The moderating role of explanatory style between experience and entrepreneurial self-efficacy

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of the cognitive conditions that facilitate entrepreneurial action by integrating prior literature from entrepreneurship and social psychology, a model is developed to explain the interrelationship between human and social capital, and two cognitive dimensions: explanatory style, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy that leads to positive entrepreneurial results. The paper: (1) proposes a conceptual framework to help direct future empirical research on the interrelationship between human capital, experience, explanatory style and entrepreneurial self efficacy; and (2) develops a decision-making matrix to guide policy makers towards enhancing the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. The paper contributes to our understanding of entrepreneurial self-efficacy by integrating a variety of perspectives to better comprehend the fuzzy front end of entrepreneurial self-efficacy.