The influence of self-efficacy on the development of entrepreneurial intentions and actions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

The contextual factors of entrepreneurship consist of social, political, and economic vari-ables such as displacement, changes in markets, and government deregulation (Bird, 1988). Entrepreneurial intentions are further structured by both rational/analytic thinking (goal-directed behavior) and intuitive/holistic thinking (vision). These thought processes underlie the creation of formal business plans, opportunity analysis, and other goal-directed behav-ior. This paper further develops Bird's model of entrepreneurial intentionality by suggesting that individual self-efficacy, which has been defined as a person's belief in his or her capa-bility to perform a task, influences the development of both entrepreneurial intentions and actions or behaviors. E,mtrepreneurship has been defined as "the creation of new enterprise " (Low & MacMillan, 1988, p. 141). This definition reflects a growing awareness that entrepre-neurship is a "processof becoming rather than a state of being " (Bygrave, 1989, p. 21). Previous research in entrepreneurship has often focused on identifying the personal characteristics or traits that distinguish entrepreneurs from the general population rather than adopting a process-oriented approach (Low & MacMillan, 1988). For example, such factors as need for achievement (McClelland, 1961), locus of control (Brockhaus, 1982), risk-taking propensity (Brockhaus, 1980), and tolerance of ambiguity (Schere, 1982) have been identified and examined as possible traits associated with entrepreneur-ial behavior. The underlying assumption of these investigations has been that there are unique characteristics of entrepreneurs that may be isolated and identified (Romanelli, 1989). However, most of these factors have not been found to be unique to entrepre-neurs, but rather they are common to many successful individuals, including manager