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Corresponding author: Marco Van Gelderen ([email protected])
Accepted by: Senior Editor Maral Muratbekova-Touron and Deputy Editor Carl F. Fey
INTRODUCTION
Autonomy is an important motivator for those starting and running their own business (Dawson & Henley, 2012; Edelman, Brush, Manolova, & Greene, 2010; Stephan, Hart, & Drews, 2015). It is a main driver of satisfaction, well-being, and persistence among business owners (Benz & Frey, 2008a, 2008b; Gimeno, Folta, Cooper, & Woo, 1997; Lange, 2012; Prottas, 2008; Stephan, 2018). Autonomy is also considered to be the basis for entrepreneurial action (Autio, Kenney, Mustar, Siegel, & Wright, 2014; Bradley & Klein, 2016; McMullen, Bagby, & Palich, 2008). Consequently, the degree of experienced autonomy and the factors that affect it are likely to have significant effects on business ownership, business decisions, growth rates, innovation, and the development of a start-up culture (Heritage Foundation, 2015; Ireland, Tihanyi, & Webb, 2008; Wiklund, Davidson, & Delmar, 2003). A vast body of research has shown entrepreneurship to drive job creation, innovation, and economic growth (Audretsch, Keilbach, & Lehman, 2006; Zhang & Stough, 2013). The psychology of the founding entrepreneur has a large influence on the operation and success of their firms (Frese & Gielnik, 2014). Given the crucial importance of autonomy to business owner/founders, and of entrepreneurship to the economy, it is surprising how little we know of what entrepreneurs do to attain and retain autonomy and the challenges and tensions they face in doing so (Ryff, 2018).
This is partly because entrepreneurship studies have tended to focus on financial performance, despite the well-known importance of motivators related to intangibles such as autonomy and challenge (Davidsson, 2004; Stephan, 2018). Another reason is that the literature takes autonomy for granted by assuming it comes automatically with the rights of ownership (Croson & Minniti, 2012; Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). For example, Lumpkin, Cogliser, and Schneider (2009) posit that autonomy may not be an issue among independently owned and managed entrepreneurial firms because such founders are innately acting autonomously. However, Van Gelderen (2016) refutes this picture by showing how Dutch business owner/founders make active efforts to attain and maintain autonomy. In that study, and in our present study, the term entrepreneur refers to an individual who founds and owns an independent business. Entrepreneurial autonomy means...