TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - The Influence of Start-up Motivation on Entrepreneurial Performance T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis, we examine a broad range of business outcomes including survival and income, as well as job creation, expansion and innovation activities for up to 40 months after business formation. Using self-determination theory as conceptual background, we aggregate the start-up motives into a continuous motivational index. We show – based on a unique dataset of German start-ups from unemployment and non-unemployment – that the later business performance is better, the higher they score on this index. Effects are particularly strong for growth oriented outcomes like innovation and expansion activities. In a next step, we examine three underlying motivational categories that we term opportunity, career ambition, and necessity. We show that individuals driven by opportunity motives perform better in terms of innovation and business expansion activities, while career ambition is positively associated with survival, income, and the probability of hiring employees. All effects are robust to the inclusion of a large battery of covariates that are proven to be important determinants of entrepreneurial performance. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 59 KW - Entrepreneurship KW - Push and Pull Theories KW - Start-up Motivation KW - Survival KW - Job Creation KW - Firm Growth KW - Innovation Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-571152 SN - 2628-653X IS - 59 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - The influence of start-up motivation on entrepreneurial performance JF - Small business economics N2 - Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis, we examine a broad range of business outcomes including survival and income, as well as job creation, and expansion and innovation activities for up to 40 months after business formation. Using the self-determination theory as conceptual background, we aggregate the start-up motives into a continuous motivational index. We show – based on a unique dataset of German start-ups from unemployment and non-unemployment – that the later business performance is better, the higher they score on this index. Effects are particularly strong for growth-oriented outcomes like innovation and expansion activities. In a next step, we examine three underlying motivational categories that we term opportunity, career ambition, and necessity. We show that individuals driven by opportunity motives perform better in terms of innovation and business expansion activities, while career ambition is positively associated with survival, income, and the probability of hiring employees. All effects are robust to the inclusion of a large battery of covariates that are proven to be important determinants of entrepreneurial performance. KW - entrepreneurship KW - push and pull theories KW - start-up motivation KW - survival KW - job creation KW - firm growth KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00722-6 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 VL - 61 SP - 869 EP - 889 PB - Springer Science+Business Media CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Rodríguez, Daniel A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - Self-efficacy and entrepreneurial performance of start-ups JF - Small business economics N2 - Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and investigate, based on a representative sample of 1,405 German business founders, how the personality characteristic of generalized self-efficacy influences start-up performance as measured by a broad set of business outcomes up to 19 months after business creation. Outcomes include start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, as well as growth-oriented outcomes such as job creation and innovation. We find statistically significant and economically important positive effects of high scores of self-efficacy on start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, which become even stronger when focusing on the growth-oriented outcome of innovation. Furthermore, we observe that generalized self-efficacy is similarly distributed between female and male business founders, with effects being partly stronger for female entrepreneurs. Our findings are important for policy instruments that are meant to support firm growth by facilitating the design of more target-oriented offers for training, coaching, and entrepreneurial incubators. KW - entrepreneurship KW - firm performance KW - general self-efficacy KW - survival KW - job creation KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00728-0 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 PB - Springer Science CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Rodriguez, Daniel A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Performance of Start-Ups T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and investigate, based on a representative sample of 1,405 German business founders, how the personality characteristic of generalized self-efficacy influences start-up performance as measured by a broad set of business outcomes up to 19 months after business creation. Outcomes include start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, as well as growth-oriented outcomes such as job creation and innovation. We find statistically significant and economically important positive effects of high scores of self-efficacy on start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, which become even stronger when focusing on the growth-oriented outcome of innovation. Furthermore, we observe that generalized self-efficacy is similarly distributed between female and male business founders, with effects being partly stronger for female entrepreneurs. Our findings are important for policy instruments that are meant to support firm growth by facilitating the design of more target-oriented offers for training, coaching, and entrepreneurial incubators. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 61 KW - entrepreneurship KW - firm performance KW - general self-efficacy KW - survival KW - job creation KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-572527 SN - 2628-653X IS - 61 ER -