The Individual Environment Nexus: Impact of Promotion Focus and the Environment on Academic Scientists’ Entrepreneurial Intentions

Using a sample of academic scientists, we show that promotion focus interacts with the work and family environments to predict academic scientists' entrepreneurial intentions. Concretely, we find that the relationship between promotion focus and entrepreneurial intentions is particularly strong when scientists' parents have owned a business and when they work in laboratories with more industry-financed research. As such, our study complements prior research into entrepreneurial intentions in academia, which has to a large extent focused on individual characteristics as determinants of such intentions. We highlight the vital role of the environment in encouraging academic entrepreneurship. Without a supportive environment, high promotion focus individuals are unlikely to become entrepreneurs. Our study has implications for the entrepreneurship literature, in particular academic entrepreneurship, and we call for more research on the individual-environment nexus.