An exploration of the association between entrepreneurial characteristics and motivating factors that influenced Irish individuals to become self employed following the 2008 financial crisis

Thompson, Joe (2016) An exploration of the association between entrepreneurial characteristics and motivating factors that influenced Irish individuals to become self employed following the 2008 financial crisis. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Employment creation in Ireland is one of the Governments top priorities post the 2008 Financial crisis. Part of the strategy that they adapted recognised the importance of the Irish SME sector as the primary creator of employment within the Irish economy - in 2012 the sector employed 68% of the total number of employable people (Reuvid, 2006). As this is a vital sector to the economy it is essential that strategies which are created are targeting the individuals that have the desire and ability to create these businesses.

Research has been conducted to identify nascent entrepreneurs (Kolvereid and Isaksen, 2006; Schoon and Duckworth, 2012) but these have primarily centred on the individual and have only recently started to examine the extraneous factors that impact the entrepreneurial intentions to create a business (Nabi and Linan, 2013). Consequently, the purpose of this dissertation was to explore the external munificent and non munificent environmental factors that existed post the 2008 financial crisis and how these impacted the entrepreneurial behaviours of nascent SME entrepreneurs.

The researcher conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with thirteen entrepreneurs that founded businesses since 2008, to gain insights into the motivating factors that influenced them to create businesses and to identify their latent entrepreneurial characteristics . The overall results showed that the main extraneous factors were push (redundancy, lack of employment opportunities) but the entrepreneurs also indicated that they were also influenced by pull factors (marketable idea). Previous research was predicated on either push or pull influencing an entrepreneur's desire to create a business and this research confirmed that push and pull factors can act together to motivate an entrepreneur to create a business.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions > Economic Recession H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory > Entrepreneurship H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > Small Business Sector
Divisions:	School of Business > Master of Business Administration
Depositing User:	Caoimhe Ní Mhaicín
Date Deposited:	02 Nov 2016 15:43
Last Modified:	02 Nov 2016 15:44
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/2307

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