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Creating An Entrepreneurial Frame Of Mind., Robert F. Sinclair

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three essays that address the question: what specific cognitions lead to the formation of entrepreneurial intentions? Essay 1, "Explaining and Predicting Entrepreneurial Intentions," investigates currently theorized antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions to determine the degree to which they predict entrepreneurial intentions. Findings suggest that proximal cognitions such as feelings, desires, emotions, and attitudes predict intention formation, albeit limited to situations where entrepreneurial behavior is imminent. Additionally, distal cognitions, such as biases, heuristics, scripts and maps, although useful in explaining intentions, are of little predictive value except when predicting the distal intention to become an entrepreneur in …