Motivations and Aspirations of Business Founders

Abstract

R.T. Hamilton is currently senior lecture and director of the MBA programme at the university of Cantebury, christchurch, New Zeland, and was previously at the London Business school and stirling university, in the UK. The main purpose of theis paper is to present a retrospectiv analysis which assesss the extent to which the characteristics of business founders are stable over timie. it finds that ther is an apparent stability over time but theevidence does show that with unemployment rising over time tis is beoming a push factor in an increasing propertion of new business formatlitions. on firm size the evidence is that business which have been pushed into existence and survived are not significantly different from those which are not subject to this particular pressure.