A Comparison of Students' use of Effectuation and Causation Principles with that of Practitioners

Abstract

This thesis tries to answer the following question: How do entrepreneurship students’ perceptions of venturing, in the context of causation and effectuation, compare to experts and entrepreneurs’ paths to success? To answer this question fourteen subjects were interviewed, there were four Experts, five were Entrepreneurs, and the last five were Students. The interviews were coded and analyzed by using S. Sarasvathy’s (2001) definitions of effectuation and causation. Each theory has five concepts that were used in this study, examples of these principles were coded for in the interviews to determine whether the interviewees were acting in effectual or causational manner. Eventually we determine prototypes for the different groups which are used to put forth a number of propositions that were helpful in answering our research question. We found that Students are the least effectual among the group and that they fall between Experts and Entrepreneurs when it comes to causational thinking; Experts are the most causational and Entrepreneurs are the least causational.