Paid Employee or Entrepreneur? How Approach and Avoidance Career Goal Orientations Motivate Individual Career Choice Decisions

The focus of much career choice research is framed around a uni-dimensional conceptualization of motivation in which the tendency to approach a career assumes a proportionately equal and opposite willingness to avoid it. Drawing upon Regulatory Focus Theory we advance a dual-channel model of career choice which allows us to capture the competing goal orientations leading individuals to approach and avoid any given career choice decision. Our results support our main hypothesis that both promotion and prevention career goal orientations mediate the relationship between individual differences, situational characteristics, and career choices in either paid employment or entrepreneurship