Bound for entrepreneurship? A career-theoretical perspective on entrepreneurial intentions

Research on entrepreneurial intentions, as an important step in the decision to undertake an entrepreneurial career, tends to position career actors as choosing entrepreneurship as a first career decision. However, most scholars agree that entrepreneurs emerge from existing organizations, not from college dorm rooms. Therefore, individuals choosing to enter entrepreneurship typically do so after having made previous career decisions to work in paid-employment careers. Despite the usefulness of the accumulated knowledge of individual and contextual antecedents to entrepreneurial intentions, few studies offer a careers theory-based explanation for why some people who have previously decided to pursue paid-employment careers view moves to entrepreneurial careers as feasible and desirable as proposed by entrepreneurial intentions-based models. In this paper, we extend boundaryless and protean career orientations, established theoretical career concepts, to explain the entrepreneurial intentions of actors already working in wage-employment careers. Our theoretical integration sheds new light on entrepreneurial intentions research and fills important gaps in our understanding of the mindsets of those inclined towards entrepreneurial careers.