Autonomy Reframed: How Founders Experience Changes in Autonomy and Intrinsic Motivation Following Venture Capital Investment

Sammanfattning

Founders often enter venture capital relationships with a high degree of autonomy and then encounter formal governance changes that prior research literature tends to model as a single, one-directional cost to motivation. Drawing on eleven semi-structured interviews with Swedish founders, nine of whom are venture-capital backed, this thesis examines how founders interpret these changes and how their interpretations shape intrinsic motivation. The data are analysed abductively through Self-Determination Theory as the primary lens, with psychological ownership as a complementary lens. Across the cases, formal governance does not simply produce a uniform decline in motivation; it reframes autonomy rather than removing it. This effect is filtered through five conditions: the founder's prior autonomy baseline, how far the trade-off was anticipated, preparedness before investment, governance quality (whether the investor relationship is experienced as support or as control), and psychological ownership of the venture. Some founders absorb governance constraints as chosen discipline; others experience the same constraints as imposed control. Most describe a partial shift along the SDT continuum, from intrinsic toward more controlled regulation, while remaining engaged. The activities founders single out as motivationally costly are not necessarily those that take the most time, but those whose source they read as external. The thesis contributes a more textured account of post-VC motivation than a binary motivation/amotivation reading allows. It identifies preparedness as an underexamined condition shaping internalisation in the SDT sense, and shows that psychological ownership operates as a motivational buffer that sustains engagement even as formal control and ownership are reduced.