A taxonomy of business start-up reasons and their impact on firm growth and size

Abstract Based on a survey of 405 principal owner-managers of new independent business in Great Britain this paper explores two research questions— are there any differences in the reasons that owner-managers articulate for starting their businesses, and, if there are, do they appear to affect the subsequent growth and size of the businesses? The results of the study indicate an affirmative answer to the first question. From the 23 diverse reasons leading to start-up that were identified in the literature, an underlying pattern emerged via the Principal Components Analysis. Moreover, these were similar to those found in earlier studies. Thus, five of the seven components identified by the model correspond to those identified by Scheinberg and MacMillan (1988) in their eleven-country study of motivations to start a business: “Need for Approval,” “Need for Independence,” “Need for Personal Development,” “Welfare Considerations,” and “Perceived Instrumentality of Wealth.” Two further components were identified by this current study. The first vindicates the decision to add a question not included in the previous study that related to “Tax Reduction and Indirect Benefits,” and the second, the desire to “Follow Role Models” was identified by Dubini (1988) in her study in Italy. In order to take account of possible multiple motivations in the start-up period, cluster analysis was used to provide a classification of founder “types.” The seven generalized “types” of owner-managers were named as follows—the insecure (104 founders), the followers (49 founders), the status avoiders (169 founders), the confused (15 founders), the tax avoiders (18 founders), the community (49 founders), and the unfocused (1 founder). Further, evidence from the final discriminant analysis model suggested that the seven-cluster classification of owner-managers was appropriate and optimal. However, despite these clear differences between clusters, this was not found to be an indicator of subsequent size or growth, as measured by sales and employment levels. The answer to the second research question would be in the negative. Therefore, we conclude that, whereas new businesses are founded by individuals with significantly different reasons leading to start-up, once the new ventures are established these reasons have a minimal influence on the growth of new ventures and upon the subsequent wealth creation and job generation potential. This result is important for investors and policy-makers. It suggests that strategies for “picking winners” solely based upon the characteristics of owner-managers and their stated reasons for wanting to go into business are not supported. Thus, for example, targeting scarce resources to those with high opportunistic and materialistic reasons for venture initiation would miss those with a wider sense of community or those with personal needs for independence who establish similarly sized businesses with comparable levels of wealth creation.