Construct · 3 names · 6 citations

Where does entrepreneurial self-efficacy collide?

Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.

● jangle · one construct, many scales Nearest construct by meaningself-efficacycompare the meanings
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Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to entrepreneurial self-efficacy is self-efficacy.

Hold this as a prompt, not a verdict. Two constructs sitting close in meaning is a reason to read them side by side and decide for yourself whether they are one idea under two names. It is not proof that they are. Compare the meanings in the Collider.

DOMAIN-SPECIFIC ESEDECONTEXTUALISED TRAITentrepreneurialself-efficacy3 NAMESEntrepreneurshipCHEN · DE NOBLE · McGEESocial cognitiveBANDURA · TASK-SPECIFICGeneral SE (trait)CHEN GULLY EDEN · GSE

Spokes are the names and the models that coined them; dashed arcs are borrowings. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.

1977Social cognitive1998Entrepreneurship2001General SE (trait)
2026

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Entrepreneurship

Belief in one's capability to perform the tasks and roles of an entrepreneur

Belief in one's capability to successfully carry out the tasks and roles involved in starting and running a venture. Chen, Greene, and Crick introduced the construct in 1998 with a 22-item measure spanning marketing, innovation, management, risk-taking, and financial control, and showed it separated founders from managers and predicted students' intention to start a business. De Noble, Jung, and Ehrlich built a competing measure in 1999 around a different set of entrepreneurial skills, and McGee, Peterson, Mueller, and Sequeira rebuilt it again in 2009 around phases of the venture process. Newman and colleagues counted a whole field of incompatible scales in their 2019 review. This is the domain-specific belief itself, and the collision on this page is that it is narrower than the general trait of confidence, broader than the single named task the parent theory requires, and measured by scales that rarely agree on its content.[1][2][3][4]

Unit
A person's confidence rating across entrepreneurial tasks or venture phases
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Confidence Likert items on venture tasks; entrepreneurial intention as the usual criterion

Social cognitive psychology

The task-specific parent belief from which ESE descends

The parent idea from which every ESE scale descends: the conviction that one can carry out the specific actions a situation demands, which Bandura set out in 1977 and separated from the outcome expectation that those actions will produce a result. Bandura held that efficacy beliefs are built from mastery experience, watching others, persuasion, and bodily state, and, crucially, that they must be measured against graded tasks in a named situation rather than as global confidence. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy borrows this logic but stretches it across a whole domain, the venture, instead of a single task. This framing is the theoretical source, not a rival scale: it is why the domain-wide entrepreneurship measures predict less strongly than the specificity rule would require, and why the broad trait of general confidence is a different thing again.[5]

Unit
A person's belief about executing a specific action in a specific situation
Recovery means
Not applicable, efficacy is built rather than recovered
Measured by
Graded task lists rated for confidence, matched to the criterion behaviour

Personality psychology

General self-efficacy as a broad trait, the contrast to ESE

General self-efficacy is the contrast case: a stable, broad belief in one's ability to cope across many situations, measured with no task or domain named. Chen, Gully, and Eden built the eight-item New General Self-Efficacy scale in 2001 as a trait-level measure, and this decontextualised confidence is exactly what entrepreneurial self-efficacy is supposed to be distinguished from. Newman and colleagues warned in 2019 that some measures labelled entrepreneurial self-efficacy are really general confidence with the word entrepreneur attached, which inflates correlations and blurs the construct. The referent here is a person's overall self-belief, not their belief about venturing in particular, and treating the two as one variable is the central error this page is about.[6][4]

Unit
A person's stable self-belief across situations, with no domain named
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Eight-item NGSE or ten-item GSE Likert scales, with no task specified

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Nearby collisions

self-efficacy5 fields · 10 citationsjingle · one name, five constructsentrepreneurial orientation6 names · 10 citationsjangle · two scales, one name, contestedefficacy4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructs

References

  1. Chen, C. C., Greene, P. G., & Crick, A. (1998). Does entrepreneurial self-efficacy distinguish entrepreneurs from managers? Journal of Business Venturing, 13(4), 295–316. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0883-9026(97)00029-3
  2. De Noble, A. F., Jung, D., & Ehrlich, S. B. (1999). Entrepreneurial self-efficacy: The development of a measure and its relationship to entrepreneurial action. In P. D. Reynolds et al. (Eds.), Frontiers of entrepreneurship research (pp. 73–87). Babson College.
  3. McGee, J. E., Peterson, M., Mueller, S. L., & Sequeira, J. M. (2009). Entrepreneurial self-efficacy: Refining the measure. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 33(4), 965–988. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2009.00304.x
  4. Newman, A., Obschonka, M., Schwarz, S., Cohen, M., & Nielsen, I. (2019). Entrepreneurial self-efficacy: A systematic review of the literature on its theoretical foundations, measurement, antecedents, and outcomes, and an agenda for future research. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 110, 403–419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.05.012
  5. Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
  6. Chen, G., Gully, S. M., & Eden, D. (2001). Validation of a new general self-efficacy scale. Organizational Research Methods, 4(1), 62–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/109442810141004

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