Banca de DEFESA: GRACEANE COELHO DE SOUZA

THE PROCESS OF BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR: ACTIONS, OPPORTUNITIES AND ENTREPRENEURIAL NETWORKS

causation, effectuation, opportunities, entrepreneurial networks, entrepreneurial
process.

The entrepreneurial process from the effectuation perspective has three basic elements:
assessment of available resources, assessment of possible courses of action and interactions
with other people. In this thesis, these elements were used to analyze how entrepreneurs can
employ causation and effectuation simultaneously in some phases of this process: in
opportunity development, in new venture creation and in entrepreneurial networking behavior.
Thus, the general objective was to analyze how the entrepreneurial process of small business
founders occurs through the lens of causation and effectuation for the opportunity
development, new venture creation and entrepreneurial networking behavior, considering the
antecedents and impacts of the post-pandemic context. A qualitative methodology was
appropriate for this study, whose data collection technique was interviews. In total, 20
entrepreneurs were interviewed in person, and the requirements for participation were: being
the founder/owner and manager of a small business, being the main or one of the main
decision makers of the business, being a resident of the city of Salvador or its metropolitan
region. The data analysis technique was content analysis, which was supported by the Atlas Ti
software to systematize the results. The main result found by this thesis is that entrepreneurs
employ causation and effectuation simultaneously at different moments of the process, with
effectuation being more predominant in the of thought´s logic, opportunity development and
new venture creation, and causation being more predominant in actions to uncertainty in the
future of the enterprise and in the entrepreneurial networking behavior. It was therefore
observed that flexibility and being alert to new opportunities was essential for the survival of
the business or made it possible to start a new career and even a new business. And, at the
same time, it revealed the importance of actions involving planning, diversification and market
analysis as a way of reducing uncertainties related to the future. Therefore, the results found in
this thesis help to understand the complexity of the entrepreneurial process, with the difference
being the association of the main elements in a single explanatory model.