Self-regulation and heuristics in entrepreneurial opportunity selection and exploitation

Cognition plays a major role in the use of heuristics by entrepreneurs in selecting and exploiting new opportunities. This paper reports a mixed methods study that explored the role of social cognitive self-regulation in those processes. Based upon measures of two existing self-regulatory constructs regulatory pride and self-efficacy entrepreneurs appeared heterogeneous in terms of their self-regulatory characteristics, and different as a group from other kinds of managers. When analyzed in combination with interview data, those patterns of self-regulation were strongly related to the use of specific heuristics in opportunity selection and exploitation, and to the management of heuristic bias.