26/05/2008 1Work, organizational and personnel psychology

Predicting multidimensional

entrepreneurial success from

personality

Vantilborgh Tim, Joly Jeroen, Pepermans Roland

Leuven, 26 mei 2008

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Entrepreneurship

“The entrepreneur uses his personality and nothing but his personality”

(Schumpeter, 1911, p417)

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Entrepreneurship: An Introduction

ہ Entrepreneurs : drive behind economic growth

ہ Increased research in entrepreneurship

ہ Firm level : entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as a strategy

ہ Individual level : personality traits & entrepreneurship

ہ Need for a predictive instrument (individual level)

What differentiates “successful” from “unsuccessful” entrepreneurs ?

ہ Psychological aspect of entrepreneurship, based on

traits

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Definitions

ہ Who/what is an entrepreneur ?ہ Founder / owner societal “improver” ہ Operationally: venture number (VAT, TAV , BTW)

ہ What is success ?ہ Objective factors: financial turnover & employment ranking within

sectorہ Subjective factors (self-reported): satisfaction with several aspects

ہ Entrepreneurship is more than just EOہ EO at individual levelہ Number of traits associated with entrepreneurship (differentiating)

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Questionnaire

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Method

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Item pool + Pilot Testing

ہ Literature & Interviewsہ 9 existing questionnaires (99 items)ہ Expert judges (assessing item pool quality)ہ Interview entrepreneurs (N=9)

ہ Pilot testingہ Random sample (N=202)ہ Reliability & Item analysis

ہ Alpha score, uni-dimensionality, distribution of items ہ Exploratory FA

52 Items

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Main Study

ہ Samplesہ Entrepreneurs sample (N=218)ہ Control sample (N=600)

ہ Measures ہ Independent variables: 9 personality factors + subfactors

ہ Dependent variables ہ Objective success

ہ Relative financial turnover rank within sectorہ Relative employment rank within sectorہ Subjective success (alpha=.82)ہ Satisfaction with finances, venture evolution, own evolution,

contribution to society, work/family balance

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Results

ہ Retesting measurement models:

ہ Subdimensions found:

ہ Risk-aversion & Risk-seeking

ہ Social & Instrumental Self-Efficacy (SE)

ہ Internal & External Locus of Control

ہ All other measurement models proved stable

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Results (2)

ہ Known-group validity:ہ Sign. differences found for 8 dimensions between entrepreneurs and non-

entrepreneurs (p<.001)ہ No sign. difference for Competitive Aggressiveness and subdimension work-

ethics (Need for Achievement)

ہ Predictive Validity:ہ Internal Locus of Control, Self Efficacy & Competitive Aggressiveness

together explain a significant amount of variance in subjective success (R²=.178)

ہ Internal Locus of Control, Innovation, Risk-seeking squared & Risk-aversion together explain a significant amount of variance in turnover scores (R²=.125)

ہ Internal Locus of Control, Innovation & Risk-seeking squared together explain a significant amount of variance in employment scores (R²=.090)

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Conclusion

ہ All 9 dimensions of our questionnaire play a role in entrepreneurship:

ہ Either by differentiating between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs

ہ Or by predicting objective and/or subjective success

ہ Internal Locus of Control plays a major role in predicting objective as well as subjective success

ہ Risk-seeking seems to have a curvilinear relation with objective success

ہ Better prediction of subjective success then objective success

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Future Research

ہ We are currently working on a smaller version of the questionnaire (24 items) able to predict almost as much variance as the full version

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