Entrepreneurial Exit

Abstract:     
Much research has been devoted to look for characteristics that drive individuals towards engaging in entrepreneurship. Less attention has been given to the question of what makes people persist in or exit from entrepreneurship. Recent years have seen an increasing focus on entrepreneurial exit in a number specialized workshops and conferences tracks, new research projects, and special issues in international journals. This chapter provides stocktaking on past research on exit, outlining the progress that research has done, together with the key problems in defining and investigating entrepreneurial exit. Conceptually, the chapter focuses on level of analysis and different definitions of exit. Empirically, the chapter describes the streams of research suggesting that exit is either determined by the environment or the entrepreneur, together with the stream of research highlighting the connection between entry and exit as path-dependent processes. The chapter concludes with highlighting a number of unsolved issues and interesting pathways for future research on exit.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 11

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Exit, Firm Exit

working papers series