| Abstract: |
Based on a trait-oriented approach, Big Five personality traits have been
repeatedly shown to affect entrepreneurial action. In the last two decades, a
new literature stream on the Big Five has emerged in the field of psychology
that has partly moved away from a traitbased perspective towards a
person-centered approach, suggesting that multiple stable combinations of
traits form individual personalities. We examine the relationship between this
prototyping approach and entrepreneurship. Moreover, we compare prototyping
with entrepreneurial profiling, another person-oriented approach to the Big
Five, which assumes that low levels of agreeableness and high levels of all
other traits describe a particular entrepreneurship-prone personality. By
using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that at least
three prototypes can be identified, one of which - the resilient type - can be
hypothesized to significantly increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial
action. Our regression results provide evidence of a positive impact of the
resilient type on the likelihood of and transitioning into self-employment but
not the likelihood of exit. We also show that the prototyping approach
explains individual self-employment decisions over and above what can already
be explained by the profiling approach. Thus, the entrepreneurial profile
tends to ignore a relatively large number of individuals who exhibit certain
combinations of traits predisposing them to become entrepreneurs. In the
context of entrepreneurship, profiling should therefore only be seen as a
first step on the way from the usual trait-based to a person-oriented view of
the Big Five. |