Research on entrepreneurial actions has thus far been dominated by individual-level and
dispositional approaches. These approaches assume that individuals’ entrepreneurial actions
are regulated by individuals’ enduring characteristics that operate in a similar way in all
contexts and in total isolation with their surroundings. This assumption has continued to
dominate research on entrepreneurial actions in spite of the widespread recognition of the fact
that entrepreneurial actions are also influenced by contextual factors. The dispositional
approach thus presents an under-socialized view of entrepreneurial opportunity creation and
ignores that entrepreneurial process of opportunity discovery are strongly influenced by
contextual factors, such as organisational environments, institutions, social reference groups,
cultural orientations, environmental munificence. This thesis addresses this gap and
contributes towards answering “How do individuals’ context influence entrepreneurial
actions?” We provide answer by extending McMullen and Shepherd’s proposed theoretical
model and argue that entrepreneurial actions depend upon not only an individual’s personal
feasibility and desirability considerations (McMullen and Shepherd 2006), but also upon the
context within which the individual evaluates the consequences of those actions. In order to
test and provide evidence in favour of this argument, an empirical design is proposed that
comprises of three separate empirical studies, each of which considers the cross-level effects
on entrepreneurial actions by combining the influences of individual-level as well contextuallevel
factors on those actions and offers explanations on the pertinent mechanisms through
which an individual’s context exercises a regulatory influence on entrepreneurial actions by
individuals.
The thesis acknowledges and further consolidates the multi-level nature of entrepreneurial
actions and considers cross-level effects by combining the influence of individual-level and
contextual-level factors on entrepreneurial actions. A multi-level methodology has been
developed and tested to bring forth the cross-level moderation effects of contextual factors
that operate at a higher level on individual-level entrepreneurial actions. Three multi-level
empirical studies feature in this thesis that elucidates the mechanisms through which an
individual’s context constitutes a regulatory influence on the feasibility and desirability to
undertake entrepreneurial actions.
The first study examines the influence of prevailing norms in an individual’s social
reference group on individual-level entrepreneurial actions. The second empirical study
examines the influence of national-level cultural orientations on individual-level
entrepreneurial actions and the third study investigates the influence of national-level cultural
orientations on persistence in the entrepreneurial process. The third empirical study examines
the influence of national-level cultural orientations on an individual’s persistence into
entrepreneurship
