Entrepreneurial motivation: A review of the literature and an agenda for future research

• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Author: Dean A. Shepherd,Anthony C. Klotz,Charles Y. Murnieks
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2374
• Date: 01 February 2020

Entrepreneurial motivation: A review of the literature and an

agenda for future research

Charles Y. Murnieks

1

|Anthony C. Klotz

1

|Dean A. Shepherd

2

1

College of Business Oregon State University,

Corvallis, Oregon

2

Mendoza College of BusinessNotre Dame

University, Notre Dame, Indiana

Correspondence

Charles Y. Murnieks, Oregon State University,

College of Business, 443 Austin Hall, Corvallis

OR 97331.

Email: charles.murnieks@oregonstate.edu

Summary

Given the substantial impact that new ventures have on the global economy, under-

standing what motivates entrepreneurs is of both practical and theoretical

importance. Although research on the nature, causes, and consequences of entrepre-

neurial motivation has grown rapidly, it has evolved in distinct theoretical silos that

tend to isolate motives based on the phase of business development (e.g., initiation,

growth, and exit) rather than acknowledge that individuals often traverse all these

phases and experience multiple types of motivation throughout their entrepreneurial

journey. To advance the study of motivation in the fields of entrepreneurship and

organizational behavior and provide a means through which these advancements

can contribute to our understanding of how motivation drives the start‐up, growth,

and exiting of businesses, we organize and review the extant literature on entrepre-

neurial motives based on the phases of the new venture process. In doing so, this arti-

cle develops a roadmap of the current state of entrepreneurial motivation research

and its nomological network and provides suggestions to guide future research in

extending our understanding of motivation in the entrepreneurship domain as well

as in traditional organizational settings.

KEYWORDS

entrepreneurial motivation, entrepreneurial passion, exit, growth, initiation

1|INTRODUCTION

Motivation—the set of energetic forces that originate within as well as

beyond individuals to initiate behavior and determine its form, direc-

tion, intensity, and duration (Mitchell & Daniels, 2003; Pinder, 1998)

—has been a core topic in psychological science and organizational

behavior (OB) for over a century (Kanfer, Frese, & Johnson, 2017;

Mowrer, 1952). During this time, a number of subdomains within the

literature have emerged based on specific theories of motivation and

upon how motivation operates in specific contexts. One particularly

active subdomain focuses on understanding what motivates entrepre-

neurs to start, grow, and exit their ventures. This research, which

examines motivation in the distinct and often extreme entrepreneurial

context, has not only advanced our understanding of what motivates

entrepreneurs but has also produced insights into the dynamics of

motivation in organizations more generally. However, as the study of

entrepreneurial motivation has proceeded, it has done so in a some-

what unorganized manner, leaving us with an incoherent “big picture”

of the role of motivation in the entrepreneurial process.

Studies of entrepreneurial motivation tend to focus on single

phases of the business development process, namely venture initia-

tion, growth, or exit. This approach has produced many insights into

why entrepreneurs act the way they do in each of these individual

phases. However, to borrow from Ployhart (2008, p. 54), “Frankly,

for most real‐world problems, who cares about motivation at a single

point in time?”Ployhart's sentiment may be especially true for entre-

preneurs as their motives can change between different phases of

their endeavors. Indeed, entrepreneurs like Paul Allen (Microsoft)

and Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia) experienced significant shifts in their

motives over the course of founding and growing their organizations

Received: 14 November 2017 Revised: 15 April 2019 Accepted: 19 April 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2374

J Organ Behav. 2020;41:115–143. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 115

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT

ISSUE

(Chouinard, 2005; Rich, 2003). Although studies based on different

phases explain unique aspects of entrepreneurial actions, focusing

on one stage or another has left the field without a holistic framework

for understanding how various motives influence the entrepreneurial

process. Moreover, although scholars acknowledge that management

research needs to consider time explicitly as a pertinent variable

(Shipp & Cole, 2015), when it is addressed, researchers tend to

dedicate only a few paragraphs to motivation and temporal issues

(Grant & Shin, 2012). Given the frequent and unpredictable change

inherent in entrepreneurial environments, this context provides an

ideal setting in which to examine changes in motivation over time.

Also, studies of entrepreneurial motivation tend to emphasize either

the role of endogenous factors like self‐regulatory or affective con-

structs (e.g., identity congruence and entrepreneurial passion) or the

influence of exogenous elements like goals or financial rewards as

drivers of entrepreneurial behavior (Shane, Locke, & Collins, 2003).

In other words, this research concentrates on either intrinsic or extrin-

sic motivators. On the one hand, considering intrinsic motives is novel

in light of the traditional views of economists who focus on financial

drivers of entrepreneurial action (e.g., Hebert & Link, 1988;

Schumpeter, 1934). On the other hand, independently investigating

intrinsic or extrinsic motivation may be misleading given research

suggesting that both types of motives, and many others, drive

entrepreneurial behavior; indeed, the two can interact in powerful

ways (e.g., Fauchart & Gruber, 2011; Powell & Baker, 2014).

Moreover, despite evidence that extrinsic rewards can attenuate

(Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999) and facilitate (Cerasoli, Nicklin, &

Ford, 2014) intrinsic motivation, these contingent relationships have

been insufficiently explored in the context of founding, growing, and

exiting organizations.

Finally, investigating motivation in the entrepreneurial context pro-

vides the opportunity to take stock of what we currently understand,

question and extend theoretical boundaries, and highlight the need for

(and inform the formation of) new theories of motivation. These

research opportunities arise in the entrepreneurial context given its

extreme nature; it is extreme in terms of its high uncertainty

(McMullen & Shepherd, 2006), intense time pressure (Baron, 1998),

challenges associated with assembling resources (Baum & Locke,

2004; Delmar & Wiklund, 2008), and elevated levels of organizational

termination (DeTienne, McKelvie, & Chandler, 2015; Ucbasaran,

Westhead, Wright, & Flores, 2010). In new ventures, relationships

between motivation and other affective, cognitive, and behavioral

constructs are brought into sharper focus by these extreme condi-

tions. Indeed, entrepreneurs represent a unique category of working

individuals; they make significant financial and psychological invest-

ments in their organizations relative to other employees. Thus, in the

entrepreneurial context, we can explore theoretical boundaries that

are obscured by perceptions of predictability and organizational stabil-

ity more prevalent in the less entrepreneurial contexts of established,

bureaucratic organizations.

In conducting a systematic review of the entrepreneurial motiva-

tion literature, we contribute to the study of motivation in the field

of entrepreneurship and to the study of leader and employee

motivation in the field of OB. Regarding the field of entrepreneurship,

this review will (a) provide the field with a nomological network of the

causes, types, consequences, mechanisms, and moderators associated

with entrepreneurial motivation; (b) build a framework to bridge the

study of entrepreneurial motivation across the three phases of

the new venture process; (c) identify understudied motives, the direct

and moderating effects of which have the potential to explain mean-

ingful variance in new venture outcomes; and (d) discuss methodolog-

ical advances in other fields that may be useful to the study of

entrepreneurial motivation. Regarding the field of OB, this review will

(a) summarize what we have learned from studying motivation in the

extreme context of entrepreneurship; (b) highlight aspects of entre-

preneurial motivation that have the potential to advance our under-

standing of employee motivation more generally (e.g., passion); and

(c) provide a template for better understanding leader, team, and

employee motivation across career transitions and organizational

changes by reviewing entrepreneurial motivation research throughout

the new venture process.

2|OVERVIEW OF THE REVIEW

Although some scholars highlight the need to examine certain areas of

the entrepreneurial motivation literature more deeply (e.g., Carsrud &

Brannback, 2011; Shane et al., 2003), no comprehensive review of the

entrepreneurial motivation literature exists. We followed the proce-

dures outlined by Shepherd, Williams, and Patzelt (2015) and

Hodgkinson and Ford (2014), to perform a systematic search for

articles to review. We conducted keyword searches in the Web of

Science and Business Source Premier databases across prominent

OB journals (Journal of Organizational Behavior,Journal of Applied

Psychology,Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,

and Personnel Psychology), management journals (Academy of Manage-

ment Journal,Academy of Management Review,Administrative Science

Quarterly,Journal of Management,Journal of Management Studies,

Management Science,Organization Science, and Strategic Management

Journal), and entrepreneurship journals (Entrepreneurship Theory and

Practice,Journal of Business Venturing,Journal of Small Business

Management, Small Business Economics, and Strategic Entrepreneurship

Journal). Following directly from our definition of motivation, we

searched titles, keywords, and abstracts for articles containing any of

the words “entrepreneur”(entrepreneur*), “founder”(founder*), or

“opportunity”(opportunit*) and any of the words “motivation”

(motiv*), “energy”(energ*), or “initiate”(initiat*). This search generated

a list of 520 articles, which we refined by excluding articles that

did not investigate entrepreneurial motivation or when motivation

was not central to the study. In total, we excluded 449 articles. As

shown in Table 1, we categorized the remaining 71 articles by venture

phase and motivation type and summarized the findings related in

each study.

The field of entrepreneurship examines how individuals discover,

evaluate, and exploit opportunities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000),

which covers the continuum from starting businesses to growing them

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