Personality Characteristics and the Decision to Become and Stay Self-Employed

By Marco Caliendo, Frank M. Fossen, A. Kritikos. Social Science Research Network, 2011

330 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which are more specifically related to entrepreneurial tasks, influence entry into self-employment and survival of self-employed persons in Germany. The empirical analysis reveals that among the specific characteristics in particular "risk attitudes" and "locus of control" have strong effects on entry and survival. With respect to the Big Five approach, in particular the traits "openness to experience" and "extraversion" and to a lower extent "agreeableness" and "neuroticism" help to explain entrepreneurial development. The explanatory power of the Big Five is comparable to one of the most prominent determinants of entrepreneurship - education - and approximately three times larger than parental self-employment.

Subfields: Education, Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/714cab5e0e7fcb6bbce3048439f30b56147af7b1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. R. Fairlie
2. Michael Stuetzer
3. M. Obschonka

In Management of Technology and Innovation

1. Michael Stuetzer
2. M. Obschonka
3. W. Holleran
4. R. Fairlie
5. Taehyun Ahn
6. Alicia Robb
7. S. Karimi
8. Milena Nikolova

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Michael Stuetzer
2. R. Fairlie
3. M. Obschonka
4. S. Karimi

Citations in the corpus

• Individual Determinants of Self-Employment Entry – What Do We Really Know? (2013, unknown): “These exercises have consistently provided a solid confirmation of the predicted relationship (e.g., Fairlie, 1999; Dunn and Holtz-Eakin, 2000; Blanchflower, 2004; Falk and Leoni, 2009; Andersson and Hammarstedt, 2010a; Brown et al., 2011a; Caliendo et al., 2011; Baumann and Brändle, 2012; Fritsch a”
• Entrepreneurship training, risk aversion and other personality traits: Evidence from a random experiment (2012, background): “See Parker (2009), van Praag (2005) and Fairlie and Robb (2008) for reviews of the literature.”
• Locus of control and the labor market (2015, unknown): “the pace of occupational advancement (Andrisani 1977), and the propensity to become self-employed (Hansemark 2003; Caliendo et al. 2014).”
• Integrating psychological approaches to entrepreneurship: the Entrepreneurial Personality System (EPS) (2017, methodology): “Entry into self-employment In contrast to selfemployment status at one point in time, the second indicator of entrepreneurial outcomes captures the entry of individuals into self-employment from a process perspective (Caliendo et al. 2014).”
• Household Finances and the 'Big Five' Personality Traits (2014, background): “4 assertive, dominant, ambitious and energetic; emotional stability (opposite to neuroticism) is described as relating to self-confidence, optimism and the ability to deal with stressful situations; openness to experience is described as relating to an individual’s creativity, innovativeness and cur”