در چشم ناظر: نحوه تمرکز نظارتی و تعامل خوداثربخشی در تاثیر گذاری بر شناخت فرصت

Although there is evidence that regulatory focus is associated with opportunity exploitation, there is a lack of research examining its role at the early stages of opportunity recognition. The present study makes two major contributions to address this gap. First, we demonstrate that entrepreneurs' promotion focus is positively related to opportunity recognition, whereas prevention focus is not significantly related to opportunity recognition. Second, integrating two theories of self-regulation – regulatory focus theory and self-efficacy theory – our findings reveal that a high promotion focus compensates for entrepreneurs' low levels of creative and entrepreneurial self-efficacy in opportunity recognition. Our study extends extant cognitive theories of opportunity recognition. Highlights ► We examine how two self-regulatory mechanisms jointly influence opportunity recognition. ► A promotion focus (focus on gains vs. losses) enhances opportunity recognition. ► Adopting such a focus also compensates for a lack of entrepreneurs' self-efficacy.

Entrepreneurship scholars generally agree that there are individual differences in opportunity recognition (e.g., Eckhardt and Shane, 2003, Gaglio and Katz, 2001, Gartner and Shaver, 2004 and Sarasvathy, 2004). The extant theory on opportunity recognition suggests that these differences are the result of a multitude of cognitive and other psychological processes that enterprising individuals employ in the entrepreneurial process (Baron, 2000, Baron, 2006, Busenitz and Barney, 1997, Eckhardt and Shane, 2003, Krueger, 1993, Shane, 2000, Shane, 2003 and Venkatamaran, 1997). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in the past years many entrepreneurship scholars have adopted a cognitive perspective (Gregoire et al., 2010b, Mitchell et al., 2002 and Mitchell et al., 2007) in investigating the underlying dynamics of how and why some people and not others are able to discover and exploit particular entrepreneurial opportunities (e.g., Baron, 1998, Gaglio, 2004, Gaglio and Katz, 2001 and Gregoire et al., 2010a). A starting point of many investigations is the intuitively appealing argument that entrepreneurs' interpretations of market environments differ from those of other economic agents (Alvarez and Busenitz, 2001 and Shaver and Scott, 1991). However, only in recent years have scholars started to explicitly investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms of how opportunities are recognized ( Baron, 2006 and Mitchell et al., 2007). Along these lines, there is an increasing number of research suggesting that entrepreneurs' self-regulation strategies may play a decisive role in the process of opportunity recognition (e.g., Baron, 2002, Baron, 2004, Brockner et al., 2004, Bryant, 2007, Gibbs, 2009, Hmieleski and Baron, 2008a, McMullen and Shepherd, 2002, Ozgen and Baron, 2007, Tang, 2009 and Wu et al., 2008). Two central theories of self-regulation are at the core of this research: regulatory focus theory (i.e., explicating the way individuals regulate their own behavior to reach certain goals; cf. Higgins, 1997) and self-efficacy theory (i.e., explaining the role of individuals' belief in their capability to exercise control over certain tasks; cf. Bandura, 1997). Whereas research on the influence of regulatory focus on opportunity exploitation is very scarce (e.g., Hmieleski and Baron, 2008a), there has been some empirical evidence on the role of self-efficacy in opportunity recognition and exploitation in the past few years (e.g., Gibbs, 2009 and Ozgen and Baron, 2007). However, our extant knowledge on both mechanisms' role in opportunity recognition has remained fragmented and inconclusive. First, the as yet only study investigating the influence of regulatory focus on new venture performance (Hmieleski and Baron, 2008a) focuses on the late stage of opportunity exploitation (i.e., a stage when an opportunity has already been recognized and is being exploited) rather than the stage of opportunity recognition (i.e., the stage when a potentially successful business idea is identified or created rather than already exploited; see Shane and Venkatamaran, 2000). Second, most work on the role of self-efficacy in opportunity recognition is conceptual in nature (see Gibbs, 2009), whereas the few empirical studies examine self-reported opportunity recognition (e.g., Ozgen and Baron, 2007) or self-reported opportunity recognition perceptions and beliefs rather than investigating opportunity recognition per se (e.g., Gibbs, 2009). Hence, these studies have been criticized to suffer from biased relationships due to common source variance and/or self-report bias (e.g., social desirability, positive/negative affectivity, acquiescence, retrospective and recall bias; see Gregoire et al., 2010c and Podsakoff et al., 2003). Third, despite few promising exploratory studies and recent calls to integrate both theories of self-regulation (e.g., Bryant, 2007), there is as yet no systematic empirical research investigating both mechanisms' roles in opportunity recognition. Thus, despite existing evidence that both are relevant, it has remained unclear how these two central self-regulatory mechanisms interact in promoting opportunity recognition. The present study addresses these limitations in the existing opportunity recognition literature. Our study makes the following important contributions. First, complementing previous research investigating the role of regulatory focus in the stage of new ventures' opportunity exploitation (Hmieleski and Baron, 2008a), we examine regulatory focus' impact on opportunity recognition in the pre-exploitation phase as called for by previous research (e.g., Brockner et al., 2004). Second, we contribute to the few existing studies on self-efficacy and opportunity recognition by applying a research design which overcomes previous methodological limitations (i.e., collecting data from multiple sources and using other-ratings of opportunity recognition rather than relying on self-report data). Third, integrating the two central theories of self-regulation used in previous entrepreneurship research – regulatory focus theory and self-efficacy theory – we argue and demonstrate that promotion focus and self-efficacy interact in a compensatory manner in influencing opportunity recognition. The remainder of this article is structured as follows. The following section briefly outlines the basic assumptions of regulatory focus theory and discusses the role the two regulatory foci play in entrepreneurial behavior in general and opportunity recognition in particular. Subsequently, we discuss the existing literature linking self-efficacy and opportunity recognition. We then integrate both theories and hypothesize on their interaction. After describing our methods, we present the study's empirical results. Finally, we discuss central implications of our findings for opportunity recognition theory, future research, and entrepreneurship education.

In conclusion, our study offers support for the notion that promotion focus has a positive influence on opportunity recognition. Focusing on goals and gains (vs. on restrictions and losses) leads to a higher likelihood of identifying opportunities. Moreover, we have demonstrated that two central self-regulatory mechanisms interact in a compensatory fashion such that individuals with low levels of creative and entrepreneurial self-efficacy do indeed benefit from adopting a promotion focus. We hope that our findings will encourage further, more fine-grained research efforts that target the cognitive processes involved in opportunity recognition. We believe that the study of regulatory focus promises important insights into the nature of entrepreneurial cognition and our understanding of the opportunity recognition process.