Lars Kolvereid

Prediction of Employment Status Choice Intentions

The present research applied the theory of planned behavior to predict employment status choice, defined as the intention to enter an occupation as a wage or salaried individual or as a self-employed one. The role of family background, sex, and prior self-employment experience was also investigated. Using a sample of 128 Norwegian undergraduate business students, the findings strongly support the theory of planned behavior as applied to employment status choice intentions. Moreover, demographic characteristics were found to influence employment status choice intentions only indirectly through their effect on attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control.

Organizational employment versus self-employment: reasons for career choice intentions

This research developed a classification scheme of reasons given for preferring self-employment versus organizational employment. Using an open-ended approach, data were collected from persons who had obtained a masters degree in business from a Norwegian business school during the 1987–1994 period. The classification scheme that emerged questions the relevance of earlier models, which have been used to explain and predict occupational status choice.

Self-employment intentions among Russian students

The present research investigated employment status choice intentions, defined as the decision to enter an occupation as a waged or salaried individual as opposed to a self-employed one. Hypotheses based on tracking models and the theory of planned behaviour were tested on a sample of 512 Russian students from three different universities in St. Petersburg. The results showed that the theory of planned behaviour, not tracking models or demographics, determined employment status choice intentions.

Entrepreneurship among business graduates: does a major in entrepreneurship make a difference?

Entrepreneurship has become a widely taught subject in universities and business schools. However, only a very small number of studies have investigated the effect of entrepreneurship education. The present research compares the behaviour of business graduates with a major in entrepreneurship and graduates with other majors from a Norwegian business school. The results indicate that graduates with an entrepreneurship major are more likely to start new businesses and have stronger entrepreneurial intentions than other graduates.

Growth aspirations among Norwegian entrepreneurs

Abstract While growing new firms receive considerable attention in the literature, most firms are born small to stay small. Microeconomic and stage-of-development theories of growth generally assume that growth is a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with the entrepreneurs priorities. More recently, this assumption has been questioned by a number of authors. If the decision to start a business is a choice made by the founder, it may also be assumed that the decision to grow the business is a choice made by the entrepreneur. The present research investigates the relationship between the founders motives to start the business, education, experience, industry, localization, characteristics of the organization and its environment, the firms history of growth, and the entrepreneurs growth aspirations. The hypotheses are tested using data from 250 Norwegian entrepreneurs in four different counties of Norway who started their businesses in 1986. The entrepreneurs motives to start the business are found to be related to his or her growth aspirations, but this relationship does not appear to be very strong. Significant relationships are also found between education, industry, and a number of organizational variables, including past growth in turnover and past growth in the number of employees, and the entrepreneurs aspirations to grow the firm in the future. However, growth aspirations are not found to be significantly related to experience, sex, location, or the size of the firm as measured by the number of employees. Entrepreneurs who want their firm to grow and intend to hire additional employees seem to have started their businesses to achieve something, more so than other entrepreneurs. They also tend to have a higher level of education than other entrepreneurs. Moreover, entrepreneurs with strong growth aspirations tend to have started manufacturing firms rather than service firms, and their businesses are found to have fewer and more distant customers and a higher number of competitors than other firms. Almost 40% of the respondents answered that they do not want to grow the firm. This percentage is significantly higher for Norway than for a comparable sample of British and New Zealand entrepreneurs, suggesting that the widespread reluctance to grow found in Scandinavian research may be a cultural phenomenon. Future research should attempt to clarify the relationship between growth aspirations and actual growth, and seek to identify the cultural peculiarities that promote growth unwillingness among Scandinavian entrepreneurs.

The Business Gestation Process of Novice, Serial, and Parallel Business Founders

This article explores the new business gestation process among three types of entrepreneurs: novice founders, serial founders (i.e., those individuals who have previously owned a business but sold it or closed it down), and parallel founders (i.e., those individuals who own at least one business while trying to start another). Founders were identified from a random sample of 9,533 Norwegian adults. Data were collected during 1996. One hundred and sixty respondents were classified as nascent entrepreneurs (i.e., those individuals starting a new business from scratch). One year later, information was collected from this group of nascent entrepreneurs surrounding their current activities. Detailed analysis revealed several differences with regard to the activities carried out during the gestation process among the three types of founders. Most notably, parallel entrepreneurs where found to have a higher probability of venture implementation than novice and serial founders.

Aspiring, nascent and fledgling entrepreneurs: an investigation of the business start-up process

This study focuses on three different milestones in the business gestation process, i.e. becoming an aspiring entrepreneur, a nascent entrepreneur, and a founder of a fledgling new business. Moreover, this study uses a combination of both individual and regional (or environmental) factors in predicting individuals’ success or failure to reach each of these three milestones. Hypotheses are developed to test the effect that human and environmental resources have on the odds of reaching the different milestones in the business start-up process. The study is based on interviews of a representative sample of 9533 Norwegians aged 18 years or older. From this group, 197 respondents qualified as nascent entrepreneurs. These were subsequently interviewed in follow-up interviews conducted in 1996, 1997 and 1999. In addition, regional data at the municipality level is included to measure the available pool of environmental resources. The results indicate that entrepreneurial experience is the single most important factor for predicting the outcome of the business start-up process. Even though environmental resources play a role, human resources are generally found to be better predictors of the outcome of the business start-up process. Several important implications for policy-makers are presented.

Entrepreneurial intentions in developing and developed countries

Purpose – This study proposes to use the Theory of Planned Behaviour to predict entrepreneurial intentions among students in five developing and nine developed countries. The purpose is to investigate whether entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents differ between developing and developed countries, and to test the theory in the two groups of countries. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 2,225 students in 13 countries participated in this study by responding to a structured questionnaire in classrooms. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. Findings – The findings indicate that respondents from developing countries have stronger entrepreneurial intentions than those from developed countries. Moreover, the respondents from developing countries also score higher on the theorys antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions – attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control – than respondents from developed countries. The findings support the Theory of Planned Behaviour in both developing and developed countries. Research limitations/implications – The findings strongly support the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The measure of subjective norms used, a multiple-item index encompassing the views of other people and motivation to comply with these, seems to have advantages over other measures of this concept. Practical implications – Developing countries need to focus on the development of institutions that can support entrepreneurial efforts. At the same time, developed economies may need to accept that entrepreneurial intentions are dependent on the dynamism of an economic environment and possibly on risk-perceiving behaviours. Originality/value – While multiple-country studies on entrepreneurship in developing and developed countries have been called for, no previous study has compared entrepreneurial intentions between developing and developed countries. The inclusion of developing countries provides a unique quasi-experimental setting in which to test the theory.

GROWTH INTENTIONS AND ACTUAL GROWTH: THE IMPACT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL CHOICE

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the Norwegian Royal Ministry of Industry and the Bodo Graduate School of Business for the financial support that made this research possible. We would also like to thank the Society of Associated Researchers in Entrepreneurship under whose auspices the data for this study was collected. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 3rd Annual Global Entrepreneurship Conference, Lyon, France, March 1993. The present research investigated: (1) the relationship between entrepreneurs’ growth intentions and actual firm growth, (2) the stability of growth intentions, and (3) the relationship between changes in intentions and actual firm growth. Using a longitudinal design, data were collected from Norwegian entrepreneurs for 1990 and 1992. The results indicate that growth intentions may be used to predict actual growth, that past intentions are related to later intentions, and that changes in growth intentions are associated with changes in growth patterns.

New business formation: does gender make a difference?

Despite an increasing trend in the number of females who start businesses in Western countries, the proportion of female compared to male entrepreneurs is still relatively low. Moreover, past research has found that females tend to start businesses with less potential for profitability and growth than men. Investigates gender differences among Norwegian entrepreneurs in the process of starting a new business. Tests the following three hypotheses: H1 ‐ during the business gestation process female entrepreneurs stress personal expectancies while male entrepreneurs stress economic expectancies; H2 ‐ during the business gestation process women perceive stronger social support than men do, and women put more emphasis on such support than men do; H3 ‐ female entrepreneurs perceive having less control and lower entrepreneurial abilities than their male counterparts. In support of H1 and H2, females were found to emphasize independence as a reason for start‐up, and to perceive a high degree of social support during the business gestation process. However, contrary to H3, females were found to perceive themselves as possessing higher entrepreneurial abilities than men.