The power of entrepreneurial ideas: necessity, enablement and the intention model

This paper uses survey data from employees and contractors at the Dounreay Nuclear Power Station in Scotland to test the explanatory power of the Entrepreneurial Intention Model under conditions of economic necessity, and in the process to explore Shapero’s notion of displacement in the movement of individual from a relatively passive state of intention to action. The early work of Shapero (1983) introduced the concept of displacement that suggests that external conditions can introduce shocks that would precipitate the active pursuit of entrepreneurship. Subsequent work on the Intention Model has focused attention mostly on cognitive processes of the individual in earlier stages of intention development, and little is known about the role of displacement. This work postulates that adverse external economic conditions can have an independent influence on the active search for entrepreneurial ideas, and that both the negative effect of facing loss of employment and the positive, empowering effect of finding ideas are displacement factors that lead to substantially higher levels of entrepreneurial intention and taking action to start a company. The research uses survey data provided by 384 of the approximately 1500 individuals working at Dounreay in 2007, and tests for the effects on intention using structural equation modelling. The results confirm that perceived necessity and having found an idea for a new company have effects independent of desirability and self-efficacy. The conclusion argues that there is an early stage of intention development that can only take the individual to a pre-disposition towards following entrepreneurship that, following Shapero, may require negative or positive displacement to be crystallised into action. INTRODUCTION The Dounreay Nuclear Power Station began operation on the north coast of Scotland in 1958. The UK Atomic Energy Authority placed it there both as a safety measure to keep what was viewed as, however small, a potential risk that should be distanced from large population centres, while serving as a source of economic benefit to a rural agricultural area with very little industry. Having now out-lived its design life, the facility is being decommissioned, and the workforce is slowly but steadily being released. Those who are older may consider early retirement, and hope that years of service will be rewarded by generous stipends for early retirement, but the lion’s share of 1,500 employees and contractors (hereafter employees) at Dounreay, constituting 20% of all employment in the local area and 30% of the local payroll, will need to find new work. Although the Dounreay employees express a strong preference for the pace and lifestyle of the area, given the likely effects of the loss of the Dounreay payroll the prospects of most employees finding employment in existing businesses would seem to be rather doubtful. In light of the limited local employment opportunities the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has taken the position that the alternative to leaving the Dounreay area to find employment elsewhere is that many should become entrepreneurs (Macfarlane, 2007). AGSE 2009