Entrepreneurial self‐efficacy and business start‐up: developing a multi‐dimensional definition

Purpose – The aims of this paper are to: critically review and identify gaps in current literature on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, provide a definition of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy that addresses some of those gaps, and explore the role of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy during the phases of a business start‐up process. The research seeks to define entrepreneurial self‐efficacy using three sources of dimensionality. The first includes the particular aspect of entrepreneurship to which self‐efficacy is applied, whether to business start‐up or business growth activities. The second sources of dimensionality refers to the content of self‐efficacy beliefs (task or outcome goal beliefs), and the third source to the valence of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy beliefs (positive or negative control beliefs).Design/methodology/approach – The authors build from the origins and mechanisms of the self‐efficacy construct in social cognitive theory and a synthesis of that work with prior use of self‐efficacy in entrep...

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