Beneath the surface of small business starters striving for autonomy, they differ in their relative emphasis on the underlying sources of the autonomy motive. We investigated why small business starters want autonomy.

The motivation for autonomy can be an end in itself. The small business starter is then motivated by the decisional freedoms and responsibilities with regard to the what, how, and when aspects of work. Autonomy can also be instrumental for the fulfilment of other motives. These distal autonomy motives are: Resistance towards bosses or rules, self-congruence/self-endorsement, and power/control.

Autonomy is a primary motive for a large majority of small business starters. However, as an explanation of why people want their own (autonomous) business it is largely circular. Therefore we focus on an explanation of the autonomy motive itself.

To obtain our results, phone interviews were held with a sample of 167 nascent entrepreneurs motivated by autonomy.