Meaningful venturing: Examining how entrepreneurs generate meaning in life

IF 8.9 1区 管理学 Q1 BUSINESS
Stella Seyb , Dean A. Shepherd , Sally Maitlis
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of meaningful venturing, which refers to entrepreneurial action that generates a sense of meaning in life for the entrepreneur. Although entrepreneurs have considerable freedom to create meaning in life through their venturing, they appear to struggle to do so. To address this tension, we theorize about how entrepreneurs can generate meaningful venturing and the tradeoffs that may arise during this process. The emerging framework of meaningful venturing offers four pathways based on differences in nascent entrepreneurs’ motivation and knowledge. For each pathway, we explain the tradeoffs that the focal entrepreneur is most likely to experience between the three facets of meaning in life. We then explain how each entrepreneur might resolve these tradeoffs to generate fully-meaningful venturing by taking specific schema-enhancing action that would be less effective for the other entrepreneurs. Overall, the framework contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing new insights into how meaningful venturing manifests, why entrepreneurs exploring the same opportunity may experience different tradeoffs, and how different entrepreneurs might generate fully-meaningful venturing. Additionally, we offer possibilities for future research at the intersection of meaningful venturing, and the literatures on entrepreneurial identity, well-being, and passion.

Executive summary

Because entrepreneurship provides founders with the freedom to enact their personal vision, entrepreneurs have high potential to generate meaning in life for themselves through their venturing. However, they often struggle to do so. We introduce the concept of meaningful venturing to encompass entrepreneurial action that generates a sense of meaning in life for the entrepreneur. To theorize about how entrepreneurs generate meaning in life, we integrate the psychology literature on meaning in life with the entrepreneurship literature, emphasizing how entrepreneurial action theory (McMullen and Shepherd, 2006) can be a helpful theoretical lens for examining meaningful venturing.
We develop a framework of meaningful venturing that contains four pathways based on nascent entrepreneurs' initial motivation and knowledge and the entrepreneurial action they engage in to reduce perceived uncertainty. Each pathway contains different tradeoffs between the three formative facets of meaning in life — a sense of purpose, mattering, and comprehension. These tradeoffs suggest unique ways for each entrepreneur to generate fully-meaningful venturing that would not be effective for the other entrepreneurs.
Overall, the framework of meaningful venturing contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing new insights into how meaningful venturing manifests, what causes it, and how it can progress for different entrepreneurs. To expand the theoretical relevance of the meaningful venturing concept, we discuss the potential to integrate meaningful venturing with established literatures in entrepreneurship on identity, well-being, and passion. Through this research agenda, we highlight how meaningful venturing could offer exciting possibilities for entrepreneurship scholarship.
有意义的冒险:考察企业家如何在生活中创造意义
摘要本文引入了“有意义创业”的概念,指的是让创业者产生人生意义感的创业行为。尽管企业家有相当大的自由,可以通过他们的冒险创造生活的意义,但他们似乎很难做到这一点。为了解决这种紧张关系,我们对企业家如何进行有意义的冒险以及在此过程中可能出现的权衡进行了理论化。新兴的有意义创业的框架基于新兴企业家的动机和知识差异提供了四条途径。对于每一条路径,我们解释了专注的企业家最有可能在生活意义的三个方面之间经历的权衡。然后,我们解释了每个企业家如何通过采取对其他企业家不太有效的特定模式增强行动来解决这些权衡,以产生完全有意义的冒险。总体而言,该框架对创业文献的贡献在于,它为以下问题提供了新的见解:有意义的创业是如何表现出来的,为什么探索相同机会的企业家可能会经历不同的权衡,以及不同的企业家如何可能产生完全有意义的创业。此外,我们还提供了未来研究的可能性,包括有意义的创业,以及关于创业认同、幸福感和激情的文献。因为创业为创始人提供了实现个人愿景的自由,企业家有很大的潜力通过他们的冒险为自己的生活创造意义。然而,他们往往很难做到这一点。我们引入了有意义的冒险的概念,以包含企业家的行动,产生一种意义在生活的企业家。为了理论化企业家如何在生活中产生意义,我们将关于生活意义的心理学文献与创业学文献结合起来,强调创业行动理论(McMullen and Shepherd, 2006)如何成为检验有意义创业的有益理论视角。我们开发了一个有意义的创业框架,该框架包含四种途径,基于新兴企业家的初始动机和知识,以及他们参与的创业行动,以减少感知的不确定性。每条道路都包含着人生意义形成的三个方面——目标感、重要性和理解力之间的不同权衡。这些权衡为每个企业家提供了独特的方式来产生对其他企业家无效的完全有意义的风险投资。总体而言,有意义的风险投资框架通过提供关于有意义的风险投资如何表现,导致它的原因以及它如何在不同的企业家中发展的新见解,为创业文献做出了贡献。为了拓展有意义的创业概念的理论相关性,我们讨论了将有意义的创业与创业中关于身份、幸福感和激情的现有文献整合的潜力。通过这一研究议程,我们强调了有意义的风险投资如何为创业奖学金提供令人兴奋的可能性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
16.70
自引率
6.90%
发文量
59
审稿时长
77 days
期刊介绍: The Journal of Business Venturing: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Finance, Innovation and Regional Development serves as a scholarly platform for the exchange of valuable insights, theories, narratives, and interpretations related to entrepreneurship and its implications. With a focus on enriching the understanding of entrepreneurship in its various manifestations, the journal seeks to publish papers that (1) draw from the experiences of entrepreneurs, innovators, and their ecosystem; and (2) tackle issues relevant to scholars, educators, facilitators, and practitioners involved in entrepreneurship. Embracing diversity in approach, methodology, and disciplinary perspective, the journal encourages contributions that contribute to the advancement of knowledge in entrepreneurship and its associated domains.
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