A model of entrepreneurial opportunity-seeking behavior: an investigation into its antecedents, consequences and boundary conditions

Recent scholarly works in entrepreneurial opportunities have shifted towards the two main sources of opportunities – opportunity creation and discovery. Whilst some school of thoughts argue for the subjective nature of opportunities, others believe that entrepreneurial opportunities are objective. Despite an increase in research into the two views of entrepreneurial opportunities and most importantly, the potential contribution this debate brings to the entrepreneurship literature, a careful look at the current discourse in the extant literature points to several and important research gaps. Specifically, knowledge is lacking on the conceptual domain and empirical validation of these two sources of opportunities and their driving forces on the one hand, and how they both simultaneously and/or differentially impact on new venture performance on the other hand. Drawing from the literature on cognitive psychology and strategic management, this study proposes and tests a framework of entrepreneurial opportunity-seeking behavior, its antecedents, and performance outcomes and associated boundary conditions using a sample of new ventures a developing economy. First, empirical analysis shows that opportunities can occur as subjective and objective phenomena in the firm and that entrepreneurs can engage in them distinctively and in a non-contradictory way. Second, the findings indicate that entrepreneurial cognitive style drives both opportunity creation and discovery. Third, the study shows that opportunity creation and discovery have differential implications for new venture performance. Thus, while opportunity creation positively impacts on the performance of new ventures, opportunity discovery has no effect on new venture performance. Fourth, an analysis into the boundary condition effects shows that firms’ dynamic capabilities, to some extent, moderate the opportunity creation/discovery – new venture performance relationships. Finally, by using a developing economy as a study setting, this research contributes to an important but rarely discussed context as far as the study and practice of entrepreneurship is concerned. The implications of such findings for the theory and practice of entrepreneurship are discussed, while providing valuable avenues for future research.