Study goals
This study aimed to understand the intellectual structure related to entrepreneurial behavior, by analyzing academic production in the area of Business Administration.
Relevance / originality
A preliminary consultation with the ISI Web of Science database showed that much has been talked about entrepreneurial behavior, the volume of publications has increased annually and new studies have been developed from a variety of perspectives. Thus, it is necessary to have an overview of everything that has been studied to date and identify in which directions the studies of this theme are being directed, since no other studies have been found that have presented such perspective.
Methodology / approach
The contribution of the research on entrepreneurial behavior was evaluated from a bibliometric study of citation and cocitation. In addition, we sought to analyze the main themes in the studies of entrepreneurial behavior through exploratory factor analysis (EFA).
Main results
In the EFA, 3 factors were identified that reflect the issues that have been explored in the context of entrepreneurial behavior. The first factor concerns the issues of the models of intent and self-efficacy. The second factor relates to entrepreneurial guidance and the environment in which entrepreneurs operate. The third factor refers to the effort found in the literature to explain the action of the entrepreneur.
Theoretical / methodological contributions
In addition to the analyses, each factor demonstrated what and how the behavior of the entrepreneur has been explored in the literature, allowing other researchers to start from this intellectual structure to generate new scientific knowledge.
Social / management contributions
The findings corroborate the direction of future studies that may continue to investigate how behavior can impact the results of the entrepreneur and in what contexts.