The Perceived Barriers to Transition to Entrepreneurship: A Case of Sri Lanka

The Great Resignation, or the Big Quit, shook the world of work, leaving it questionable whether organizations could find and retain the necessary talents. Nevertheless, the shrinking Transition to Entrepreneurship (TE) demonstrated that developing countries were less affected by this massive attrition wave. However, in the context of developing countries, the causes of thinner TE remain unknown. The current study investigated the perceived barriers to TE in the Sri Lankan context. The present study followed a quantitative approach to test the extent to which demographic, environmental, motivational, human capital, and behavioral factors are perceived as barriers to TE intention. Participants in the field survey provided the data based on a psychometric measure with a seven-point response scale. Structured Equation Modelling (SEM) analyzed the data. According to the findings, employees in Sri Lankan context are more likely to avoid transitioning from their current employment to entrepreneurship because they perceive behavioral, human capital, and demographic factors as barriers to TE. However, the prospective entrepreneurs in the Sri Lanka did not perceive motivational and environmental factors as significant barriers to TE. The implications suggest modeling TE by incorporating the identified roadblocks to TE to predict entrepreneurial penetration in developing countries.