Article
Reconceptualizing Necessity Entrepreneurship
Academy of Management: Proceedings
(2021)
Abstract
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.
Disciplines
Publication Date
August, 2021
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.15368symposium
Citation Information
Chad David Coffman, Marc B. Gruber, David Gras, Robert Nason, et al.. "Reconceptualizing Necessity Entrepreneurship" Academy of Management: Proceedings Vol. 2021 Iss. 1 (2021) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/chad-coffman/5/