Professional self-determination of an entrepreneur: stages and factors

Abstract

Background. Entrepreneurship in Russia continues to develop. In 2023, Russia registered 1.2 million small and medium-sized enterprises, though there is also a significant number of organizations closed down. While the reasons for business closures often relate to financial or legal issues, there are also socio-psychological factors that hinder an entrepreneur’s development in this field. Entrepreneurial self-determination (ESD) is seen as a journey consisting of professional choices and includes both factors that encourage choosing entrepreneurship and those that deter it. Studying ESD will help identify the challenges in an entrepreneur’s professional path and provide insights into what motivates entrepreneurs to choose this type of occupation from the perspective of social psychology..

Objective. To create a model of socio-psychological factors influencing entrepreneurial self-determination.

Study Participants. The study involved 29 respondents aged 18 to 40 who currently own or have owned a business, as well as 6 entrepreneurship experts..

Methods. Theoretical analysis in the form of systematization and generalization of domestic and foreign research on socio-psychological factors of entrepreneurial self-determination, narrative interviews, expert interviews.

Results. The study allowed to construct the model including 9 stages of entrepreneurial self-determination and 4 crisis stages. Each stage is characterized by a complex of socio-psychological factors that either push towards or pull away from entrepreneurial activity. Socio-psychological factors are divided into groups: environmental factors, including micro- and macro-environmental factors, and personal factors, including behavioral and internal factors.

Conclusions. An entrepreneur’s professional path consists of 9 sequential stages from observation to stability. At each stage, certain socio-psychological factors play a decisive role in the ESD, determining the choice of entrepreneurship as the main professional activity. The proposed preliminary ESD model can serve as a basis for creating a questionnaire for quantitative research into the socio-psychological factors of ESD.

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