Essays on current topics in employee entrepreneurial behaviors and attitudes
A firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is its propensity to act proactively, innovate, take risks, and engage in competitive and autonomous behaviors. Prior research shows that EO is an im-portant factor for new ventures to overcome barriers to survival and fostering growth, measured by annual sales and employment growth rates. In particular, individual-level EO (IEO) is an important driver of a firm’s EO. The firm’s ability to exploit opportunities appearing in the mar-ket and to achieve superior performance depends on the employees’ skills and experiences to act and think entrepreneurially. The main objective of this dissertation is to investigate how and when employees engage in entrepreneurial behaviors at work. Building on three essays, this dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach to employee entrepreneurial behaviors in new ventures, encompassing both entrepreneurship and gamification research. The first main contri-bution proposed in this field is a more nuanced understanding of how employee entrepreneurial behaviors help young firms cope with growth-related, organization-transforming challenges (i.e., changes in organizational culture that accompany growth, the introduction of hierarchical structures, and the formalization of processes). When new ventures grow, employees’ IEO tends to manifest in introducing technological innovations and business improvements rather than in actions related to risk-taking. Second, this dissertation reveals the relevance of self-efficacy for entrepreneurial behaviors and explores how gamification can enhance employee entrepreneurial behaviors in new ventures. Based on these findings, this dissertation contributes to EO research by highlighting the role of IEO as a building block for EO pervasiveness. This research further develops our knowledge on the use of gamification in new ventures. This cu-mulative dissertation is structured as follows. Part A is an introduction to the study of entrepre-neurial behaviors. Part B contains the three essays.
Entrepreneurial behaviors, gamification, entrepreneurial orientation, start-up, new venture, start-up growth
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