1. Introduction
Multiple nations have begun to focus on innovation growth through start-ups as a primary strategy for economic development [
1]. Young start-up entrepreneurs are encouraged to develop new employment opportunities to resolve unemployment among young people led by various factors, including slowdowns in economic growth. The term “start-up” refers to the establishment of an innovative process or system that produces and sells goods or services as a business [
2]. The establishment of a new enterprise requires that entrepreneurs have the ability to elicit ideas from the surrounding environment and capture business opportunities [
2]. Since start-ups require a long-term process of planning and implementation, establishing a new business depends on entrepreneurs’ fixed temperament as well as personal motivations and attitudes. Most previous research focuses on individual characteristics as antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions, which are necessary conditions for starting a new business [
3]. Considering that the complexities and problem-solving processes required for starting a new business demand knowledge of various fields, this study explains individual learning behaviors based on the organizational learning theory to explore and use the knowledge and experience needed for successful start-ups. In this study, we assume that the relationship between personal traits and entrepreneurship intention is not directly associated with, but the relationship can be mediated by the ability to recognize various environments and situations and obtain and utilize information appropriate to the situation. This research tries to examine the role of learning activities. The study also explores the characteristics that affect individuals’ exploration and exploitation activities, presenting a fundamental approach and a systematic direction that delineates the individual capabilities needed to increase start-up leaders’ entrepreneurial intentions.
Existing research suggests that learning about and direct and indirect experience with participating in starting a start-up can affect start-up initiatives [
4]. To specify the learning behaviors needed from entrepreneurs, organizational learning theory is adopted to explain organizational learning activities for advancing firms’ innovative performance. Organizational learning theory specifies the process of searching for, identifying, and exploring knowledge that is external to the company, called exploration activities, and the creation of new knowledge using the inherent knowledge within a company refers to exploitation activities [
5]. In previous research, the concepts of exploration and exploitation have been applied to organizational-level research and measured by investment in R&D activities or patenting characteristics [
6,
7,
8]. In this vein, few studies have examined individual exploration and exploitation activities. Recently, a few studies started to emphasize that individuals also could engage in the routine of learning activities, which results in organizational performance [
9,
10]. For example, Ref. [
10] focus is given to individual exploration and exploitation activities for incentive-given performance, asserting that without clear incentives, individuals lack motivation for exploration and exploration activities. Initiating start-ups requires various types of experience and knowledge in the long term, and the ability to search for and use knowledge is directly linked to entrepreneurs’ ability to navigate when problems arise or when new knowledge is needed. Therefore, this study suggests that learning activities have a direct influence on entrepreneurial intentions.
For start-ups, the process of successfully starting a business and earning a profit is arduous and faces a variety of challenges that require solutions, so the founder’s individual characteristics will have an influence on the organizational learning process when accumulating a variety of knowledge and experience. To reveal the link between entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics and entrepreneurial intentions, we investigate research questions regarding learning activities: How do exploration and exploitation activities mediate personal traits and entrepreneurial intentions? Personal traits are mainly included in previous studies that engaged planned behavior theory, adopted as antecedents that can affect exploration and exploitation activities. This study focuses on innovativeness, self-efficacy, and internal locus of control as personal traits.
This study’s theoretical contributions are threefold. First, this study reveals the mediating variables between personal traits and entrepreneurial intentions. Most previous research indicates that entrepreneurs’ traits and intention to engage in start-up education activities are directly related to entrepreneurial intentions [
11]. However, not every individual with these identified personal traits will become an entrepreneur. Because the start-up itself faces various difficulties and challenges during the foundational process, entrepreneurs require new knowledge and experience to meet and solve arising problems. Thus, to successfully start a business, entrepreneurs’ learning activity, which is a more direct endeavor, will play a major role in understanding the origin and motivations of entrepreneurial intentions. Second, this study measures exploration and exploitation from an individual-level perspective. Previous research in the field of strategic management has investigated organizational learning theory from a firm-level perspective [
12,
13]. Specifically, most research measures exploration and exploitation through proxies such as patent, R&D budget expenditure, or mergers and acquisitions (M&A) [
6,
7,
8]. Considering that exploration and exploitation are important individual activities when people gain knowledge, there remains relatively limited research regarding learning activities at the individual level. Third, this study identifies personal traits that act as antecedents of engaging in learning activities. There is a lack of research regarding how specific personal traits activate individual attitudes toward founding start-ups and motivate founders to prepare for long-term learning activities. The mediating variables of learning activities that represent core capabilities for overcoming challenges and procuring new knowledge when managing a start-up are categorized into exploration and exploitation. In addition, this study specifically examines how personal traits influence the two activities. To the best of our knowledge, no research has examined the antecedents of individuals’ proclivity toward exploration and exploitation activities.
4. Hypotheses
Innovation is the ability to pursue change and leverage innovative ideas to identify new opportunities and solve existing problems [
48]. Many studies related to entrepreneurship assert that innovation is the main characteristic of entrepreneurs (e.g., [
49,
50]. Various studies investigate exploration and exploitation activities as learning activities of organizations that can potentially lead to corporate innovation performance. In contrast, this study seeks to examine the effect of individual innovation on exploration activities among learning activities. Although various research has attempted to reveal the link between individuals’ behavior and organizational learning activities, most has focused on the firm-level performance as the dependent variable [
39]. For instance, [
51] examined the impacts of top managers’ individual innovation behaviors on firm-level innovation activities, with a focus on CEO leadership. However, there remains a lack of research on individuals’ innovative behavior with regard to exploration and exploitation activities compared to studies about the impacts of those activities on firms’ overall innovation performance. This study endeavors to fill the gap of previous research by specifically focusing on innovation resulting from entrepreneurs’ personal traits in terms of exploration activities. Continuous innovation is required in an environment of high uncertainty and for developing novel ideas. Therefore, this study targets exploration and exploitation activities to learn about new ideas during the whole process of venturing, which requires entrepreneurs’ innovativeness.
Hypothesis 1.1. Entrepreneurs’ innovativeness positively influences exploration activities.
Hypothesis 1.2. Entrepreneurs’ innovativeness positively influences exploitation activities.
The role of self-efficacy is intensively studied among personal factors that influence knowledge-management activities, such as knowledge sharing, in previous studies. Self-efficacy is also used as a major individual variable for mediating or moderating environmental factors that affect individual performance. For example, [
52] demonstrated the moderating role of self-efficacy when corporate environmental factors, leadership style, or organizational culture influence individual creativity or innovation performance. In addition, [
53] found that self-efficacy has an effect on an individuals’ learning and retention capacity and exploration and exploitation activities.
Hypothesis 2.1. Entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy positively influences exploration activities.
Hypothesis 2.2. Entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy positively influences exploitation activities.
In this study, among entrepreneurs’ main characteristics, internal control is considered the main explanatory variable for learning activities that mediate entrepreneurial opportunities. Planned behavior theory includes the concept of perceived behavior control [
54]. In social psychology, [
55] first proposed the concept of the locus of control, which is defined as “people’s perception of the source of control over their destiny or actions” [
56]. Individuals with an internal locus of control believe that they have control over their lives and those with an external locus of control believe that the control is outside [
57]. Chen et al. [
58] divide internal controllability and controllability by chance, asserting that we adopt two categories of locus of control with internal control and external control. Internal control refers to a belief in self-control of the events that occur and the consequences of one’s actions. With internal control, people believe that their abilities and actions can determine the rewards [
59]. As a result, they believe that they can control the outcomes and themselves through their abilities and actions [
60]. The internal locus of control involves skills, abilities, personality, and emotions [
61]. Most research focuses on the role of the personal traits of the internal locus of control. For example, [
62] suggested that the internal locus of control might influence job success. Phares [
63] indicated that people with a higher internal locus of control are more likely to easily overcome environmental barriers and more readily learn required skills. Conversely, people with a strong external locus of control are less productive and passive in their work [
64]. Past studies have used internal control as an explanatory variable with a direct relationship to entrepreneurial intention [
50,
65,
66]. In this study, it is assumed that the internal locus of control is a trait suitable for ensuring a series of events and that long-term efforts would have a direct impact on all of the various activities for acquiring knowledge related to entrepreneurship. Ajzen [
67] asserted that perceived behavior control affects knowledge-sharing activity. In the context of perceived behavior control, an individual’s internal control over their own will and ability to impose their will on the environment should have an important influence on the discovery or use of new knowledge in the process of learning and applying new information.
Hypothesis 3.1. Entrepreneurs’ internal locus of control positively influences exploration activities.
Hypothesis 3.2. Entrepreneurs’ internal locus of control positively influences exploitation activities.
In the case of exploration, the discovery and experimentation of new technology is a core activity for firms [
5,
68]. Exploration focuses on creating variety in experience and thrives on experimentation and free association [
69]. According to [
70], exploration is a process by which organizations establish experiential variety through experimentation, trialing, and free association. Exploration itself is not efficient for existing business since it focuses on new technologies that are not related to firms’ existing knowledge. Exploration is focusing on radically new knowledge by transforming or combining new or existing knowledge [
71,
72,
73,
74].
In contrast, according to [
5], exploitation is the refinement, extension, and enhancement of existing capabilities and technologies. More specifically, exploitation is a process by which organizations create reliability in experience through refinement, production, and focused attention [
75]. Exploitation is a process of reutilization to add value to existing knowledge. Such exploitation could increase firms’ innovation performance by enhancing competencies in certain knowledge domains that result from specialization [
76]. Exploitation normally focuses on refinement and the incremental extension of existing capabilities [
77]; however, exploitation that focuses on innovation changes the existing internal links within a firm. Exploration is a more uncertain and innovative technology or knowledge-investment activity that is not directly related to performance, whereas exploitation is an activity that leverages the knowledge or technology that the company already manages professionally so it can achieve results more rapidly.
Hypothesis 4.1. Entrepreneurs’ exploration activities positively influence entrepreneurial intention.
Hypothesis 4.2. Entrepreneurs’ exploitation activities positively influence entrepreneurial intention.
7. Conclusions
This study sought to investigate the effect of entrepreneurs’ individual characteristics on entrepreneurial intention, assessing individuals’ learning activities as moderators. The unique characteristics of individuals alone cannot explain the impact on entrepreneurial intention, which requires the long-term resolution of various emerging challenges and a long-term perspective. Therefore, it was intended to understand the mechanisms that affect entrepreneurial intention using the nature of the individual’s learning activity as a mediator. In this vein, the results of this research successfully support our research questions about the hidden mechanisms between personal traits and entrepreneurial intention. In this regard, this study offers several theoretical and practical implications.
For theoretical implications, first, the research on the factors that affect entrepreneurial intention contributes to expanding and deepening the research on entrepreneurial intention, as it identified and validated major factors and individual characteristics that could affect entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurs’ innovativeness, self-efficacy, and internal control can be seen as the individual characteristics of entrepreneurs that are necessary to solve various problems under the uncertainty of starting a business. Although many studies have studied the effect of individual characteristics on entrepreneurship intention, this study judged that entrepreneurs’ individual characteristic variables will explore new knowledge and skills and affect exploitation activities to solve problems arising from entrepreneurship. As a result, it was found that entrepreneurs’ innovation, self-efficacy, and internal control are associated with exploration and exploitation activities. The results of this study suggest that entrepreneurship intention can be related to various skills and abilities of individuals, not only including their personal traits but also the characteristics that can be developed by them. Second, from the perspective of the theory of organizational learning, most previous studies judged learning activities as investments in new technologies or knowledge within a firm or the expansion of knowledge. This study is of theoretical significance, as it applied the activities presented in the organizational learning theory to prospective entrepreneurs’ activities in the start-up field. Third, in this study, the activities for ambidextrous learning for acquiring new knowledge and skills for future start-up companies and to improve, expand, and improve existing capabilities and skills being related to the entrepreneurship intention was confirmed. The prospective entrepreneurs were found to have an effect on the performance of entrepreneurship intention while maintaining a balance between exploration activities and utilization activities in order to establish corporate growth and internal stability.
The practical implications include some important insights. To increase the intention of starting a business, education or training development was not possible for the characteristics and temperament of prospective entrepreneurs based on previous research; however, the results of the hypotheses presented in this study are significant, as they were demonstrated to be sufficiently strengthened by the nature of the learning activities engaged in or through the support of the relevant institutions. Therefore, it is meaningful to strengthen training and learning activities that can develop and reinforce the individual characteristics identified to directly enhance start-up intentions by facilitating start-up-related problem-solving activities.
The limitations of this study and future research directions are presented as follows. First, in this study, research was conducted only for prospective entrepreneurs. The characteristics of entrepreneurs according to the start-up period will have different effects on learning activities, so it is necessary to subdivide entrepreneurs and examine how their personal characteristics affect learning activities. Second, since exploration and exploitation activities, which are variables of learning activities, have different performance goals in terms of content and time, they should be measured as different dependent variables in empirical studies. However, in this study, since start-up intention was used as a dependent variable, a study examining the relationship with various dependent variables will be needed in the future. As for the limitations of this study, the research model can be developed along with other variables in the future for the causal relationship, which is not clearly elucidated, along with other personality characteristics of the prospective founders not covered by this study. In addition, given that this study conducted a survey on prospective entrepreneurs, it is clear how learning activities will have a direct effect on the performance of start-up and, through this, will have a positive effect on actually starting a start-up. However, in future research, it is necessary to conduct research targeting those who are currently engaged in start-ups.