Self-Employment as a Career Choice: Attitudes, Entrepreneurial Intentions, and Utility Maximization
- 1 April 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
- Vol. 26 (3), 81-90
- https://doi.org/10.1177/104225870202600305
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between career choice and people's attitudes toward income, independence, risk, and work effort. Entrepreneurs are often described in terms of the strength or weakness of their attitudes in these dimensions. Conjoint analysis was used to determine the significance and nature of these attitudes in choosing one Job over another. We also investigated the effect these attitudes have on the intention to start one's own business. Significant relationships were found between the utility expected from a job and the independence, risk, and income it offered. Similarly, the strength of intention to become self-employed was significantly related to the respondents' tolerance for risk and their preference for independence.Keywords
This publication has 16 references indexed in Scilit:
- Entrepreneurship as a utility maximizing responseJournal of Business Venturing, 2000
- What Marshall Didn't Know: On the Twentieth Century's Contributions to Economics*The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000
- A lack of insight: do venture capitalists really understand their own decision process?Journal of Business Venturing, 1998
- Heterogeneous ability, career choice and firm sizeSmall Business Economics, 1993
- Hybrid conjoint analysis: An estimation probe in new venture decisionsJournal of Business Venturing, 1992
- Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and DestructiveJournal of Political Economy, 1990
- A profile of new venture success and failure in an emerging industryJournal of Business Venturing, 1990
- The Career Dynamics of Self-EmploymentAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1987
- An empirical analysis of self‐employment in the U.K.Journal of Applied Econometrics, 1986
- New Directions in the Economic Theory of AgencyCanadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, 1984