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, becomes their career in a manner similar to an individual who climbs ladder of a Fortune 500 firm. Bird's (1989) work on entrepreneurial behavior discussed long-term, career-oriented nature of commonly neglected in defining 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 entrepreneurial process. Understanding entrepreneurial motivation is critical to understanding complete entrepreneurial process. Herron and Sapienza (1992) stated that because motivation plays an important part in creation of new organizations, theories of organization creation that fail to address this notion are incomplete (p. 49). While Herron and Sapienza concentrated on interactive nature of variables leading up to launch of a venture, Herron and Robinson (1993) extended this model into a more complete description of venture performance process. In developing a model of entrepreneurial motivation, Naffziger, Hornsby, and Kuratko (1994) contended that a more complete view of should include entirety of entrepreneurial experience - that is, behaviors necessary to operation of firm and its performance, as well as psychological/non-psychological outcomes resulting from firm ownership. Thus they integrated existing research and theory into a model which incorporated both decision to create a new venture and motivation to sustain (sustained means to remain with a venture or to start additional ventures versus abandoning as a career choice). An important aspect of these motivational models is role of entrepreneurial goals in motivating business founders to sustain their pursuit of entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically 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 use of factor analysis. Literature Concerning Entrepreneurial Process In recent past, entrepreneurial process has been examined from a theoretical point of view. Bygrave (1993) defined an entrepreneurial event as creation of a new organization to pursue an opportunity. Some of characteristics that Bygrave used to describe 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 key that unlocks 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 states that 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 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 relationships between entrepreneurial characteristics and venture performance. …