Necessity Entrepreneurship: Individual, Environmental and Public Policy-Related Factors Influencing the Process of Opportunity Exploitation under Unfavorable Circumstances

The topic of entrepreneurship, i.e. the process surrounding the identification and exploitation of opportunities by an individual, has received a great amount of interest from scholars throughout the last decades. Theoretical lenses from disciplines as varied as psychology, economics, strategy and sociology have been successfully employed in entrepreneurship research, greatly increasing our understanding particularly of high-growth businesses funded by venture capital. Yet, surprisingly little is know about the large number of individuals desiring to become self-employed facing less fortunate circumstances than the glamorous fast-growing enterprises dominating the public perception of entrepreneurial activity. This dissertation aims to shed light on three critical research questions surrounding entrepreneurship occurring in unfavorable circumstances, employing individual, environmental, as well as public-policy perspectives. The first article reviews and reconceptualizes necessity entrepreneurship, suggesting a clear definition of the phenomenon and proposing to differentiate between an absolute versus a relative form of necessity. This perspective allows resolving several inconsistencies in the prior literature and promises a better understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of firm creation under unfavorable circumstances. While absolute necessity is evoked predominantly by certain environmental parameters, relative necessity results from negative situational influences. It is suggested that the entrepreneurial process differs for individuals driven by necessity compared to their non-necessity driven counterparts, as well as between necessity in its absoluteand its relative form. The second research study focuses on a previously neglected outcome measure of entrepreneurship, the phenomenon of work satisfaction for the self-employed. Self-employment has repeatedly been associated with high rates of work satisfaction in prior studies. Although different explanations for this phenomenon have been offered, the drivers of work satisfaction in entrepreneurship are still largely unknown to date. This study reveals that the individual’s psychological makeup as well as the social support that the founder receives when starting his/her company are significant