ANTECEDENTS OF THE CAREER ANCHORING AND ITS MEDIATING ROLE IN THE BUSINESS IDEATION STAGE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Abstract

This research aims to deepen our understanding of the interplay between career anchoring, personality traits, and entrepreneurial behavior, with a focus on the business ideation stage of entrepreneurship. Drawing from seminal literature, the study investigates the correlation between career anchoring and entrepreneurial ideation, identifies antecedents influencing career anchoring, and examines the mediating roles of career anchoring between training, personality traits, and entrepreneurial ideation. By synthesizing insights from diverse disciplines such as organizational psychology, human resource management, and entrepreneurship, the study sheds light on the complex dynamics shaping individuals' entrepreneurial journeys. The findings underscore the importance of personalized approaches to entrepreneurship development, emphasizing the need for tailored interventions that resonate with individuals' unique profiles and career aspirations. Implications for entrepreneurship education, policy, and practice are discussed, highlighting opportunities to foster innovation and economic growth by leveraging individuals' inherent strengths and motivations. Finally, the study outlines avenues for future research, including the exploration of contextual influences, the scalability of personalized development programs, and the broader systemic factors shaping entrepreneurial ecosystems. Schumpeter identified five major areas of innovation and societal change that are fueled by entrepreneurship: new goods, markets, manufacturing techniques, raw materials, and organizations. Entrepreneurs are vital to the development of society and the generation of jobs because they are intelligent and committed individuals. According to Shane and Venkataraman (2000), entrepreneurship is a process that includes opportunity exploration, invention, and value development. 4 The growth of the economy, policies, and society needs to comprehend the elements that lead to entrepreneurial success and the reasons why people take up entrepreneurial ventures. Important components including demand, financial responsibility, teamwork, discipline, communication, and individual features like a tendency towards taking risks, goal setting, and personality traits as defined by the Big Five Personality Theory are highlighted in this study. In particular, the research focuses on the ideation stage of the firm and explores the complex dynamics of career anchoring and its critical role in the early stages of entrepreneurship. Organizational behavior literature has given much emphasis to career anchoring, a psychological concept that represents a person's primary values, abilities, and motivations in their career pursuits. Nonetheless, its applicability and influence in the context of entrepreneurship, especially in the crucial stage of business ideation, are still little studied. Through an examination of career anchoring's antecedents and potential mediating effects on entrepreneurial ideation processes, this study seeks to close this gap. Based on well-established ideas in career development, entrepreneurship, and psychology, the study suggests a conceptual framework that proposes the relationships between the constructs that shape career anchoring, their self or personality antecedents, and their influence on business ideation. The hypotheses posit that career anchoring tendencies are influenced by individual characteristics, including personality traits, past experiences, and cognitive processes. Furthermore, it suggests that by directing and influencing entrepreneurs' opportunity recognition, assessment, and exploitation, career anchoring acts as a moderating influence on their ideation processes. The study collects data from a wide sample of aspiring and existing entrepreneurs using a mixed-methods methodology that combines qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys. The internal consistency reliability of the factors representing entrepreneurial training, personality traits, career anchoring, and the business idea stage of entrepreneurship was assessed using Cronbach's alpha. Each factor met the required 5 criteria of an alpha value greater than 0.7, confirming their reliability. The Cronbach's alpha values were business idea stage of entrepreneurship = 0.897, career anchoring = 0.862, conscientiousness = 0.89, entrepreneurial training = 0.893, openness = 0.906, agreeableness = 0.89, extroversion = 0.913, and neuroticism = 0.91. These results demonstrate the internal consistency and reliability of all the factors included in the measurement scale. The construct validity of the measurement scale, which includes entrepreneurial training, personality traits, career anchoring, and the business idea stage of entrepreneurship, was assessed using the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) method. This evaluation focused on two components: convergent validity and discriminant validity. Convergent validity checks the relationship between statements and their respective factors through item construct loadings, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE). For convergent validity to be established, most item loadings should exceed 0.7, while the CR and AVE values for each factor should be above 0.7 and 0.5, respectively. The suggested links are tested, and deeper insights are extracted using methods such as theme analysis and statistical techniques like structural equation modeling (SEM) using Smart PLS. It is anticipated that the results will make a theoretical contribution by deepening our comprehension of the fundamental mechanisms that propel entrepreneurial behavior and a practical contribution by guiding the creation of customized learning interventions that assist entrepreneurial endeavors from their very beginning. The analysis demonstrates that career anchoring significantly enhances the business ideation stage of entrepreneurship (BISE), with higher levels of career anchoring positively impacting BISE. Entrepreneurial training has a positive effect on BISE (0.440) which is statistically significant at the 5% level (t = 9.9693). Additionally, entrepreneurial training's indirect effect on BISE via career anchoring is positive (0.23) and significant (t = 5.868), while the direct effect, with career anchoring as a mediator, is also positive and significant (path coefficient = 0.209, t = 3.496). This indicates that career anchoring plays a significant, moderately strong, and partial mediating role between entrepreneurial 6 training and BISE, supporting previous studies on its critical role in entrepreneurial intentions and actions. Similarly, the mediation analysis confirms that career anchoring significantly mediates the relationship between personality traits and BISE. The total effect of personality traits on BISE is positive (0.540) and statistically significant (t = 13.786), with a positive indirect effect via career anchoring (0.154, t = 3.331) and a positive direct effect (path coefficient = 0.469, t = 5.933), reaffirming career anchoring's crucial mediating role This study emphasizes the necessity for individualized approaches in entrepreneurship development by examining the complex interaction between personality traits, career anchoring, and entrepreneurial ideation. It illustrates how personality traits, ideation, and entrepreneurial training are mediated by career anchoring. The conclusions imply that including personality evaluation instruments in training programs is crucial and that customized interventions are necessary. Using these findings, policymakers can create focused policies that promote economic growth and innovation. Subsequent investigations ought to examine the contextual elements that impact entrepreneurial results and evaluate the long-term effects and scalability of customized growth initiatives. In addition, additional research is necessary to fully understand the impact of wider systemic factors on entrepreneurship as well as the suitability of customized strategies at various stages of the entrepreneurial process.