Higher purposes in religious entrepreneurship: how Kenyan pastors sustain persistence toward spiritual impact
通过对21位肯尼亚牧师创业者的质性研究，揭示他们如何在经济生存与宗教目标之间做出权衡，并维持对精神影响的长期坚持，为理解宗教身份驱动的创业决策提供新视角。
The recent theological turn in entrepreneurship research highlights spiritual impact as a likely yet underexplored measure of entrepreneurial success. This outcome reflects the pursuit of higher purposes grounded in a religious identity, which often involves the need to make economic trade-offs to achieve these religious goals. Given the limited empirical research on how entrepreneurs navigate these trade-off decisions, this study explores how entrepreneurs sustain persistence towards religious and economic goals over time. We conduct an inductive qualitative study involving 21 Kenyan ‘pastor entrepreneurs’ engaged in an entrepreneurship training program designed to help them achieve economic goals to sustain household survival and achieve religious goals involving sharing religious beliefs with others. We develop a theoretical model illustrating the actions entrepreneurs take to achieve both sets of goals and the decision-making processes that sustain persistence towards these goals over time. The study provides insight into the psychological effects of spiritual impact beliefs, defined as convictions that one’s efforts have created spiritual value for God, on risk-taking and goal persistence. Altogether, the study advances a theological perspective on entrepreneurial action and decision-making.