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Reconceptualizing Necessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurship: A Needs-Based View of Entrepreneurial Motivation
Academy of Management Review (2021)
  • Chad D. Coffman, University of Missouri—Kansas City
  • Sanwar A. Sunny, University of Baltimore
Abstract
In their recent paper, Dencker, Bacq, Gruber and Haas (2019) reconceptualized necessity entrepreneurship—sometimes referred to as necessity-motivated entrepreneurship (McMullen, Bagby, & Palich, 2018)—through the lens of motivational theory, utilizing Maslow's (1954) hierarchy of needs framework. Prior research has often conceptualized necessity entrepreneurship within a push-pull framework (Storey, 2016), with necesity entrepreneurship occurring when individuals are pushed into entrepreneurship by negative forces such as job loss or even the need for food and clothing, and opportunity-motivated entreprenuers pulled into entrepreneurship by its attractiveness (Uhlaner & Thurik, 2007). This push-pull framework resulted in a dichotomous view of necessity entrepreneurship that Dencker et al. (2019) correctly described as oversimplified, and unable to account for the wide array of antecedents, processes and outcomes that occur in developing and developed contexts.
Publication Date
October, 2021
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2019.0361
Citation Information
Chad D. Coffman and Sanwar A. Sunny. "Reconceptualizing Necessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurship: A Needs-Based View of Entrepreneurial Motivation" Academy of Management Review Vol. 46 Iss. 4 (2021) p. 823 - 835
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/chad-coffman/1/