Entrepreneurial Profit-Seeking: Socially Situating Opportunity Exploitation

Abstract

The greatest contribution of the individual–opportunity nexus (ION) approach to entrepreneurship theory is the identification of the entrepreneurial function with the very action linking an individual to the opportunity he aims at appropriating. Nevertheless, this contribution remains incomplete, as current efforts have been mostly directed at understanding the occupational and the structural natures of the nexus components, that is, the individual and the organization of opportunity. This paper aims at further complementing the ION approach by emphasizing the actual nexus between individual and opportunity, namely, action. A praxeological approach based on methodological individualism and structurating analysis is developed to distinguish between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial action according to the temporal nature of the socio-institutionally profit-seeking of agents involved with an enterprise. Entrepreneurship is therefore equated to the diachronic profit-seeking as manifest in the institutional structure of the enterprise.

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