Expectancy theory and nascent entrepreneurship

Maija Renko (), K. Kroeck () and Amanda Bullough ()

Small Business Economics, 2012, vol. 39, issue 3, 667-684

Abstract: Motivation is an important factor that distinguishes those nascent entrepreneurs who make progress towards an operating venture from those who do not. Based on Vroom’s (Work and motivation, 1964 ) expectancy theory, we predict that startup-specific instrumentality, valence and expectancy are key components of entrepreneurial motivation and closely related to those intentions, efforts, and behaviors that will eventually lead to operating a firm. Hypotheses are tested using data from the first Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics I. Our results show that valence is a multidimensional construct, and that various types of valence are related to different intent and behavioral outcomes. All types of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy are related to a nascent entrepreneur’s intended effort level in a cross-section of data, and over time, intended effort is positively related to operative firm status. Overall, our results suggest that expectancy theory holds promise for research on nascent entrepreneurs’ motivation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2012

Keywords: Expectancy theory; Nascent entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial motivation; Startup process; L26; M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11187-011-9354-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:sbusec:v:39:y:2012:i:3:p:667-684

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-011-9354-3

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().