Extending Social Cognitive Career Theory into the Entrepreneurship Domain: Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy's Mediating Role Between Inputs, Outcome Expectations, and Intentions

Abstract

Self-efficacy is among the most important constructs in recent entrepreneurship literature (Forbes, 2005), and is central to our understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. Accordingly, it often captures the attention of policy makers, community leaders, educators and entrepreneurship advocates (e.g., Shook & Bratianu, 2010; Descant, 2010; McCollister, 2011; Chapman, 2011). In this dissertation, I seek to expand upon the extant knowledge of self-efficacy research by undertaking three specific objectives. First, I apply a social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) to entrepreneurship, and posit that this is a more robust theoretical framework to study individual entrepreneurial activity. Second, I explore self-efficacy as it relates to entrepreneurial intentions, beginning to reconcile the unique roles of both domain-specific and generalized self-efficacy. Lastly, I explore how a new set of contextual variables (university orientation toward teaching, university focus on entrepreneurship, and student exposure to faculty) impact individual entrepreneurial career aspirations.

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