What Do Entrepreneurs Actually Do? An Observational Study of Entrepreneurs’ Everyday Behavior in the Start–Up and Growth Stages

Susan Mueller, Thierry Volery and Björn von Siemens

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2012, vol. 36, issue 5, 995-1017

Abstract: In this study, we used the sociological method of structured observation to investigate the everyday behavior of six entrepreneurs in the start–up stage and six entrepreneurs in the growth stage. Our results suggest the existence of both commonalities and differences between these two stages with regard to activities, functions, exploration vs. exploitation, and communication. Building on these detailed observations, we develop a taxonomy specifying the constitutive elements of entrepreneurs’ behavior on a continuum that spans from single, discrete actions of entrepreneurs to actions concerning the broader organization.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2012.00538.x (text/html)

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:sae:entthe:v:36:y:2012:i:5:p:995-1017

DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6520.2012.00538.x

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().