An Examination of Owner's Goals in Sustaining Entrepreneurship

Many entrepreneurs continue to pursue independent employment throughout their careers in spite of adverse events or lack of financial success. In fact, entrepreneurship becomes their career in a manner similar to an individual who climbs the ladder of a Fortune 500 firm. Bird's (1989) work on entrepreneurial behavior discussed the long-term, career-oriented nature of entrepreneurship commonly neglected in defining the term. Bird defined an entrepreneurial career as "the process of deciding to begin and to continue operating as an entrepreneur" (p. 173). The concepts of motivation, goal-directed behavior, and perception of successful outcomes are all important elements in the entrepreneurial process. Understanding entrepreneurial motivation is critical to understanding the complete entrepreneurial process. Herron and Sapienza (1992) stated that "because motivation plays an important part in the creation of new organizations, theories of organization creation that fail to address this notion are incomplete" (p. 49). While Herron and Sapienza concentrated on the interactive nature of variables leading up to the launch of a venture, Herron and Robinson (1993) extended this model into a more complete description of the venture performance process. In developing a model of entrepreneurial motivation, Naffziger, Hornsby, and Kuratko (1994) contended that a more complete view of entrepreneurship should include the entirety of the entrepreneurial experience - that is, behaviors necessary to the operation of the firm and its performance, as well as the psychological/non-psychological outcomes resulting from firm ownership. Thus they integrated existing research and theory into a model which incorporated both the decision to create a new venture and the motivation to sustain entrepreneurship (sustained entrepreneurship means to remain with a venture or to start additional ventures versus abandoning entrepreneurship as a career choice). An important aspect of these motivational models is the role of entrepreneurial goals in motivating business founders to sustain their pursuit of entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the existence of a set of goals that when achieved, motivate entrepreneurs to sustain their venture efforts. Whether or not this collection of goals can be synthesized into a more concise description was addressed through the use of factor analysis. Literature Concerning the Entrepreneurial Process In the recent past, the entrepreneurial process has been examined from a theoretical point of view. Bygrave (1993) defined an entrepreneurial event as the creation of a new organization to pursue an opportunity. Some of the characteristics that Bygrave used to describe the entrepreneurial event were: discontinuity, holistic, change of state, dynamic, unique, extremely sensitive to initial conditions, involving numerous antecedent variables, and initiated by an act of human volition. However, he admitted that "if researchers could develop a theory to explain entrepreneurial events, then they would have the key that unlocks the mystery of entrepreneurship" (p. 257). Bull and Willard (1993) offered a tentative theory of entrepreneurial activity extracted from anecdotal observations and extant literature. Their definition of entrepreneurship states that "A person will carry out a new combination, causing discontinuity, under conditions of task-related motivation, expertise, expectation of personal gain, and a supportive environment" (p. 186). A number of attempts have been made to construct theoretical models of the entrepreneurial process (Gartner 1985; Greenberger and Sexton 1988; Learned 1992; Herron and Sapienza 1992; Herron and Robinson 1993; Naffziger, Hornsby, and Kuratko 1994; and Bhave 1994). Specific to this study Herron and Robinson (1993) proposed a causal model of the relationships between entrepreneurial characteristics and venture performance. …