The paper discusses a social cognitive framework of how employee´s entrepreneurial behaviour (EB) could be influenced in SMEs. The model suggests, individual-level EB mainly to be influenced by processes of social exchange and social learning. That means organizational level with individual level to be conceptually linked by relationships of exchange and learning between the employee and the organization. The employee´s perception of the quality of these relationships is suggested to directly influence individual level EB: the personnel´s motivation for EB can be fostered via social exchange; the personnel´s abilities for EB might be fostered via social learning. Because of the SMEmanagement´s fundamental influence with regard to establishing high quality relationships with their employees, fostering EB is regarded a top-down process. To test the propositions, an experimental study design is proposed.
Opportunity recognition takes many forms especially when it comes to information search behavior. Scholars differentiate among others between fortuitous recognition, passive search or proactive search only to name a few. Despite the importance of such information search behavior in opportunity recognition, a common understanding and a comparison of diverse information search behavior is lacking in entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, existing scales are rather imprecise with respect to information search. They only use a few dimensions or they focus on general behavior instead of information search for a specific opportunity. We develop a scale of information search behavior in opportunity recognition combining deductive and inductive approaches. Thereby we interviewed small business owner managers who recognized and successfully exploited 59 opportunities and entrepreneurship students completed the survey with the developed measurement. It resulted in five distinct factors such as problemistic, proactive, passive, systematic and slack search.
Entrepreneurs search information differently in order to recognize opportunities. It ranges from no deliberate search such as accidental recognition up to proactive search which corresponds to an intended behavior. There is research analysing different search behavior separately, however, a common understanding and a comparison of different information search behavior by comparable scales is lacking. We develop a scale of distinct information search behavior inductively by analysing interviews with small business owner-managers having recognized and successfully exploited 59 opportunities. Furthermore, we conduct a pre-test of the scales with 211 business students to validate the developed scale. Serial opportunity recognizers more frequently use problemistic and systematic search than less experienced ones.
How entrepreneurs search for information influences entrepreneurial opportunity recognition processes like the amount of opportunities recognized by entrepreneurs. The odds of entrepreneurs to successfully recognize promising opportunities increases if we advance our understanding of entrepreneurial information search behavior. However, despite its imputed relevance, academic understanding remains limited particularly due to empirical issues. Existing scales attempting to measure such search behaviors lack sufficient distinguishability between the different types of information search behavior. Thus, it is almost impossible to assess what construct is actually being measured. This entails the need for a valid, reliable and applicable new measure. By building on opportunity discovery and information search theory, we develop and validate a scale of information search behavior. We found proof for three distinct types of information search behaviour, namely, passive, proactive and systematic search.
Research on entrepreneurial learning often stresses the role of experience and previous knowledge. We aim to advance this perspective by pointing out the prerequisites and limitations of experience-based forms of learning and by adapting findings from educational psychology to the entrepreneurial context. Developing a model of self-regulated entrepreneurial learning (SREL) we pursue a more process oriented view of entrepreneurial learning in order to explain how learning unfolds in contexts of uncertainty and novelty when relevant experience and knowledge are scarce. The model comprises a planning, a performance and a review phase in order to support entrepreneurs in their learning process. It is suggested how SREL is related to self-efficacy, emotions and cognitive biases.
