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New ventue cretion in Canada: the impact of social media usage, power distance and individualism on entrepreneurial decision- making.

Drent, M.C. (2012) New ventue cretion in Canada: the impact of social media usage, power distance and individualism on entrepreneurial decision- making.

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Abstract:	This thesis reflects on how national culture and social media impact the way entrepreneurs make decisions when creating a new venture. The focus group in this research is Canadian entrepreneurs who graduated maximum 5 years ago and are based in the city of Ottawa, Canada. Leading theory in this research was originally developed by Saras D. Sarasvathy, who concluded that entrepreneurs either make use of causational or effectual reasoning in creating new ventures. Causational reasoning refers to a process that takes certain effects as a given and focuses on selecting the right means to create a predefined goal, whereas effectual reasoning start to analyze their means and then allow their goal to emerge over time. In this research, the focus was on the perceived influence of culture on the use of effectuation and causation. In addition, the influence of social capital was recognized within effectual reasoning. The research for this thesis has been executed based on combined theories of methodology. To measure the use of effectuation and causation, the Think Aloud method was carried out under a Canadian sample of entrepreneurs. Furthermore, several surveys were used to confirm these findings, as well as to gather insights on frequencies of social media usage among the entrepreneurs in Canada. To reinforce the findings, Canadian data on the Think Aloud method was compared to Malaysian data as previously gathered. The results of this research pointed out that there are differences between two opposite cultures regarding the use of effectuation, but there were no statistical significant results to be found. Furthermore, no impact of social media could be demonstrated, which is probably caused by the homogeneity of the sample group studied. Although not all results proved to be significant, differences between the decision-making of entrepreneurs could be presented when looking at the differences between Canadian culture and the Malaysian culture. Also, the behavior of Canadian entrepreneurs on social platforms seemed to be in line with the purpose of the platforms, but they are not being fully utilized. This insight can be useful for future education and the evolvement of the research field, the focus should be shifted to an approach that is in line with current technologies.
Item Type:	Essay (Master)
Faculty:	BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:	85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:	Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:	https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62695
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