Resourcefulness Behaviors: An Agentic Perspective
Research Paper Title:
“An agentic perspective of resourcefulness: Self-reliant and joint resourcefulness behaviors within the entrepreneurship process”
Authors:
Timothy Michaelis (Northern Illinois University)
David Scheaf (Baylor University)
Background:
We integrate social cognitive theory, and its tenets of personal and collective agency, to develop an individual-level perspective on entrepreneurs' resourcefulness behaviors that illustrates how resourcefulness behaviors can be classified as ‘self-reliant behaviors’ or ‘joint resourcefulness behaviors’. Using this novel cognitive theoretical approach, it is provided and tested a framework that explains how dispositional, perceptual, and behavioral factors interact in the enactment of purposeful action with regards to entrepreneurs' resourceful behaviors.
Methodology:
Sample: Entrepreneurs who founded a new venture within the past 5 years.
Sample Size: 178 people
Analytical Approach: Confirmatory Factor Analysis, OLS regression, and Mediation analysis
Hypothesis:
Perceived environmental hostility mediates the relationship between trait frugality and the amount of customer-related bootstrapping behaviors enacted.
Results:
Results provide evidence that personal agency, demonstrated by one's level of frugality, explains variance in self-reliant type resourcefulness behaviors (i.e., bootstrapping), but not in joint resourcefulness type behaviors.
Perceptions of environmental hostility mediate the relationship between frugality and self-reliant type resource bootstrapping behaviors.
Post-hoc results containing 15 in-depth interviews provided supplemental evidence that one's frugality relates to a need for self-sufficiency and to reduce dependencies on others.
Further post-hoc analysis highlighted that (a) trait risk-taking was related to joint resourcefulness behaviors but not self-reliant resourcefulness behaviors and (b) self-reliant and joint resourcefulness behaviors are distinct constructs.
Conclusion:
It is intuitively appealing and conceptually tempting to think of all resourcefulness behaviors as fundamentally similar. This is, unfortunately, a common misperception. This work advances the resourcefulness literature by introducing human agency into the discussion of why and in what ways that entrepreneurs will choose to enact resourceful behaviors. In doing so, we respecify the resourcefulness construct into self-reliant and joint resourcefulness, and we find that entrepreneurs tend to choose the resourceful paths that align with their dispositions and attitudinal perceptions.