Title :

Does skill balancing prepare for entrepreneurship? Testing the underlying assumption of the jack-of-all-trades view

Author(s) :

Syme, Lorna [Auteur]
Mueller, Elisabeth [Auteur]
Lille économie management - UMR 9221 [LEM]

Journal title :

Applied Economics

Pages :

1145-1161

Publisher :

Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

Publication date :

2022-01-10

ISSN :

0003-6846

English keyword(s) :

Jack-of-all-trades view
Entrepreneurship
Balanced skills
Involuntary job change

HAL domain(s) :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Economies et finances

English abstract : [en]

Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship predicts that individuals with a more balanced skill set are more likely to enter entrepreneurship. This relationship is often explained by either the investment or the ...
Show more >Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship predicts that individuals with a more balanced skill set are more likely to enter entrepreneurship. This relationship is often explained by either the investment or the endowment hypothesis. Both hypotheses describe skill balancing by those more interested in entrepreneurship per se. Previous studies which have attempted to determine the relative importance of both hypotheses have neglected the important question of whether balanced skills are actually productive in preparing an individual for entrepreneurship. We test this key underlying assumption by introducing a new measure of skill balancing that measures the breadth of skills directly and introduces exogenous skill balancing due to involuntary job changes. Results suggest that skill balancing through an external shock to an individual’s skill set also increases the probability of entering entrepreneurship. Thus, the underlying assumption of the jack-of-all-trades view that balanced skills support entrepreneurship can also be confirmed for exogenous skill balancing. We contribute to the discussion of whether entrepreneurs are born or made by suggesting that even individuals not predisposed to entrepreneurship can be productively prepared for it.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Peer reviewed article :

Oui

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

Collections :

• Lille Économie Management (LEM) - UMR 9221

Source :

Harvested from HAL