Why Do Employees Leave Their Firm to Become Entrepreneurs? A Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

There is a lack of consensus regarding the predictors of entrepreneurial spawning. We meta-analyzed 28 studies (with 128 effect sizes) to examine the predictors of entrepreneurial spawning. Our findings indicate that some employee characteristics (age, gender, family background, education, family income, and job position) are positively and significantly associated with entrepreneurial spawning, some parent firm characteristics (firm age, firm performance, firm diversity, and patents) are negatively and significantly related to entrepreneurial spawning, and some environmental characteristics (self-employment and unemployment rate) are positively and significantly related to entrepreneurial spawning. We identified two inverted U-shaped relationships (age and tenure with entrepreneurial spawning).