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Should I stay or should I go? Career choice intentions of students with family business background

Thomas Zellweger, Philipp Sieger and Frank Halter

Journal of Business Venturing, 2011, vol. 26, issue 5, 521-536

Abstract: Personal and motivational patterns of intentional founders have been researched in great depth; however, antecedents to career choices of intentional successors have been conspicuously missing in entrepreneurship research. By drawing on theory of planned behavior, we investigate how intentional founders, successors, and employees differ in terms of locus of control and entrepreneurial self-efficacy as well as independence and innovation motives. We find that transitive likelihood of career intent depends on degree of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the independence motive. Unexpectedly, we see that high levels of internal locus of control lead to a preference of employment, which challenges traditional entrepreneurship research and suggests that the feasibility of an entrepreneurial career path does not automatically make it desirable. Our findings suggest that students with family business background are pessimistic about being in control in an entrepreneurial career, but optimistic about their efficacy to pursue an entrepreneurial career.

Keywords: Career; choice; intentions; Theory; of; planned; behavior; Motives; Theory; of; mixed; control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

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