Senior Entrepreneurs and Dynamic Managerial Capabilities in Thai Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs)

Population ageing is a significant phenomenon worldwide, causing socio-economic challenges in developing countries, including Thailand. These countries are experiencing this demographic shift at a faster rate than more developed nations, whilst their public support systems are often less established. One alternative to addressing these challenges is to encourage older people to enter entrepreneurship, with senior entrepreneurship increasingly playing a crucial role in economic activity.

This study drew on three bodies of literature: senior entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial motivations and dynamic managerial capabilities. It applied the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation framework together with the lifespan theory – the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) – and contextual considerations, to explore entrepreneurial motivations for becoming business owners amongst senior entrepreneurs. Integrating an age perspective into entrepreneurship could help capture the complexities involved in older individuals’ motivation to engage in entrepreneurial activities, addressing the current lack of a combination of age and contextual perspectives in entrepreneurial motivation theory and research. This study also focused on the concept of dynamic managerial capabilities (DMCs) to investigate how their motivations played a role in their DMCs to make strategic changes in their firms. Focusing on the context of Thailand, where a culture favours individuals of older age, status or wealth, could gain insights into how their age played a role in DMCs. This aimed to address the lack of clarity regarding the factors that influence DMCs and provide a more comprehensive picture of the factors that influence DMCs.

This exploratory qualitative study focused on nineteen individuals aged 50 years or older who were owner-managers of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in various sectors across Thailand. Two semi-structured interviews were undertaken with each senior entrepreneur, meaning 38 interviews were undertaken. All interview data were analysed using template analysis. Based on key themes, this study made empirical and theoretical contributions to both socioemotional selectivity theory and dynamic managerial capabilities by illuminating previous knowledge of senior entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial motivations and dynamic managerial capabilities through the SST and contextual lens.

The first contribution highlights that institutional contexts can cause financial adversity, leading to the prioritisation of financial motives (i.e., extrinsic motivation) amongst senior entrepreneurs, despite perceiving a limited future time in life. This identifies financial adversity and limited welfare provision as a boundary condition of SST, as it challenges the core assumption of SST, which is that individuals with limited future time perspectives typically prioritise intrinsic motivations over extrinsic factors. The study also suggests that the entrepreneurial motivations of senior entrepreneurs can serve as a micro-foundation of dynamic managerial capabilities. Furthermore, regardless of future time perception, entrepreneurial motivations to become business owners can encourage senior entrepreneurs to prioritise knowledge acquisition and social network expansion, which also challenges core assumptions of SST. This identifies senior entrepreneurship as a boundary condition of SST, since knowledge acquisition and social network expansion are typically important elements of senior entrepreneurship. This divergence from SST may be explained by self-regulation theory, in that senior entrepreneurs prioritise upskilling and expanding social connections to contribute to strategic changes in their businesses. Drawing on the boundary conditions identified in this study (financial adversity, limited welfare provision and senior entrepreneurship), a senior entrepreneurship-specific version of SST is developed. This could enable a more appropriate theoretical framing of future senior entrepreneurship studies.

The remaining theoretical contributions provide new insights into DMCs. Firstly, the study highlights the importance of cultural age norms (i.e., respect for older people), which shape social capital and subsequently DMCs. This expands perspectives on social capital in DMC theorising, which typically underplay the influence of contextual factors. Finally, emotion regulation is found to shape the cognitive element of DMCs, thereby expanding prior understanding of the influence of emotions on DMCs.

This study also provides evidence to inform policy and practice for promoting the inclusion of older people who are willing to continue working and foster their skills to capture entrepreneurial opportunities as a late-career alternative in Thailand and other developing countries.