Exploring the role of context in motivating entrepreneurial behaviours: the motivations of migrant entrepreneurs in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

Abstract

The personality traits approach is a popular way of understanding entrepreneurial motivation. This approach emphasises the importance of internal characteristics as drivers of entrepreneurial motivation. One of the central issues with the personality traits literature is therefore a tendency to overlook the importance of the actor's external context in facilitating entrepreneurial motivations. The purpose of the paper is to address this gap by making three exploratory arguments, each of which is demonstrated through an analysis of the motivations of 43 migrant entrepreneurs in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The arguments are: 1) that context is an active force influencing entrepreneurial motivation; 2) that external environments are experienced differentially by actors; 3) that context has both spatial and temporal elements.