The Big 5 and Entrepreneurial Intention

Big Five Entrepreneurial Intention

1 Openness to experience + Positive
2 Conscientiousness Ø Null
3 Extraversion + Positive
4 Agreeableness - Negative
5 Neuroticism Ø Null

The Big-5 traits may also determine entrepreneurial intentions. Antoncic et al. (2015) conducted
62 face-to-face interviews at firms through 501 questionnaires at educational institutions, classifying
people into four groups:

1. Practicing entrepreneurs who already own a firm (30.2% of responses);

2. Potential entrepreneurs who intend to establish their own firm in the following three years
(9.9%);
3. maybe-entrepreneurs who might establish their own firm in the future (46.7); and
4. non-entrepreneurs who never intend to set up their own firm (13.2%)

Hence, openness to experience positively correlate with entrepreneurial intention.

Explanation: Apparently, near half of the participants would want to become entrepreneurs. The study
also finds of variation for openness: practicing entrepreneurs are the open to experience, potential
entrepreneur’s slightly less open, would-be entrepreneurs even less open, and non-entrepreneurs the
least open

The limitations for meta-analyses may in part reflect the influence of the environment on each
entrepreneurial populations, industry, and culture are an impossible task. Whether driven by necessity
or opportunity, entrepreneurs bring different personality traits.

Explanation: According to (Envick and Langford, 2000; much of the variation across individual studies are
due to the small sample sizes, which usually only capture a few hundred respondents. Also, Zhao and
Seibert (2006) and Zhao et al. (2010) stated that small sample sizes are unlikely to be the only answer
the patterns in meta-analyses overlap but are also not fully congruous.

Another critique of the Big 5 framework is the general nature of these broad personality traits, such that
they cannot easily predict situation-specific behaviors; also, an understanding of a person’s Big 5
personality may provide specific mechanisms through which personality impacts entrepreneurial
attitudes and actions

In the light of these limitation of the Big-5 to describe a coherent portrait of the entrepreneur,
researchers have shifted toward creating a multidimensional personality framework that incorporates
other qualities like self-efficacy, innovativeness, locus of control, and need for achievement.
Correlates of Self-efficacy and other Traits

Entrepreneurs must have a strong sense of personal self-efficacy to accomplish their visions and
the keen eyesight to innovate new products and identify new marketplaces.

According to (Cassar and Friedman, 2009) many researches hypothesize that in creating a new venture
in an uncertain and competitive environment, entrepreneurs must have a strong sense of personal self-
efficacy to accomplish their visions and the keen eyesight to innovate new products and identify new
marketplaces.

Also (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998), (Lent and Hackett, 1987), (Baum and Locked, 2004) stated that self-
efficacy correlates with work-related performance, career choice, and small business growth.

According to (Chen et. al. 1988) measured on two levels of specificity, self-efficacy is either generalized
or domain specific the latter constitutes entrepreneurial self-efficacy. It is also a composite of five skills:
innovation, risk taking, marketing, management, and financial control.

(Chen et. al. 1998) also stated that in a survey of students in three business study programs, they find
that entrepreneurship students have a higher ESE average in marketing, management, and financial
control than did organizational psychology and management students. Perhaps entrepreneurship
programs attracted students who feel confident in many areas for the varied demands of being an
entrepreneur, or maybe the study of entrepreneurship imparts this ESE.

They found that business founders have a higher ESE in innovation and risk-taking than no-founders,
even as the locus of control (belief of having control over situations and experiences) remains the same
across the two populations.

Utsch and Rauch (2000) find innovativeness and initiative as mediators of achievement orientation,
which in this case is a composite measure

(Goldsmith and Foxall, 2003) Innovativeness refers to how individuals respond to a new thing.

(Hurt et al., 1997) It is either a global or domain-specific personality trait or a behavioral concept such as
new products by consumers. There have been several suggestions to measure innovativeness since the
1970s but, no uniform measure exists across the studies reviewed here. The results of studies also vary
and overlap.
Marcati et al. (2008) found that domain-specific innovativeness of founders completely mediates their
general innovativeness in a sample 188 entrepreneurs of small- and medium-sized firms of various
industries. Both forms of innovativeness display consistent correlations with Big-5 traits, not showing
major differences in their origin.

Acording to Kickul and Gundry (2002) analyze the relationship between 107 small-firm owner-managers
strategic orientation, personality, and innovation. They adopt the Mile and Snow strategic orientation
typology which divides business strategies into prospector, defender, analyzer, and reactor strategies.

. Kickul and Gundry (2002) find that the prospector's strategic orientation mediates proactive
personality and three types of innovations: innovative targeting processes, innovative organizational
systems and innovative boundary supports. They also find that those with proactive personalities are
more likely to take on a prospector strategy orientation and innovate in their work.

According to (Parker, 2009) Evidence on related industry-level research supports this hypothesis, with
industries showing high rates of entry by small firms also having high rates of innovation and high
productivity growth

One explanation for this innovativeness-risk-personality lies from the lack of consensus on an agreed-
upon set of survey questions to measure someone innovativeness and how to measure risk preferences
in relation the Big-5 traits.

Hence, the proposal for the concept of prospector strategy. The concept means constantly seeking new
markets and opportunities and consist of three types:

1) a defender strategy concentrates on protecting current markets and maintaining stable growth;

2) an analyzer strategy both try to maintain market share and seek new market opportunities; and

3) reactor strategy who cannot anticipate or influence events in the environment (Bandura, 1997;
Forbes, 2005). Scholars were reluctant to Pursue further studies on prospector strategy possibly for
limited publication on this area.

According to (Griffin, 1992) Another explanation is that the identification of ESE traits is sensitive to the
reverse causality and omitted variable bias concerns thereby increase the difficulty.

Cassar and Friedman (2009) compared nascent entrepreneurs in the start-up phase of new ventures
with a control in drawn from the general working-age population. The Panel Study of Entrepreneurial
Dynamics (PSED) defines a nascent entrepreneur as anyone who is currently trying to start a new
business, expects to be an owner or part-owner of the firm, and active in doing so for the past 12
months.

Cassar and Friedman (2009) assert that their data, drawn from the PSED and interview and survey
responses of 431 American nascent entrepreneurs, present evidence that higher ESE increases the
likelihood of being a nascent entrepreneur and the successful founding of a business.