TY - JOUR
T1 - Reconceptualizing Necessity Entrepreneurship
AU - Coffman, Chad David
AU - Gruber, Marc B.
AU - Gras, David
AU - Nason, Robert
AU - O'Donnell, Philip James
AU - Slade Shantz, Angelique
AU - Sunny, Sanwar A.
N1 - Recent scholarly work on necessity entrepreneurship has highlighted shortcomings in theoretical development underlying the construct and, by extension, limitations in our understanding of the behaviors of individuals we assign to this category.
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - Recent scholarly work on necessity entrepreneurship has highlighted shortcomings in theoretical development underlying the construct and, by extension, limitations in our understanding of the behaviors of individuals we assign to this category. While necessity entrepreneurs compose a sizable proportion of the world’s entrepreneurs (approximately 30% according to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data), theory about their behavior remains sparse, and our understanding of who they are, their motivations and their outcomes remains limited. Often conceptualized within a push-pull framework, necessity entrepreneurship occurs when individuals are pushed into entrepreneurship by negative forces, as opposed to opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship, which occurs when individuals are pulled into founding a venture by the attractiveness of an opportunity. This push-pull framework has resulted in a dichotomous view that, despite being widely used, some scholars have described as over-simplified, and unable to account for the wide array of antecedents, processes and outcomes. In this symposium, we convene established scholars who routinely use these constructs in the field. We highlight recent work to develop the constructs, identify use cases where a dichotomous framing of entrepreneurial motivation is insufficient, and suggest ways to develop a more meaningful framework moving forward. This symposium aims to contribute by further developing our understanding of the necessity entrepreneur, by considering new frameworks to better explain the nuance in nascent entrepreneurial motivation, and by discussing practical steps for measuring these constructs in the field.
AB - Recent scholarly work on necessity entrepreneurship has highlighted shortcomings in theoretical development underlying the construct and, by extension, limitations in our understanding of the behaviors of individuals we assign to this category. While necessity entrepreneurs compose a sizable proportion of the world’s entrepreneurs (approximately 30% according to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data), theory about their behavior remains sparse, and our understanding of who they are, their motivations and their outcomes remains limited. Often conceptualized within a push-pull framework, necessity entrepreneurship occurs when individuals are pushed into entrepreneurship by negative forces, as opposed to opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship, which occurs when individuals are pulled into founding a venture by the attractiveness of an opportunity. This push-pull framework has resulted in a dichotomous view that, despite being widely used, some scholars have described as over-simplified, and unable to account for the wide array of antecedents, processes and outcomes. In this symposium, we convene established scholars who routinely use these constructs in the field. We highlight recent work to develop the constructs, identify use cases where a dichotomous framing of entrepreneurial motivation is insufficient, and suggest ways to develop a more meaningful framework moving forward. This symposium aims to contribute by further developing our understanding of the necessity entrepreneur, by considering new frameworks to better explain the nuance in nascent entrepreneurial motivation, and by discussing practical steps for measuring these constructs in the field.
UR - https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.15368symposium
U2 - 10.5465/AMBPP.2021.15368symposium
DO - 10.5465/AMBPP.2021.15368symposium
M3 - Article
VL - 2021
JO - Academy of Management: Proceedings
JF - Academy of Management: Proceedings
IS - 1
ER -