اهداف کارآفرینی : تاثیر عوامل سازمانی و فردی

An individual's intent to pursue an entrepreneurial career can result from the work environment and from personal factors. Drawing on the entrepreneurial intentions and the person–environment (P–E) fit literatures, and applying a multilevel perspective, we examine why individuals intend to leave their jobs to start business ventures. Findings, using a sample of 4192 IT professionals in Singapore, suggest that work environments with an unfavorable innovation climate and/or lack of technical excellence incentives influence entrepreneurial intentions, through low job satisfaction. Moderating effects suggest that an individual's innovation orientation strengthens the work-environment to job-satisfaction relationship; self-efficacy strengthens the job-satisfaction to entrepreneurial intentions relationship.

The presence of technology-based firms has long been associated with a nation's economic growth and prosperity (Rothwell and Zegveld, 1982). IT professionals who leave their organizations to start businesses are a key source of these firms (Roberts, 1991 and Romanelli and Schoonhoven, 2001). This paper addresses the reasons IT professionals leave their jobs to start business ventures. We focus on entrepreneurial intentions as crucial antecedents of that purposive behavior (Ajzen, 1987, Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980 and Krueger et al., 2000). Understanding the factors influencing entrepreneurial intentions is, thus, a central part of studying the process of venture creation. The research on entrepreneurial intentions examines the main factors: desirability (perceptions of the personal appeal of starting a business) and feasibility (degree to which one feels capable of doing so) (Krueger et al., 2000 and Shapero and Sokol, 1982). Relative to the desirability factor, we examine individual-level factors of innovation orientation, job satisfaction, and self-efficacy together with organizational-level factors of innovative climate and technical excellence incentives. We theorize that IT professionals are driven into entrepreneurship by low job satisfaction (Brockhaus, 1980, Cromie and Hayes, 1991 and Watson et al., 1998) caused by a mismatch between their innovation orientation and characteristics of the organizations for which they work (innovation climate and technical excellence incentives). We extend the entrepreneurial intentions literature by introducing a multilevel perspective of individual and organizational factors influencing business creation intentions. Proponents of multilevel research (Hitt et al., 2007 and Ireland and Webb, 2007), particularly in entrepreneurial research (Davidsson and Wiklund, 2001), explain that to understand entrepreneurial intentions, researchers must account for both organizational and individual factors. While studies indicate that organizational factors influence the job satisfaction of technical employees (Mak and Sockel, 1999 and Sankar et al., 1991), these studies offer little on why these factors affect some individuals more than others. We provide a better understanding by introducing the single characteristic, innovation orientation, as a moderating factor. We theorize that the higher the employee's desire for innovation, the stronger the influence of restrictive innovative climate/poor technical excellence incentives on job satisfaction. Regarding the feasibility factor, we advance entrepreneurial intentions research by looking beyond the main effects of self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions (Krueger et al., 2000 and Shapero and Sokol, 1982). We theorize that self-efficacy strengthens the relationship between low job satisfaction and entrepreneurial intentions. High self-efficacy employees can be more confident about starting successful businesses; these employees are, therefore, more apt to leave their companies to start businesses if they experience low job satisfaction. Taken as a whole, we include individual- and organizational-level influences on entrepreneurial intentions, as well as the moderating effects of innovation orientation and self-efficacy on these relationships. Fig. 1 summarizes our conceptual model. In the next section, we review the entrepreneurial intentions literature. We then use the person–environment (P–E) fit theory to hypothesize the interactive effects of individual innovation orientation and organizational innovation climate/technical excellence incentives on job satisfaction. We explain the relationship between low job satisfaction and self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions. We present the methods and the results. Finally, we discuss the implications of the findings for organizational leaders and policy makers.

Results of this study indicate relationships among a set of individual- and organizational-level factors contributing to IT professionals' entrepreneurial intentions. Consistent with the P–E fit arguments, we found support for Hypotheses 1a and 1b; that is, individual differences, specifically innovation orientation, moderate the relationship between poor organizational conditions and job satisfaction. Specifically, the higher the employee's innovative orientation, the stronger the negative effects of restrictive innovative climate/poor technical excellence incentives on job satisfaction. The support we found for Hypotheses 2a and 2b suggests that the effects of a misfit between individual orientation and organizational conditions are indirectly linked to entrepreneurial intentions through low job satisfaction. Such findings align with the desirability arguments in the entrepreneurial intentions literature that intra- and extra-personal factors interact to influence the personal attractiveness (i.e., the level of job satisfaction in this paper) of starting a business. Our findings supporting Hypothesis 3 indicate that self-efficacy not only influences perceived feasibility, as the entrepreneurial intentions literature suggests, but it can also moderate the relationship between perceived desirability and entrepreneurial intentions. Individuals' intentions to start their own businesses are likely to be boosted by the level of confidence they have in their own competencies when they experience low job satisfaction due to a mismatch between individual orientations and organizational environment. 6.1. Implications for research This study extends the entrepreneurial intentions literature by introducing a multilevel perspective in understanding the factors contributing to the intent to start a business. Individual or organizational variables alone do not sufficiently explain the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial intentions (c.f. Davidsson and Wiklund, 2001). Rather, the interaction between individual and organizational factors can provide better insights into the firm emergence process. Furthermore, our study introduces the P–E fit perspective into the study of entrepreneurship. While the usefulness of the P–E fit theory in explaining entrepreneurial behavior is not entirely new (Brigham et al., 2007 and Leung et al., 2006), the nature of the relationship between individual and organizational factors—and how this triggers entrepreneurial intentions—is still relatively unknown. Our findings indicate that low job satisfaction is caused, in part, by the mismatch between the individual's innovation orientation and the organization's innovative climate/excellence incentives. Low job satisfaction, in turn, may lead to entrepreneurial intentions, particularly among high self-efficacy individuals. These findings demonstrate the mediating role of job satisfaction in translating the effects of a restrictive innovative climate/and or poor excellence incentives on individuals with high innovation orientation into entrepreneurial intentions. The findings build on and extend the desirability arguments in the entrepreneurial intentions literature by taking into account the roles of the individual and the environment in entrepreneurial intentions. Previous research indicates the direct influences of negative situational factors on entrepreneurial intentions (Shapero and Sokol, 1982). We expected low job satisfaction to partially mediate the relationship between person–organization misfit and entrepreneurial intentions. However, the results revealed that the effects of mismatch between an individual's innovation orientation and organizational innovative climate/excellence incentives on entrepreneurial intentions were fully mediated by low job satisfaction. For scholars, this implies that among the displacement factors, low job satisfaction is a critical conceptual link to entrepreneurial intentions. To date, models of entrepreneurial intentions have primarily focused on the main effects of self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions (Krueger et al., 2000). We extend these models and theorize that, in addition to its primary effects, self-efficacy also moderates the intention to start a business venture. Our work contributes to the long-standing interest in the effects of self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions. Importantly, we found that, while individuals can be driven into entrepreneurship by negative situational factors such as low job satisfaction (Brockhaus, 1980), the strength of this relationship is stronger when self-efficacy is high. Furthermore, our study builds on Shapero and Sokol's (1982) intentions model. Rather than considering perceived feasibility (i.e., self-efficacy) and perceived desirability (i.e., low job satisfaction) as independent paths leading to entrepreneurial intentions, our study examines the interaction between the factors along those paths. Results from this study suggest that low job satisfaction alone is inadequate in explaining entrepreneurial intentions. This probably explains why empirical evidence on the impact of low job satisfaction on entrepreneurial intentions has been mixed (Schjoedt and Shaver, 2007). Confidence in job competency provides the additional motivation necessary for employees who experience poor job satisfaction to consider entrepreneurship as an alternative career choice. Theoretically, our study offers a new perspective in the entrepreneurial intentions literature by demonstrating how the interactive effects of desirability and feasibility influence entrepreneurial intentions. Taken as a whole, the findings are consistent with Baron's (2007) assertion that individual-level factors predict the processes of new venture development. More critically, our findings support arguments from Hmieleski and Baron (2009) and Phan et al. (2009) that more multi-level research is needed in the field of entrepreneurship research. 6.2. Implications for practice We investigated factors influencing IT professionals' intent to leave their jobs and start new ventures. Previous studies offer little information on which individuals, more so than others, are affected by poor organizational conditions. We found that employees with stronger innovation desires are more likely to experience low job satisfaction when faced with restrictive innovative climates and/or poor technical excellence incentives. This finding has implications for organizational leaders, particularly of technology-driven businesses. As the congruence between individual needs and organizational characteristics may predict job satisfaction, innovatively oriented organizations should recruit individuals with matching needs in their innovation orientation. Having employees with characteristics that fit their organizations is crucial because this synergy can significantly impact job satisfaction levels. Low job satisfaction, in turn, is a central factor that translates misfit between individual characteristics and poor organizational conditions into an employee's desire to leave the organization. Organizations valuing innovation can put structures and incentives in place to cultivate an innovative climate to help prevent “brain drain” and the consequences of having employees leave to set up new, potentially competitive ventures. Alternatively, organization leaders can exploit the misfit between individual needs and organizational characteristics by providing spin-off opportunities to tap into employees' desires for innovation. Employees who are not satisfied with their organizational practices can be allowed to start spinoffs, and the parent organizations can support them with financial and human resources. The moderating role of self-efficacy in the entrepreneurship equation has implications for policymakers in facilitating venture creation. Policymakers can target employees dissatisfied with their jobs for educational and training programs to raise their self-efficacy levels. Entrepreneurial education programs can expose employees to the business environment, market opportunities, and real-life entrepreneurship situations. This may strengthen their confidence in pursuing entrepreneurship as an alternative career choice. 6.3. Limitations and future research The findings of this study offer a number of opportunities for future research to advance our knowledge of the individual and organizational factors that predict IT professionals' intentions to start businesses. The present results showed that low job satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between person–organization misfit and entrepreneurial intentions. The effect of job satisfaction was the only mediator of the work environment–entrepreneurial intentions relationship considered in our study. Other potential mediators may include, for example, work motivation (Shane et al., 2003) and organizational commitment (Kickul and Zaper, 2000). In this study, we focus on the mediating role of job satisfaction because of its historical association with entrepreneurial intentions (Brockhaus, 1980). Future research can consider other mediators influencing the work-environment–entrepreneurial intentions relationship to gain a more comprehensive understanding of why individuals leave their jobs to start business ventures. Future research should consider different aspects of job satisfaction (e.g., satisfaction with the work itself, remuneration, supervision, and co-workers) and how these influence entrepreneurial intentions. To broaden our understanding of the interactional effects between desirability perceptions and feasibility perceptions on entrepreneurial intentions, future studies should also look beyond self-efficacy to consider other individual factors, such as risk-taking propensity, locus of control, and degree of autonomy. Additionally, further research of professions other than the IT sector is needed to validate the generalizability of our study's findings. Moreover, future studies could validate the perceptual measures with objective proxies. For example, “incentives for technical excellence” could be correlated with proxy measures such as frequency of technical training, types and quantity of rewards for technical excellence, and organizational budget for technical training and education. It may also be useful to conduct longitudinal studies that track respondents as they follow through their entrepreneurial intentions to actually start a business. To conclude, findings from our study point to the need for future research to account for multilevel factors, and to discover their direct, indirect, and moderating effects, thereby enhancing our understanding of what leads individuals to an entrepreneurial career.