The growth of entrepreneurial human capital: origins and development of skill variety
基于纵向数据,研究发现青少年时期的广泛多样性取向是成年后创业型人力资本(技能多样性)的前兆,且创业人格特质(而非创业父母)能预测早期多样性取向、技能多样性和创业意向。
Abstract Given that recent research on entrepreneurial behavior and success has established skill variety as a central human capital factor, researchers, educators, and policymakers have turned their interest to a deeper understanding of the formation of skill variety. Based on human capital theory and the competence growth approach in developmental psychology (highlighting long-term, age-appropriate, and cumulative skill-growth processes), we hypothesize that a broad, early variety orientation in adolescence is a developmental precursor of such entrepreneurial human capital in adulthood. This was confirmed in an analysis of prospective longitudinal data via structural equation modeling and serial mediation tests. We also find that an entrepreneurial constellation of personality traits, but not entrepreneurial parents, predicts early variety orientation, skill variety, and entrepreneurial intentions. By shedding new light on the long-term formation of entrepreneurial human capital, the results suggest that establishing and benefiting from an early variety orientation is not only an important developmental mechanism in entrepreneurial careers but gives those with an entrepreneurial personality an early head start in their vocational entrepreneurial development. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.