The Psychology of Entrepreneurship: Action and Process

We review the research on the psychology of entrepreneurship of the last decade. We focus on two key topics in entrepreneurship research: action and process. Combining action and process in a model of the psychology of entrepreneurship, we present the action theory process model of entrepreneurship and use it as a guiding framework for the review. We discuss theories of action, such as effectuation/causation, bricolage, theory of planned behavior, and action theory. Furthermore, we adopt a process perspective to discuss antecedents of actions in terms of cognition, motivation, and emotion and how they develop during the entrepreneurial process. The process perspective considers recursive relationships and dynamic changes in actions and their antecedents over time. We conclude that the action theory process model is a useful starting point to explain the psychological dynamics of entrepreneurship.