Bound for entrepreneurship? A career-theoretical perspective on entrepreneurial intentions

David R. Marshall () and Robert Gigliotti ()
Additional contact information
David R. Marshall: University of Dayton
Robert Gigliotti: Saint Anselm College

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 2020, vol. 16, issue 1, No 13, 287-303

Abstract: Abstract Research on entrepreneurial intentions, as an important step in the decision to undertake an entrepreneurial career, tends to position career actors as choosing entrepreneurship as a first career decision. However, most scholars agree that entrepreneurs emerge from existing organizations, not from college dorm rooms. Therefore, individuals choosing to enter entrepreneurship typically do so after having made previous career decisions to work in paid-employment careers. Despite the usefulness of the accumulated knowledge of individual and contextual antecedents to entrepreneurial intentions, few studies offer a careers theory-based explanation for why some people who have previously decided to pursue paid-employment careers view moves to entrepreneurial careers as feasible and desirable as proposed by entrepreneurial intentions-based models. In this paper, we extend boundaryless and protean career orientations, established theoretical career concepts, to explain the entrepreneurial intentions of actors already working in wage-employment careers. Our theoretical integration sheds new light on entrepreneurial intentions research and fills important gaps in our understanding of the mindsets of those inclined towards entrepreneurial careers.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial careers; Entrepreneurial intentions; Boundaryless careers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11365-018-0523-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:intemj:v:16:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11365-018-0523-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... urship/journal/11365

DOI: 10.1007/s11365-018-0523-6

Access Statistics for this article

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal is currently edited by Salvador Roig

More articles in International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().