which the individuals are centered, and by their perceptions of the environment. Individuals who feel supported over time in their process of becoming entrepreneurs are more likely to translate their intentions into actions, while those who feel that this support has changed over time may abandon or postpone their choice of starting a new business. Moreover, the environment is seen as representative of individual’s aspirations and preferences. If the environment is representative of the individuals’ aspirations and individuals are ready to adapt their aspirations to the environmental characteristics, thus the translation of intentions into actions become an easy process. On the other side, the inconsistency that may exist between individuals’ aspirations and their environment may lead individuals to abandon or postpone their entrepreneurial actions.