This study builds a grounded model of how careers shape entrepreneurs' preference for causal and effectual decision logics when starting new ventures. Using both verbal protocol analysis and interviews, we adopt a qualitative research approach to induct career management practices germane to entrepreneurial decision making. Based on our empirical findings, we develop a model conceptualizing how configurations of career management practices, reflecting different emphases on career planning and

more »

... reer investment, are linked to entrepreneurial decision making through the imprint that they leave on one's view of the future, generating a tendency toward predictive and/or creative control. These findings extend effectuation theorizing by reformulating one of its most pervasive assumptions and showing how careers produce distinct pathways to entrepreneurial thinking, even prior to entrepreneurial entry. 'In my career, I hadn't really thought of myself as an entrepreneur, but I had thought that I was responsible for myself. So in a sense, I had the thought that I'm the owner of my own business, and being the owner of yourself, it's how do you invest in yourself, how do you take responsibility for being better [...] ? I hadn't thought that the skill set of entrepreneurs, when I was going through as an employee, was the skills that I need. It was only later, when I started doing entrepreneurship, that I realized that those skills were the precise skills that would enable me to invest in myself and helped me both create the future and adapt to the future.'