Individual-Level Entrepreneurial Behaviors: Essays on Employees’ Entrepreneurial Behavior, Entrepreneurial Entry and Women’s Entrepreneurial Intentions

Entrepreneurship is frequently described as the pursuit and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities, but individual-level entrepreneurial behaviors can take on many forms. The present dissertation explores individual-level entrepreneurial behaviors both within companies and of independent entrepreneurs. Individual-level entrepreneurial behaviors are important for a country’s growth and development directly by creating new businesses and indirectly, as employees engaging in entrepreneurial behaviors can help their companies to gain a competitive edge over their competitors. However, many factors keep individuals from engaging in entrepreneurial behaviors and influence their entrepreneurial decision-making, such as uncertainty, stress and lack of confidence in their own abilities. In order to increase individual-level entrepreneurship, we need to understand what motivates individuals in different situations to engage in entrepreneurial behaviors and how various cognitive processes and determinants shape their decision-making and intention formation. The present dissertation thus explores three distinct research areas: (1) employees’ entrepreneurship within companies, (2) individuals starting their own companies while being employed and (3) the particularities of female entrepreneurship. In doing so, this dissertation contributes to a more nuanced understanding of cognitive processes in entrepreneurship in general, and more specifically, to research on antecedents of entrepreneurial behavior within organizations, to the understanding of the concept of hybrid entrepreneurship, and to female entrepreneurship research and how to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship