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The purpose of this study is to explore the role of employees’ underlying implicit person theories in the relationship with innovative work climate and proactive behaviour at work. First, the authors study how an employee’s implicit person theory (IPT), or the domain-general implicit belief about the development potential of people’s attributes, relates to learning goal orientation and proactive learning and entrepreneurial behaviour at work. Second, the authors investigate how employees’ perception of their work climate is associated with this IPT.

The authors set up an exploratory study relying on survey data from a sample of 498 professionally active Flemish adults and analysed a correlational path through SEM.

The authors found that holding an incremental IPT (i.e. believing in the development potential of people’s attributes) positively relates to proactive learning and entrepreneurial behaviour. Moreover, the authors found that employees working in an innovative work climate are more likely to hold an incremental IPT.

This study offers indications that IPT is a relevant explanatory variable in the relationship between innovative work climate on the one hand and learning goal orientation, learning work behaviour and entrepreneurial work behaviour on the other hand. As such, this study suggests that IPT is a promising concept that can be actively endorsed as a relevant underlying psychological process variable for fostering learning and entrepreneurial behaviour in organizations.

According to the literature, general personality traits are less strongly related to the creation of new ventures than specific/proximal personality traits. Therefore, this study aims to understand the different proximal personalities that influence the entrepreneurial intention to start a new venture and the relationship between them.

Data were gathered through a self-administered questionnaire filled in by students of entrepreneurship or related courses at the end of the second semester (2019/2020 academic year), and the research option is based on covariance-based structural equation modelling.

The results of this study show that entrepreneurial intentions can be predicted by specific individual traits, namely, risk-taking, entrepreneurial alertness, creativity, proactivity and self-efficacy. Moreover, it was found that risk-taking mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and proactivity. On the other hand, students’ creativity mediates the relationship between risk-taking and proactivity. Finally, students’ self-efficacy mediates the relationship between proactiveness and entrepreneurial intention.

The results have implications for entrepreneurship education given that a better understanding of the personality traits that influence entrepreneurial intentions can lead to the development of new approaches and pedagogical tools.

This model can be used as a diagnostic tool for designing an effective and efficient entrepreneurship curriculum and pedagogy, acting as an (ongoing) audit of students’ entrepreneurial intentions to get a scientific basis in case of further course/module adjustments.

Drawing from resource-based theory, the authors aim to study how and under what conditions small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) capitalise on their proactive entrepreneurial behaviour (PEB) to achieve new product development (NPD) performance.

The authors’ data were drawn from a cross-sectional questionnaire survey of 401 UK-based SMEs in the manufacturing sector.

The authors identify an upward curvilinear relationship between PEB and NPD performance. Taking a step further, the authors propose and confirm that this curvilinear association arises from, in part, SMEs’ innovation capability, which in turn translates into NPD performance. The authors also find that this upward curvilinear relationship between PEB and innovation capability flips to a downward curvilinear relationship when firms pursue a customer and competitor orientation.

This paper looks beyond the linear relationship that exists among entrepreneurial behaviour, market orientation and innovation outcomes.

As the current “one size fits all” research approach is likely to be ineffective in identifying the conditions that promote the entrepreneurial career of the solo self-employed, this paper advances the current understanding of the heterogeneity among the solo self-employed.

A person-centered approach is used to identify groups among the solo self-employed based on their starting motives and to examine their engagement in proactive career behaviors.

Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), six groups displaying distinct motivational profiles are identified: (1) the pushed by necessity, (2) entrepreneurs by heart, (3) control-seekers, (4) occupationally-driven, (5) challenge-seekers and (6) the family business-driven. In line with the argument that starting motives affect behavior because they reflect the future work selves that individuals aim for, results show that solo self-employed with distinct motivational profiles differ in their engagement in proactive career behaviors. For future research, it is recommended to examine the role of demographic characteristics in the engagement in proactive career behaviors.

Although starting motives among self-employed people have been studied frequently, this research applies an innovative methodological approach by using LCA. Hereby, a potentially more advanced configuration of starting motives is explored. Additionally, this study applies a career perspective towards the domain of solo self-employment by exploring how solo self-employed with distinct motivational profiles differ in terms of managing their entrepreneurial careers.

Self-employment is considered one of the responses to precarious employment, particularly among those who lost jobs during an economic crisis. Although starting a new business is widely available, operating new ventures remains challenging. This article aims to explore the premises of self-employment success, namely self-employment intention and proactive coping as crucial predictors of further performance.

The authors recruited participants among initially unemployed individuals who participated in the entrepreneurial program aimed at creating self-employment. Since entrepreneurs are expected to have specific personal characteristics important for performance, the authors assessed proactive coping as the key factor for self-employment intention.

The results depicted proactive coping as crucial in performing own ventures in the long run, which suggests that self-employment intention may change over time.

Proactive coping is particularly appropriate for self-employed at any stage of the entrepreneurial process because it maintains the intention to perform own business. Thus, the findings underline the need for proactive coping training for entrepreneurs, particularly those previously unemployed.

As the self-employment intention may differ in time, the importance of being proactive in operating small businesses increases.

Employees' entrepreneurial behavior, innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking can contribute to business performance and success, making it important for the organization. Yet, little is known about how management can promote their employees' entrepreneurial behaviors. Based on workplace resources theories, the present study tested a serial mediation model. Empowering leadership predicts employees' resources of role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work via demand-ability fit and need-supply fit, which subsequently lead employees to exhibit entrepreneurial behaviors.

Korean employees (n = 200) working in a variety of industries participated in a two-wave survey with a five-week time lag.

Structural equation modeling supported a serial mediation model showing how empowering leadership can promote employees' person-job fit. Increased person-job fit was related to enhanced employees' role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work, which in turn predicted entrepreneurial behaviors. Alternative models with more direct paths did not improve model fit, highlighting the roles of the mediators. Empowering leadership is an important resource facilitating entrepreneurial activities through its influence on employees' fit perceptions and resources.

The present study contributes to entrepreneurial behavior literature by showing the importance of job and personal resources in explaining the determinants of employees' entrepreneurial behavior.

While much has been debated about venture formation and demise, the behavioral dynamics of why entrepreneurs intend to continue and persevere post-startup have received scant attention and scrutiny. Building upon the rich tapestry of entrepreneurial cognition, the purpose of this paper is to forward entrepreneurial continuance logic as a theoretical framework to empirically investigate the antecedents, contingencies and mediators of entrepreneurial continuance.

Using observations from surveying 156 practicing entrepreneurs across the USA, UK, South Africa and India, this research offers interesting findings.

Results surface attitudinal tensions between the transactional attitudes of entrepreneurial climate, entrepreneurial responsiveness and calculative commitment and the relational attitudes of affective and normative continuance. Specifically, the authors find that affect is the strongest direct predictor of continuance intentions but only in the absence of entrepreneurial responsiveness behavior.

Entrepreneurial responsiveness, rather than commitment, is found to be a core continuance constituent, traceable as a positive influence on continuance as a direct antecedent, a moderator and a mediator.

The research reveals that entrepreneurs willing to seize and adapt to a changing entrepreneurial landscape are more like to continue with their ventures, but not just driven by strict underpinnings of affect and norms but by a strong sense of economic rationality.

Entrepreneurial continuance is an important behavioral phenomenon with substantial socio-economic consequences. Given the scant attention paid to entrepreneurial continuance – symptomatic of broader downstream effects of entrepreneurial survival and positive socio-economic spillovers, the authors embark on a systematic investigation of continuance intention as post-startup behavior.

The paper explains post-startup entrepreneurial behavior in several ways. First, while affective commitment, a relational attitude, still drives continuance intentions, calculative commitment, a transactional attitude, is a significant contender. Interestingly, the nature of contemporary entrepreneurship disregards continuance behavior based on norms. Second, entrepreneurial responsiveness needs to be cautiously examined in relationship to commitment and continuance. Entrepreneurial responsiveness, a transactional attitude, positively influences continuance; however, in the presence of a relational attitude such as affective commitment, the interplay reduces continuance intentions. Third, perceptions of entrepreneurial climate are found to trigger more opportunity-seeking behavior among entrepreneurs, which in turn increases an entrepreneur’s intention to continue.

This study aims to examine the relationship between social network ties (SNT) and successful retail business (SRB), as well as the effect of the moderating variable of proactive entrepreneurial behavior (PEB).

The quantitative method with a cross-sectional design is used. A series of questionnaires are distributed and collected from a total of 101 retail business owners selected by a purposive sampling technique. Factor analysis and regression analysis are used to test the validity of the data and hypotheses.

The results establish that the higher the SNT, the higher the chance of a retail business to be successful. Interestingly, subsequent findings indicate that the role of PEB can strengthen the relationship between SNT and SRBs.

Business owners or entrepreneurs are considering both SNT and PEB in making business decisions. A new insight on the importance of intangible resources is revealed where it is rooted in resource-based and social capital theories.

In this chapter, we advance an understanding of entrepreneurial resourcefulness in relation to context by focusing on challenging and sometimes outright hostile environments and the way they shape, and are shaped by, entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Drawing on selective evidence from several projects in post-socialist countries in both Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia and other published research covering these countries, we argue for contextualized conceptualizations of resourcefulness. More specifically we emphasize that temporal, historical, socio-spatial, and institutional contexts are antecedents and boundaries for entrepreneurial behavior, while at the same time allowing for human agency. This is visible in individuals’ actions to negotiate, reenact, and cross these boundaries, and as a result, intentionally or inadvertently contributing to changing contexts. We suggest that resourcefulness is a dynamic concept encompassing multiple practices, which change over time, and it results from a close interplay of multiple contexts with entrepreneurial behavior. We also propose that from a theoretical point of view, resourcefulness not only needs to be contextualized, but it also needs to be explored together with its contextual outcomes – the value it creates and adds at different levels of society.

The dynamic business environment of all industries is forcing organizations to restructure their organizational philosophy and strategies to gain and maintain competitive advantage. To grapple with this rapidly changing environment, organizations are required to be more intrapreneurial in their operations. However, very few studies have been conducted on knowing the antecedent of intrapreneurship in organizations; thus the purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. This study strived to investigate the association among styles of leadership and intrapreneurial behavior (IB) of employees in the presence of psychological empowerment (PE) as mediator in higher educational institutes in Pakistan.

A deductive approach of logic was taken to formulate and test the hypotheses. A structured questionnaire was developed and sent to 350 Academic staff of Universities in Pakistan, out of which 280 responses were collected. A structured equation modeling technique was utilized to analyze the hypotheses.

Findings revealed a positive impact of transformational leadership (TL) and authentic leadership on IB, while a negative association between transactional leadership and IB was found. Contrary to these results, no significant association was observed between IB and passive- avoidant leadership. In addition, mediation analysis was run using the bootstrapping function of SmartPLS. Results showed that the association among TL, authentic leadership and IB were mediated by PE; however, the association of transactional leadership, passive-avoidant leadership and IB was not mediated by empowerment.

This study contributed to the knowledge domain of leadership as well as intrapreneurship. The study may help practitioners and academicians understand organizational factors such as leadership behavior, which might foster IB.