Let's Put the Person Back into Entrepreneurship Research: A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Business Owners' Personality Traits, Business Creation, and Success

Abstract

The role of personality traits in the decision to start a business and to maintain it successfully is discussed controversially in entrepreneurship research. Our meta-analysis builds upon and extends earlier meta-analyses by doing a full analysis of personality traits that includes a comparison of different traits from a theoretical perspective and by analysing a full set of personality predictors for both start-up activities as well as success. Theoretically, our article adds to the literature by matching traits to the tasks of entrepreneurs. The results indicate that traits matched to the task of running a business produced higher effect sizes with business creation than traits that were not matched to the task of running an enterprise, corrected r = .247, K = 47, N = 13,280, and corrected r = .124, K = 20, N = 3975, respectively. Moreover, traits matched to the task produced higher correlations with success, corrected r = .250, K = 42, N = 5607, than traits not matched to the task of running a business, corrected r = .028, K = 13, N = 2777. The traits matched to entrepreneurship significantly correlated with entrepreneurial behaviour (business creation, business success) were need for achievement, generalized self-efficacy, innovativeness, stress tolerance, need for autonomy, and proactive personality. These relationships were of moderate size in general and, moreover, heterogeneity suggested that future research should analyse moderator variables.

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Let's put the person back into entrepreneurship
research: A meta-analysis on the relationship between
business owners' personality traits, business creation,
and success
Andreas Rauch
a
; Michael Frese
a
a
University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany
First Published on: 12 October 2007
To cite this Article: Rauch, Andreas and Frese, Michael (2007) 'Let's put the person
back into entrepreneurship research: A meta-analysis on the relationship between
business owners' personality traits, business creation, and success', European Journal of Work and Organizational
Psychology, 16:4, 353 - 385
To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13594320701595438
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Let’s put the person back into entrepreneurship
research: A meta-analysis on the relationship between
business owners’ personality traits, business creation,
and success
Andreas Rauch and Michael Frese
University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany
The role of personality traits in the decision to start a business and to maintain
it successfully is discussed controversially in entrepreneurship research. Our
meta-analysis builds upon and extends earlier meta-analyses by doing a full
analysis of personality traits that includes a comparison of different traits from
a theoretical perspective and by analysing a full set of personality predictors for
both start-up activities as well as success. Theoretically, our article adds to the
literature by matching traits to the tasks of entrepreneurs. The results indicate
that traits matched to the task of running a business produced higher effect sizes
with business creation than traits that were not matched to the task of running
an enterprise, corrected r ¼ .247, K ¼ 47, N ¼ 13,280, and corrected r ¼ .124,
K ¼ 20, N ¼ 3975, respectively. Moreover, traits matched to the task produced
higher correlations with success, corrected r ¼ .250, K ¼ 42, N ¼ 5607, than
traits not matched to the task of running a business, corrected r ¼ .028, K ¼ 13,
N ¼ 2777. The traits matched to entrepreneurship significantly correlated with
entrepreneurial behaviour (business creation, business success) were need for
achievement, generalized self-efficacy, innovativeness, stress tolerance, need for
autonomy, and proactive personality. These relationships were of moderate size
in general and, moreover, heterogeneity suggested that future research should
analyse moderator variables.
Research on personal traits seems to have reached an empirical dead end
(Aldrich, 1999, p. 76)
Relationships between personality traits and entrepreneurial behaviour are
frequently addressed in entrepreneurshi p theorizing and research. Yet, a
Correspondence should be addressed to Andreas Rauch, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
RSM Erasmus University, Entrepreneurship and New Business Venturing, Burg. Ouderlaan 50,
3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: arauch@rsm.nl
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND
ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
2007, 16 (4), 353 – 385
Ó 2007 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/ejwop DOI: 10.1080/13594320701595438

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deep-rooted scepticism prevails in the entrepreneurship literature about the
presence and the strength of this relationship. While some narrative reviews
concluded that there is indeed a positive relationship between personality
traits and both business creation and business success (Chell, Haworth, &
Brearley, 1991; Cooper & Gimeno-Gascon, 1992; Rauch & Frese, 2000),
other narrative reviews concluded that there is no such relationship
(Brockhaus & Horwitz, 1986; Gartner, 1989; Low & MacMillan, 1988).
Recent meta-analyses provided evidence for the predictive vali dity of
personality traits in entrepreneurial research (Collins, Hanges, & Locke,
2004; Stewart & Roth, 2001, 2004b; Zhao & Seibert, 2006) and suggest
further analysis of contingencies that impact the size of the relationship. We
build upon these meta -analyses and extend the reach of our meta -analysis in
the following way: First, we propose to study specific traits, such as
achievement motive, rather than broad categories of traits, such as the Big
Five, to predict entrepreneurial behaviour. Second, a related point is to ask
the question of whether the trait is matched to the task or not. We propose
that a good match between traits and the tasks of run ning a business allows
for higher validities in the context of entrepreneurship research than
personality traits not matched to entrepreneurship. Third, we study both
business creation as well as business success and examine the relationships
between personality and entrepreneurship in different contexts—business
creation and success. Finally, we intended to be as inclusive in the number of
traits studied as the literat ure allows us to be. The present study attempts to
test a full set of traits to provide a complete picture of the relationship
between personality and entrepreneurshi p, which in turn permits us to
present an empirical answer to the question of whi ch traits are valid
predictors of entrepreneurial success.
Such a meta-analysis has important consequences for theory and model
building. If a meta-analysis finds relationships of personality with business
success to be important, theories of entrepreneurship must take the
dynamics of personality into account, and model building needs to consider
personality factors when predicting business success, similar to environ-
mental and industry conditions. Therefore, this article first unfolds the
theoretical assumptions that justify a positive relationship between owners’
personality traits and entrepreneurial behaviour. Following this, we discuss
previous meta-analyses on traits of entrepreneurs before we develop the
framework and hypotheses used in the present study.
THE FUNCTION OF PERSONALITY TRAITS IN
ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESSES
Entrepreneurship has been defined using a behavioural definition; for
example, the creation of new organizations (Gartner , 1989). A frequently
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used behavioural definition of entrepreneurs refers to independent owner-
ship, active management, and/or expressed intention to do so (Stewart &
Roth, 2001). Other definitions of entrepreneurship describe tasks, such as
the recognition and exploitation of opportunities, as central to entrepreneur-
ship (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). We included articles in our meta-
analysis using a broad behavioural definition of entrepreneurship. On the
other hand, we use more specific task descriptions of entrepreneurship, such
as the one by Shane and Venkataraman, when discussing the importance of
matching personality traits to entrepreneurship.
Personality traits are defined as dispositions to exhibit a certain kind of
response across various situations (Caprana & Cervone, 2000); personality
traits are also enduring and show a high degree of stability across time
(Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, & Knafo, 2002). We follow McCrae and Costa
(1990) and conceptualize personality traits as propensities to act. Different
propensities may facilitate or impede business owners’ actions and
behaviours. Therefore, we assume that personality traits are predictors of
entrepreneurial behaviour (Rauch & Frese, 2000). Kanfer (1992) referred to
personality traits as distal variables. Distal dispositions include noncognitive
and nonability dispositions that affect beh aviour and performance
indirectly. Such traits include biological determinants (such as tempera-
ment), broad personality factors (such as the Big Five), motives (such as
achievement motive), and generalized attitudes and beliefs (such as
generalized self-efficacy). Thus, this study uses the term personality traits
generally to describe the distal dispositions of entrepr eneurs.
Classic economic theorizing has emphasized personality traits to describe
entrepreneurs; examples are creativity (Schumpeter, 1935) and risk taking
(Knight, 1921; Mill, 1909). Empirical studies on need for achievement
provided support for this assumption as business owners have higher values
in need for achievement than managers, and need for achievement is
positively related to business success (McClelland, 1961). However,
subsequent research raised serious doubts as to whether personality plays
any role in the start-up phase and for business success. Gartner (1985)
argued that entrepreneurs constitute a highly heterogeneous group of people
that defies a common definition and, therefore, common predictors; in other
words, an ‘‘average entrepreneur’’ does not exist and, therefore, an average
personality profile of entrepreneurs cannot be determined. Low and
McMillan (1988) argued that personality-based descriptive studies do not
help to develop a theory of entrepreneurship (p. 148). Reviewers of the
literature have, therefore, sugge sted to discontinue the search for personality
traits in entrepreneurship research (e.g., Aldrich, 1999).
The proposal to discontinue the study of personal ity within entrepreneur-
ship research was based on narrative reviews of the literature. Meta-analysis
approaches have argued that it is often hard to detect small but important
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relationships with a narrative review (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004): Small
relationships are often difficult to detect, because they are masked by
frequent nonsignificant findings (often a result of lack of power) and the fact
that unreliability of measures may lead to small attenuated empirical
correlations (in contrast, a meta-analysis typic ally corrects for reliability
issues). This often leads to a more negative view of the evidence than is
called for. All of these (and other) issues might result in a higher incidence of
Type II errors (Hunter & Schmidt, 1996; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1 991).
Indeed, recent meta-analytical evidence provides support for the
predictive validities of personality traits. Zhao and Seibert (2006) addressed
in their meta-analysis multiple traits by coding various personality traits into
the five factors of the Big Five model. Results indicated differences between
entrepreneurs and managers in conscientiousness, openness to experience,
neuroticism, and agreeableness. Other meta-analyses studied the two specific
personality traits—risk taking and achievement motive—that are theoreti-
cally related to the domain of entrepreneurship. For example, entrepreneurs
risk losing their investments in contrast to mana gers; therefore, they should
be high in risk taking (Knight, 1921). Stewart and Roth (2001, 2004a) found
small and significant differences in risk propensity between entrepreneurs
and managers. Variations in effect sizes were fully explained by different
instruments used to measure risk propensity: Objective measures produced
higher effect sizes than projective measures. Need for achievement is an
additional trait that has been related to economic outcomes and business
performance (McClelland, 1961). Two meta-analyses addressed ne ed for
achievement of entrepreneurs: The difference between entrepreneurs and
nonentrepreneurs was of moderate size (d ¼ 0.44 and d ¼ 0.39; Collins et al.,
2004, Stewart & Roth, 2004b, respectively). Moreover, need for achievement
was positively related to success (r ¼ .26; Collins et al., 2004). Thus, these
meta-analyses show the validities of selected personality variables.
We build our meta-analysis on this prior work and extend the coverage.
The previous meta-analyses studied only differences between entrepreneurs
and managers (with the exception of Collins et al., 2004). Entrepreneurship
theory needs to know not only how entrepreneurs’ personality is different
from nonentrepreneurs but also whether or not personality traits are related
to business success. At present we know this only for one trait—achievement
motive, which was studied by Collins et al. (2004). Zhao and Seibert (2006)
have presented the most encompassing meta-analysis up to this point. They
concentrated on the relationship between personality variables and start-up
activities. We complement this study by examining the relationships between
traits and success. Zhao and Seibert did not directly analyse the Big Five
traits but coded studies according to the five-factor taxonomy. As a
consequence, they included both broad and specific traits under the same
rubric. More importantly, they did not differentiate according to whether or
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not the traits matched the tasks of entrepreneurs (more on this later). This
leads to the problem that the relationships may have been underestimated.
In one instance, the authors did differentiate between two facets of
conscientiousness—the traits of achievement motive and dependability;
the results showed that only achievement motive was related to entrepre-
neurship with d (corrected) ¼ 0.59, while dependability did not show a
significant relationship, with d (corrected) ¼ 0.01. These differentiations are
washed out when reporting the Big Five category of conscientiousness,
which produced a d (corrected) ¼ 0.45. For this and further theoretical
reasons (see later), we think that it is necessary to examine specific traits and
their relationships with business creation and with business success.
Moreover, we think it is necessary to differentiate traits into those that
can be theoretically matched to the tasks of entrepreneurs a nd those that are
not matched to these tasks. We propose that a good match between traits
and the tasks of running a business allows for higher validities in the
context of entrepreneurship research than personality traits not matched to
entrepreneurship.
Matching personality traits to the task of entrepreneurship
There is a debate within work and organizational psychology about whether
researchers should use broad traits or whether they should rely on specific
traits to predict performance. For example, Ones and Viswesvaran (1996)
argued that broad big five traits are better predictors of job performance
than more specific traits, because specific traits have low reliabilities and
criterion related validity. In contrast, another set of authors suggested to
differentiate between broad and narrow traits (Barrick & Mount, 2005;
Dudley, Orvis, Lebiecki, & Cortina, 2006; Tett, Steele, & Beauregard, 2 003).
As Barrick and Mount (2005) pointed out, ‘‘narrow traits rely on explicit
description that may be situated in time, place, or role’’ (p. 367). The
usefulness of specific traits in predicting job performance was supported
(Barrick & Mount, 2005; Tett et al., 2003).
We argue in the following for an explicit differentiation of specific traits
into those that are ‘‘role’’-related and those that are not (in the sense of
Barrick & Mount, 1991), that is, we ask the question of which traits may be
related to the tasks of entrepreneurship. This also follows from a general
approach to understand work tasks first and then look at the relevant
predictors of performance (Fleishman & Quaintance, 1984) as well as from
entrepreneurship research (Baum & Locke, 2004; Collins et al., 2004).
Broad trait taxonomies use personality-based variation to organize
specific personality traits into meaningful clusters. As a result, these global
traits lose specific criterion-related variance. More specific traits can add to
the prediction of a criterion because the best predictors might very well be
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specific traits that represent different big five factors rather than many traits
from one single factor (Paunonen & Ashton, 2001). An example is the factor
conscientiousness, which includes subfactors of achievement striving and
dutifulness. A rough analysis of the tasks of entrepreneurs shows that
achievement strivings should show positive correlations with entrepreneurial
success and start-up activit ies, while dutifulness should show zero or even
negative relationships. If overall conscientiousness is used to predict
entrepreneurial success, the two underlying co ntradictory correlations may
lead to an overall small positive correl ation. Many studies on small business
owners’ personality were not theoretically driven, but were descriptive in
nature. Because both task-related as well as nontask-related personality
variables were mixed together, the overall conclusion often was that there is
only a very weak overall relationship between personality and entrepreneur-
ial performance. Thus, links between the personality traits, business start-
up, and success need to be explicitly conceptualized (Low & MacMillan,
1988); true effects will be underestimated if one does not select the
appropriate personality traits that are more likely to be predictive of
entrepreneurship (Johnson, 2003; Tett et al., 2003). Traits that are more
likely to predict entrepreneurial behaviour are those traits that match
personality with work characteristics (Holland, 1985; Vinchur, Schippmann,
Switzer, & Roth, 1998).
Recently, the literature on entrepreneurship has made great strides to
define essential parameters or roles of entrepreneurs. For example,
entrepreneurs have to detect and exploit opportunities, they have to make
rapid decisions under uncertainty and in a resource constraint environment,
they have to work harder than most employees, and they have to possess a
wide variety of skills, knowledge, and abilities (including, e.g., leadership,
management, marketing, and innovating) (Sarasvathy, 2001; Shane, 2003).
Examples of traits that are matched to such tasks are nee d for achievement,
innovativeness, proactive personality, generalized self-efficacy, stress toler-
ance, need for autonomy, internal locus of control, and risk taking. Need for
achievement implies that one chooses tasks of moderate difficulty, accepts
responsibility for results, and seeks feedback on action outcomes. It is
important for entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs need to be interested
in the tasks that they are doing to perform well. In some of the oldest work
on the differentiation between entrepreneurs and managers, McClelland
(1961) showed that achievement motive was higher in entrepreneurs. Only if
they did well at tasks of moderate difficulty, accepted responsibility for
results, and sought feedback on business outcomes were entrepreneurs able
to do well (McClelland, 1961). Innovativeness assumes a person’s willingness
and interest to look for novel ways of action (Patchen, 1965). The trait of
innovativeness helps entrepreneurs to foster innovations in their firms
(Heunks, 1998). Innovation has been one of the core concepts of
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Schumpeter’s approach to entrepreneurship (e.g., Schumpeter, 1935; see also
Drucker, 1993), and innovation is related to business success (Bausch &
Rosenbusch, 2005). People high on proactive personality want to influence
their environm ent (Crant, 1996) and proactive personality is a personal
disposition for personal initiative behaviour (Frese & Fay, 2001). Proactive
personality is important for entrepreneurs because by definition, entrepre-
neurs have to be self-starting and influence their environment by founding
new organizations and by identifying and acting upon opportunities.
Generalized self-efficacy is important for entrepreneurs because they must be
confident in their capabilities to perform various (and often una nticipated)
tasks in uncertain situations (Baum & Locke, 2004). We follow the literature
to differentiate generalized self-efficacy (a personality concept) from specific
self-efficacy (the latter is not a personality trait) (Eden, 1988) and only
excluded studies with specific self-efficacy (such as Baum & Locke, 2004).
People with high generalized self-efficacy are likely to persevere when
problems arise and search for challenges and, therefore, challenging
opportunities (Bandura, 1982, 1997); they also show a higher degree of
personal initiative (Speier & Frese, 1997); they have higher hopes for success
and, therefore, take a long-term perspective (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995);
they also actively search for information (Ashford & Tsui, 1991), which
leads to a better knowledge. Therefore, generalized self-efficacy is related to
business creation and success (Poon, Ainuddin, & Junit, 2006; Utsch,
Rauch, Rothfuss, & Frese, 1999). Stress tolerance is important because
entrepreneurs typically have a high workload and take financial and
personal risks. Stress tolerance is essential because entrepreneurs should not
get strained in situations that are typically characterized by high insecurity
and pressure. Need for autonomy is associated with entrepreneurs’ avoidance
of restrictive environments; they prefer to make decisions independent of
supervisors, to set their own goals and develop their own plans of actions,
and to control goal achievement themselves. People high in need for
autonomy want to be in control, they avoid the restrictions and rules of
established organizations, and thus, choose the entrepreneurial role
(Brandsta
¨
tter, 1997; Cromie, 2000). Internal locus of control is related to
entrepreneurship because owners must believe that their own actions
determine the rewards (business outcomes) they obtain (Rotter, 1966). Since
people with a high internal locus of control feel that they are able to control
outcomes, they should exert more effort and persistence towards intended
outcomes, which, in turn, should help to start an enterprise and to
maintain it successfully. In contrast, externally controlled people may be
more passive. If one believes that one is not able to control outcomes, one
has no reasons to actively change one’s environment and to start a
firm. Finally, the tasks of entrepreneurship include taking risks, for
example, because decisions are made in uncertain situations (Knight,
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1921). Therefore, entrepreneurs show risk-taking propensity (cf. Stewart &
Roth, 2004a).
A theoretical issue in the personality literature relates to the impact of the
situation. A truism of psychology has been the dictum by Lewin (1951) that
behaviour is a function of the person and the situation. Personality traits can
affect behaviour only if the situ ational constraints allow their expression
(Mischel, 1968). Typically, weak situations that are characterized by low
structure, little and ambiguous information, and high autonomy allow the
expression of individual differences (Hattrupp & Jackson, 1996). In contrast
to the work of employees whose organizational settings are usually relatively
strongly influenced by institutionalized means, rules, guidelines and reward
structures (Davis-Blake & Pfeffer, 1989), there is more room for manoeuvre
for business owners. Business owners usually determine decisions, rules,
reward structures, and business strategy. This suggests that entrepreneurs act
within weak situations because they manoeuvre in situations of high
autonomy, low structure, and they have to make decisions based on
uncertain and ambiguous information. Therefore, personality traits should
be related to business creation and success. In summary, we hypothesize that:
H1: There is a positive relationship between business owners’ personality
traits and entrepreneurial behaviour (business creation and business
success).
H2: Personality traits that are matched to the task of entrepreneurship
(need for achievement, innovativeness, proactive personality, self-
efficacy, stress tolerance, need for autonomy, internal locus of control,
and risk taking) predict entrepreneurial behaviour (business creation,
business success) more strongly than traits that are not matched to
entrepreneurship.
METHOD
Developing the database
We included studies that defined business owners as independent ownership,
active management, and/or expressed intention to do so (Stewart & Roth,
2001). Personality traits were measured at the individual level (therefore, we
did not include studies on entrepreneurial orientation). We included all
those studies that had some measure of a personality trait and some measure
of business success or business creation (see Appendix).
We used five different strategies to identify studies for the meta-analysis.
First, we inspected databases: PsycLit/PsycInfo (1806 – 2006), ERIC (1966 –
2006), EconLit (1969 – 2006), ABI/Inform (1971 – 2006), Dissertation
Abstracts Online (1987 – 2003), Digital Dissertations Online (2004 – 2006),
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and SSCI (1972 – 2006). Second, we reviewed the past 23 volumes of the
Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Adminis-
trative Science Quarterly, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of
Business Venturing (1985 – 2006), and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice .
Third, we analysed the conference proceedings of the Academy of
Management (1980 – 2006), International Council of Small Businesses
(1993 – 2005), and Babson-Kauffman Conference (1981 – 2005). Fourth, we
examined article reference lists for other articles that were not identified with
the other approaches. Finally, we contacted several research groups that we
knew were active in the area and asked for relevant data and unpublished
papers. The latter two strategies were particularly useful in identifying
unpublished studies, allowing the analysis of both published and unpub-
lished data (an important desideratum of meta-analyses; cf. Hunter &
Schmidt, 2004).
Criteria for inclusion and exclusion of studies. Results of meta-analyses
depend on which studies are included or excluded (compare, e.g., the
controversy by Miner & Raju, 2004, and Stewart & Roth, 2004a). Therefore,
we attempted to be very careful in developing our criteria for the inclusion
of studies. First, since we attempted to study independent samples, we
carefully checked that each sample was included only once in our analysis
(only the most recent publication was analysed when we found more than
one publication on a sample). For example, we excluded Miner, Smith, and
Braker (1989), because the sample overlapped with the longitudinal analysis
published in 1994 (Miner, Smith, & Braker, 1994). Second, we included only
studies that reported statistics that could be transformed into the r statistic.
Forty-eight studies were excluded because they did not contain sufficient
statistical information to compute effect sizes (e.g., only significant
relationships or only multivariate statistics were report ed). Third, we did
not include studies reporting only significant results (e.g., Lerner, Brush, &
Hisrich, 1997; Singh, 1989). Fourth, we chose not to estimate effect sizes
from approximate p values (p 5 .05, etc.; e.g., Hull, Bosley, & Udell, 1980);
while it is possible to estimate effect sizes from exact p values, transforming
approximate effect sizes can lead to wrong effect size estimates. Fifth, we
included studies that reported results on some personality measure even if
the study itself did not explicitly focus on a personality approach; for
example, we included Heunks (1998), because he included a creativity
measure, Gatewood, Shaver, and Gartner (1995), because they used an
internal locus of control scale, and Robinson, Stimpson, Huefner, and Hunt
(1991), because their measure is conceptually related to personality research
and was specifically developed for the context of entrepreneurship. Sixth,
single item measures of owners’ traits were excluded because of unreliability
problems. Finally, laboratory studies were not included.
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Final sample. Our final meta-analytic database consisted of 116
independent samples from 104 different articles that met the criteria for
inclusion and provided the necessary information for computing the
statistics (with an overall N of 26,700). Of these, 62 studies dealt with
business creation and 54 studies tested relationships between owners’ traits
and business success. Twenty-seven studies came from sources other than
peer-reviewed journals.
Coding procedure. We used ratings from a group of experts for matching
traits to the tasks of entrepreneurs. We asked 10 subject matter experts from
business studies and entrepreneurship to code how far traits were related to
the task of entrepreneurs. Experts were five professors and five PhD students
from the US, Europe, and Australia who had done research in the area of
entrepreneurship. We chose these experts because they were qualified to rate
the relevance of a particular trait for entrepreneurship. The expert s received
a short introductory letter explaining the rating; they were asked to code the
51 different traits studied in the articles identified for our meta-analysis
(Table 1). Specifically, they indicated on a 5-point rating scale the
importance of each trait with regard to entrepreneurship. We only
analysed traits that showed high interrater agreement (James, Demaree, &
Wolf, 1993). The cut-off point for interrater agreement was rwg  .70
(Lance, Butts, & Michels, 2006). The rwg of optimism was a little lower
(rwg ¼ .69); however, it was near enough to the cut-off point of .70 to
include it in the analysis. We defined traits being matched to
entrepreneurship when experts indicated them to be as important or very
important for entrepreneurship (a mean rating of 4.0 and above). Table 2
displays the results of the expert coding: 11 traits were consistently coded as
being task related and 12 traits wer e coded as being not task related. It is
interesting to note that some traits (e.g., tenacity, passion for work) have not
been studied frequently enough to be able to include them into separate
meta-analyses for personality traits matched to the task of entrepreneurship.
Moreover, some traits frequently discussed in entrepreneurship research,
such as internal locus of control and risk taking, were not included in
Table 2 because experts disagreed considerably on their relevance for
entrepreneurship. Although the variability of expert judgements with regard
to internal locus of control and risk taking was high, we included these traits
in the analysis reported in Table 4 because these two traits have been
frequently suggested in the literature.
1
The coding of the type of entrepreneurial behaviour consisted of two
categories: business creation and success. Business creation consisted of
1
Internal locus of control was included 50 times in the literature reviewed here and risk
taking 35 times.
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TABLE 1
Traits studied in articles identified
Need for achievement Flexibility
Internal locus of control Protestant work ethic beliefs
Risk-taking propensity Optimism
Innovativeness Rigidity
Need for autonomy Self-confidence
Stress tolerance Proactive personality
Self-efficacy Self-esteem
Need for dominance Goal orientation
Tolerance for ambiguity Tenacity
Sobriety Higher order need strength
Type-A behaviour Creativity
Practicality Enthusiasm
Openness to experience Need for affiliation
Extraversion Scepticism
Emotional stability Self-reliance
Conscientiousness Dogmatism
Delay of gratification Impulsiveness
Discipline Endurance
Conservatism Conformity
Neuroticism Future orientation
Expedience Aggressiveness
Forthrightness Passion for work
Shyness Norm orientation
Tough-mindedness Originality
Trustworthy Benevolence
Humility
TABLE 2
Results of the expert coding: Traits matched to entrepreneurship and traits not matched
to entrepreneurship
Matched Mean
Interrater
reliability
(rwg) Not matched Mean
Interrater
reliability
(rwg)
Self-efficacy 4.6 .76 Optimism 3.8 .69
Proactive personality 4.7 .88 Extraversion 3.1 .73
Tenacity 4.4 .87 Conscientiousness 3.7 .88
Need for achievement 4.5 .75 Rigidity 1.9 .73
Stress tolerance 4.2 .80 Creativity 3.5 .75
Goal orientation 4.2 .80 Self-reliance 3.7 .77
Need for autonomy 4.3 .88 Dogmatism 1.5 .75
Innovativeness 4.3 .77 Conservatism 1.3 .88
Endurance 4.1 .73 Forthrightness 3.2 .80
Flexibility 4.2 .91 Shyness 1.0 1
Passion for work 4.6 .87 Norm orientation 1.9 .73
Conformity 1.5 .75
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studies comparing business owners to other populations. The latter category
consisted mainly of managers, but also of employees, students, nonfounders
(e.g., heirs), or of a representative sample of the population. Since the
comparison group ‘‘other populations’’ consists of quite heterogeneous
occupations, we tested whether there are differences in the overall effect of
personality traits for the comparison between owner s versus managers and
owners versus nonmanagers and found that the effect sizes were of similar
size (z ¼ 0.975, ns). A typical example for business creation is the study of
Cromie and Johns (1983), which comp ared a random sample of 42 founders
of independent businesses with 41 middle and senior managers and found
that entrepreneurs had higher values in internal locus of control. Finally,
studies addressing business success usually conceptualized personality traits
as predictors of business outcomes. For example, Box and White (1993)
studied 93 founders of independently owned enterprises and reported a
positive correlation between internal locus of control and business success
(average annual employment growth).
Meta-analytic procedure
We employed the meta-analytic procedures suggested by Hunter and
Schmidt (2004), utilizing Schwarzer’s (1989) and Borenstein and Rothstein’s
(1999) computer software. To allow comparisons between different analyses,
all effect sizes were transformed into ‘‘r’’ statistics. We first calculated the
N-weighted average correlations and their 95% confidence intervals. Each
weighted correlation was then corrected for attenuation (corrected r, based
on reliabilities). This correction was applied to traits and success variables.
Since many studies did not provide information about reliabilities, we
aggregated data on reliabilities for each subset of analyses and applied this
aggregate to the analysis.
To assess the variability of the weighted correlations, we calculated the
observed variance, the sampling error variance, and the residual variance.
We computed the observed variance of the weighted correlation to provide
an estimate of the variations in the correlations. To assess heterogeneity of
weighted correlations, we also calculated sampling error variance. We
assumed homogeneity of effects, if 75% or more of the observed variance
could be explained by sampling error variance (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990).
Some of our analyses were based on a small number of studies, causing a
second order sampling error. If the observed effect sizes of these studies
happened to come very close to the expected value, the observed variance
ended up being smaller than the sampling error variance. Still, the correct
conclusion in such cases is that all observed variance could be accounted for
by sampling error variance (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990). If results indicated
heterogeneity, we coded the studies further into subsets and tested for the
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categorical moderator. A variable is commonly classified as a moderator
when the population effect size varies from subset to subset and the residual
variance average is lower in the subsets than for the effect as a whole
(Hunter & Schmidt , 1990). For testing the significance of a moderator effect,
we analysed differences in the weighted correlations by using a z-test as a
critical ratio (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990, p. 348).
RESULTS
Hypotheses tests
Hypothesis 1 proposed that personality traits would relate to entrepre-
neurial behaviour, such as business creation and success. Results displayed
in Table 3 supported this hypothesis—personality measures were
significantly positively correlated with both business creation, corrected
r ¼ .190, and business success, corrected r ¼ .195. Since the lower boun-
daries of the 95% confidence intervals were greater than zero, these effects
were significant. The magnitude of the effects was moderate (Cohen, 1977).
Additionally, the analyses revealed heterogeneity, suggesting the presence
of moderators.
Hypothesis 2 suggested that personality traits that are matched to the
task of entrepreneurship are better predictors of entrepreneurial behaviour
than traits not matched to entrepreneurship. In line with Hypothesis 2, effect
sizes for business creation were higher for traits matched to the task of
entrepreneurship than for traits not matched to the task of running a
business, corrected r ¼ .247 and r ¼ .124, respectively. The difference in the
weighted correlations was significant z ¼ 2.83, p 5 .01. Hypothesis 2 was
also supported regarding the relationship between personality traits and
business success (Table 3). The correct ed relationshi ps with success were
r ¼ .250 for traits matched to entrepreneurship and r ¼ .028 for trai ts not
matched to the task, and the difference in the weighted correlations was
significant, z ¼ 5.37, p 5 .01. The effect size of traits not matched to the task
of entrepreneurship was not significant, as the lower boundary of the
confidence interval was below zero. Heterogeneity of effect sizes, however,
indicated the presence of other moderator variables. Therefore, we tested for
the relationship between personality traits matched to the task of
entrepreneurship and different types of entrepreneurial behaviour (Table 4).
Traits that were directly and significantly correlated with success were
innovativeness, corrected r ¼ .273; proactive personality, corrected r ¼ .270;
and generalized self-efficacy, corrected r ¼ .247, while stress tolerance was
consistently related to business creation, corrected r ¼ .104. Thus, for some
traits, we found direct relationships with specific entrepreneurial behaviours
that were not moderated by other variables.
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TABLE 3
Results for relationships between traits and entrepreneurial behaviour
K N rw So Se Sp
% variance due
to sampling
error Corrected r
95%
confidence
interval
Significance
test of
moderators
All personality traits
with business creation
62 18835 .161 .0232 .0031 .0199 13.51 .190 .123 – .199 0.45
All personality
traits with success
54 7865 .149 .0270 .0066 .0202 24.45 .195 .105 – .193
Moderator analyses
Traits matched to task
with business creation
1
47 13280 .213 .0216 .0032 .0180 15.02 .247 .171 – .255 2.83**
Traits not matched to
task with business creation
2
20 3975 .104 .0204 .0050 .0154 24.30 .124 .041 – .166
Traits matched to task
with business success
1
42 5607 .238 .0306 .0067 .0239 21.93 .250 .185 – .291 5.37**
Traits not matched to
task with success
2
13 2777 .027 .0106 .0047 .0059 44.45 .028 7.029 – .083
K ¼ number of studies. N ¼ overall N. rw ¼ sample weighted mean correlation. So ¼ observed variance, Se ¼ variance due to sampling error,
Sp ¼ residual variance. Corrected r ¼ corrected for low reliabilities. **p 5 .01.
1
Traits included here are displayed in Table 2, Column 1.
2
Traits included
here are displayed in Table 2, Column 4.
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TABLE 4
Relationships between particular personality traits and different types of entrepreneurial behaviour
Personality characteristic K N rw So Se Sp Corrected r
% variance
due to
sampling error
95%
confidence
interval Sig. test
Need for achievement with
Business creation 29 8698 .188 .0108 .0031 .0057 .219 28.94 .150 – .226 z
1
¼ 1.16
Success 31 4115 .232 .0411 .0068 .0338 .304 16.52 .161 – .303
Innovativeness with
Business creation 15 4620 .196 .0197 .0030 .0164 .235 16.45 .125 – .267 z
1
¼ 0.15
Success 7 800 .203 .0052 .0081 .0000 .273 157.23 .150 – .256
Proactive personality with
Success 5 679 .201 .0062 .0068 .0000 .270 110.09 .124 – .278
Generalized self-efficacy with
Business creation 8 2250 .335 .0377 .0028 .0347 .378 7.44 .201 – .470 z
1
¼ 1.79
Success 11 1331 .205 .0101 .0077 .0024 .247 75.46 .146 – .265
Stress tolerance with
Business creation 6 1325 .090 .0004 .0045 .0000 .104 1034.42 .073 – .106 z
1
¼ 1.71
Success 11 1282 .157 .0161 .0082 .0078 .198 51.18 .081 – .231
Need for autonomy with
Business creation 11 4256 .252 .0246 .0023 .0223 .312 9.24 .159 – .344 z
1
¼ 1.70
Success 8 843 .126 .0262 .0093 .0168 .164 35.42 .013 – .238
Locus of control with
Business creation 24 5648 .157 .0199 .0041 .0158 .188 20.37 .100 – .213 z
1
¼ 1.68
Success 23 3959 .098 .0093 .0057 .0036 .134 61.43 .059 – .138
Risk taking with
Business creation 18 8863 .086 .0111 .0020 .0091 .102 18.06 .037 – .135 z
1
¼ 0.16
Success 13 1744 .079 .0172 .0074 .0097 .103 43.17 .008 – .15
K ¼ number of studies. N ¼ overall N. rw ¼ sample size weighted mean correlation. So ¼ observed variance, Se ¼ sampling error variance, Sp ¼ residual
variance. Corrected r ¼ corrected for reliabilities.
1
difference in rw between business creation and success.
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Post hoc tests
Although we did not have any specific hypotheses, we performed post hoc
analyses on business creation and success. We did this because future
research might be interested in the differential prediction of these criteria in
the entrepreneurship literature. Table 3 displays that the overall correlations
between personality traits and business creation and between personal ity
traits and success were of similar size, z ¼ 0.45, ns. Additionally effect sizes
of type of entrepreneurial behaviour (business creation and success) did not
differ for need for achievement, innovativeness, generalized self-efficacy,
stress tolerance, need for autonomy, internal locus of control, and risk
taking (Table 4). These traits predicted different entrepreneurial behaviours
in a similar way.
We also compared the two categories of business success: key informant
ratings and organizational performance measures. Key informant ratings
included mainly global self-ratings of success, satisfaction, and external
ratings (e.g., by the interviewer). These measures shared subjective
assessment of nonfinancial success measures. Measures of organizational
performance included information about financial outcomes, such as
accountant-based measures, and growth. These subdimensions partially
overlap, both theoretically and statistically (cf. Combs, Crook, & Shook,
2005). Our post hoc analyses revealed that key informant ratings of success
produced higher effect sizes than measures of organizational success. The
difference in the size of correlations was significant for generalized self-
efficacy, z ¼ 3.82, p 5 .01, and stress tolerance, z ¼ 3.82, p 5 .01.
Since our study included both published and unpublished data, we
performed post hoc analyses to test whether publication bias had an impact
on the proposed relationships. Results indicated that publication bias had
an impact on the hypothesized relationships with business creation. Peer-
reviewed publications, rw ¼ .142, N ¼ 16,032, K ¼ 55, reported smaller effect
sizes than studies not published in peer-reviewed journals, rw ¼ .245,
N ¼ 2803, K ¼ 7, for personality differences between owners and other
populations, z ¼ 2.81, p 5 .01. The effect sizes of the relationship between
personality traits and success were not different for peer-reviewed studies,
rw ¼ .143, N ¼ 5942, K ¼ 37, as compared to other publications, rw ¼ .167,
N ¼ 1931, K ¼ 17, z ¼ 0.60, ns.
DISCUSSION
Aldrich (1999, p. 76) argued that research on personality traits seemed to
have reached an empirical dead end because the correlations between
personality traits and entrepreneurial behaviour were too smal l to matter.
Others concurred with him on this verdict (Brockhaus & Horwitz, 1986;
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Gartner, 1989; Low & MacMillan, 1988)—all of these conclusions were
based on narrative reviews. Our meta-analysis paints a different picture of
the relationships between personality traits and entrepr eneurial behaviour:
First, we found that business owner s’ personality traits were positively
related to business creation and business success (Hypothesis 1), with
corrected rs of .190 and .195, respectively. While the size of these
relationships is only moderate (Cohen, 1977), it is about the same size as
the correlation between personality and performance in general (Barrick &
Mount, 1991) and the correlation between personality traits and both
leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness (Judge, Bono, Ilies, &
Gerhardt, 2002). Thus, entrepreneurship research needs to take personality
as seriously as research on employees’ personality has done.
Once we differentiated between traits that are matched to the task of
entrepreneurship and traits not matched to the task of entrepreneurship,
we found higher correlations for personality traits matched to entrepre-
neurship than for traits not matched to the task of entrepreneurship
(Hypothesis 2). In addition, the correlation between a particular
personality trait and entrepreneurial behaviour can be as high as, e.g.,
r ¼ .378 (generalized self-efficacy with business creation) and r ¼ .304 (need
for achievement with success)—this seems to us to be a clear verdict
against the general conclusion that personal ity traits are not important in
entrepreneurship resear ch.
It may be useful to compare our results with the study by Zhao and
Seibert (2006), as our study replicates their findings on business creation and
extends the breadth of coverage by including specific traits and other
outcome variables, such as business success (please note that Zhao and
Seibert use d instead of r—d needs to be roughly divided by two to get at the
equivalent size of the correlations r, cf. Hunter & Schmidt, 2004). Similar to
Zhao and Seibert, our meta-analysis also finds that personality is related to
business creation (and our results are similar in size with a correlation of
.190, which is roughly equivalent to the d of .45). More importantly, we find
that those traits that are matched to the tasks of entrepreneurs showed
significantly higher relationships than those that are not. For example, need
for achievement sho w relatively high correlations, as shown by other meta-
analyses as well (Collins et al., 2004; Zhao & Seibert, 2006). Since specific
personality traits have high validity, specific personality traits can add to the
prediction of entrepreneurial behaviour (Paunonen & Ashton, 2001).
Need for achievement and risk taking showed similar effect sizes as those
found in the previous meta-analyses on these two traits of entrepreneurs
(Collins et al., 2004; Stewart & Roth, 2001, 2004a, 2004b). Since our
approach enab led us to study several traits, we found additional traits that
are important predictors of entrepreneurial behaviour: innovativeness,
proactive personality, generalized self-efficacy , stress tolerance, need for
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autonomy, and internal locus of control were related to entrepreneurial
behaviour.
Interestingly, two traits that have been studied relatively frequent ly in
entrepreneurship research—internal locus of control and risk taking—were
not coded to be well matched to the tasks of entrepreneurs by the experts in
our expert survey. Internal locus of control might be important not only for
entrepreneurs but also for other occupations such as managers or
politicians. Similarly, running a business with a risky strategy may be good
for quick success but also for early failure. Our meta-analysis showed,
indeed, that the effect sizes of entrepreneurial risk taking and internal locus
of control were relatively small (corrected from r ¼ .031 to .103 for risk
taking, and from r ¼ .012 to .188 for internal locus of control).
While previous meta-analyses focused only on differences between
entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurs (with the exception of Collins et al.,
2004), our study design enabled us to test whether or not traits are
differentially related to different types of entrepreneurial behaviours:
business creation and business success). Some authors argued that
personality traits affect the decision to start an enterprise more strongly
than subsequent business success, becau se the impact of the individual
business owner decreases with increasing size of the enterprise (Begley &
Boyd, 1987; Frese, van Gelderen, & Ombach, 2000). However, our results,
as well as the meta-analysis by Collins et al. (2004), challenged this
proposition. Traits, such as need for achievement and generalized self-
efficacy were valid predictors of both business creation and business success
in the same way.
Theoretical implications
Our results indicate that a few carefully selected personality traits can
predict well entrepreneurial behaviour. While there is evidence that the
common variance of traits contribute to entrepreneurial behaviour (Zhao &
Seibert, 2006), our results suggest that traits matched to the task of
entrepreneurs produce specific variance that contribute to the prediction of
entrepreneurial behaviour. Indeed, the traits that matched to entrepreneurial
tasks, such as generalized self-efficacy, proactive personality, innovativeness,
and achievement motives, are the factors most strongly related to
entrepreneurial behaviour. Since these matched traits belong to different
big five factors, they share little common variance and, therefore, need to be
exploited separately. Unfortunately, there are a number of important
entrepreneurship-related personality factors that scholar s of entrepreneur-
ship have only started to be interested in, but that have not been addressed
in enough studies to be included into a meta-analysis. Our expert survey
revealed that some traits, such as passion for work and tenacity (Baum &
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Locke, 2004), might be important for running a business; they were not
studied frequently enough to be included into a meta-analysis. Other
examples are cognitive and perceptual processes (Baron, 2004), such as
cognitive alertness (Busenitz, 1996; Kirzner, 1997), and practical intelligence
(Sternberg, 2004). Therefore, exploring additional task matched traits may
be a frui tful avenue for future research.
Beyond the increments in the behavioural prediction, the use of such
matched traits can lead to important advances in the explanation of
entrepreneurial behaviour, because it is possible that a single trait can have
differential relationships with different types of entrepreneurial behaviour.
For example, while opportunity recognition depends on cognitive proper-
ties, the decision to exploit an opportunity involves traits, such as risk taking
and optimism. At the same time, such traits do not necessarily increase the
probability of success because they limit realistic forecasts of the future
(Shane & Venkatamaran, 2000). Other scholars have called for a process
view of entrepreneurship and argued that the impact of specific traits vary
through the process (Baron, 2007; Baron & Markman, 2005). While the
empirical evidence is preliminary and inconsistent at present, exploring the
role of task-matched traits on different entrepreneurial behaviours should be
tested in future research.
Moreover, future research needs to address processes and conditions that
affect the relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurial
behaviour. Our approach of matching traits to the tasks of entrepreneurs
may lead away from a pure static orientation in personality. We agree with
Mischel and Shoda (1998) that a good personality description takes into
account not just trait components but also mediational processes. For
example, Herron and Robinson (1993) argued that motivation is a mediator
through which personality traits determine entrepreneurial behaviour. Other
processes mediating the effects of personality traits include intentions, goals,
and self-regulatory processes (Barrick, Mitchell, & Stewart, 2003; Baum,
Frese, & Baron, 2007; Frese et al., 2000). In entrepreneurship research, such
mediating processes are rarely studied and, therefore, there is too little
literature available to summarize mediating processes in a meta-analysis.
Exceptions are Baum and Locke (2004), who identified situation-specific
motivation (goal setting, specific self-efficacy) as a mediator in the
relationship between personality traits and business success, or Frese,
Krauss, et al. (in press), who used active planning as a mediator for
personality-success relationships in small-scale enterprises. Similarly, tests
on cognitive processes and heuristics are in our view a useful approach to
studying the relationship between personality traits and success (e.g., Baron,
2004; Busenitz, 1996; Palich & Babgy, 1995). For example, risk-taking
propensity might lead to overoptimistic heuristics and, as a consequence, to
the decision to start a business venture.
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Future research should address the impact of situational conditions in the
sense of Personality 6 Situation interactions (Magnusson & Endler, 1977).
Personality traits c an affect behaviour only if situations are relevant and not
constrained to allow the expression of individual differences (Mischel, 1968).
Thus, potential moderators are environmental constraints (Dess & Beard,
1984; Herron & Robinson, 1993), such as the economic situation at the
time of study, the demands of the specific industry, or the stage in the
business life cycle (Baron, 2007). Unfavourable environm ents (e.g.,
decreasing demands, high competition) may co nstrain the expression of
individual differences. Favourable environments (e.g., growing markets and
demands) may allow the expression of individual traits, for example, owners
with a high need for achievement may be able to pursue more opportunities
than owners with a low need for achievement. Size of business is another
factor that might also moderate the effects of personality traits: In very small
companies the owner can determine decisions, goals, and company culture
(van Gelderen, Frese, & Thurik, 2001) and in larger businesses, the influence
of the business owner decreases and, therefore, organization-level entrepre-
neurship becomes more impor tant than the individual traits of the business
owner. Unfortunately, there is lack of research and theory on the relevant
context conditions as moderato rs, both in work and organizational
psychology (Barrick et al., 2003) and in entrepreneurship research. However,
identifying moderators is all the more important as we called for the use of
task-matched traits and, as a consequence, we linked personality to the
situation of entrepreneurship.
Practice implications
Our findings suggest that practitioners may consider task-specific person-
ality traits as criteria for decision making. The effect sizes are high enough to
provide practical utility that may accumulate over time (Collins et al., 2004).
To illustrate this point, consider the fact that the effect sizes for the task-
related traits are as high as the effect sizes for the following medical
diagnostics: conventional x-rays and tooth cavities (r ¼ .36), or cardiac tests
and prediction of death or myocardial infarct within 1 week of vascular
surgery (r ¼ .20) (Meyer et al., 2001). These correlations are sizeable enough
to draw practical conclusions in medicine and they should be considered
sizeable enough to influence practice in entrepreneurship. For example,
people interested in starting a business may evaluate their traits and use this
information to support their career choice and to match themselves to the
task of running a business or to decide on partners who compensate for their
weaknesses. Similarly, government agencie s may use task-specific traits to
select potential entrepreneurs more successfully. For example, in 1994 the
German Government aimed to support entrepreneurshi p by introducing
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the so-called Ich-AG. One of the most important criteria for attending the
programme was a formal registration of unemployment. Our results would
suggest using, at least additionally, achievement motivati on and innova-
tiveness as criteria for attending the programme. Moreover, it would be
interesting to research what amount of variance of the task-matched traits
can be changed through training. Genera lized self-efficacy can be increased
by training (Eden & Aviram, 1993). How much does changing personal
initiative lead to changes in proactive personality (Frese, Glaub, Gramberg,
Hass, Friedrich, & Solomon, 2007)? Finally, banks or venture capitalists
may consider task-matched traits for guiding investment decisions.
Meta-analytical evidence may not only help to identify predictors that
can guide the decisions of practitioners but also provide information about
the importance of a particular predictor. For example, need for achievement
produces higher effect sizes than risk taking and, therefore, should receive a
higher weight in the decision-making process. However, at the same time, it
is important to consider task-specific traits as only one selection criteria.
Given the large body of empirical findings suggesting that factors other than
traits of business owners affect entrepr eneurial behaviour, valid selection
criteria must include other individual differences variables as well as
nonpersonality variables, such as strategies, cognitive ability, and environ-
ment, which are additional predictors of success (Campbell, McCloy,
Oppler, & Sager, 1993).
Limitations
Our meta-analysis is based on cross-sectional correlations and, therefore, we
cannot rule out alternative explanations. First, third variables may produce
spurious correlations, for instance, cognitive ability may contribute to a
higher degree of need for achievement and thus the correlation of need for
achievement and business creation may be due to more highly intelligent
people starting more firms. Second, most studies do not allow strong
conclusions to be drawn regarding the causal path of effects. There is
evidence for a genetic component in many personality variables (Jang,
Livesley, & Verno n, 1996) and a high test – retest stability across adu lt life
(Roberts & DelVeccio, 2000), which suggests that personality traits pro-
bably affect subsequent entrepreneurial behaviour. However, not all of
personality is genetically determined and there is some part of the variance
of personality traits that can change because of success as well. Thus, we
cannot rule out reverse causality: Starting a business successfully may lead
to the changes in personality traits (e.g., business success may increa se
entrepreneurs’ generalized self-efficacy). Entrepreneurship scholars need to
employ more longitudinal studies to determine the direction of causation
empirically. Future studies should also look into the issue of the
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intercorrelations between the various personality factors and examin e an
explicit predictive regression model that includes several task-matched
personality predictors.
A further limitation is the fact that many studies included in the meta-
analysis are biased towards successful enterprises: Studies that compared
entrepreneurs with other populations usually consisted of samples of
entrepreneurs that survived until the time of data collection and, thus,
compared ‘‘successful’’ entrepreneurs with other populations. Moreover,
studies analysing relationships between personality traits and success usually
do not provide data about businesses that failed. However, this bias works
against the proposed hypotheses because there is reduced variance in the
independent variable. For example, if need for autonomy makes an
individual more likely to start up a business, the variance in need for
autonomy would be reduced when predicting business success. Variance
restriction would result in smaller effect sizes (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004).
Therefore, this limitation contributes to a conservative estimate of the
relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurial behaviour.
Our meta-analysis attempted to link personality traits to the criterion
entrepreneurial behaviour. For this purpose, we asked expert judges to rate
personality traits as to the match to entrepreneurship. This approach has
strengths but also weaknesses. The experts used to establish our framework
may have been biased. For example, the experts may have known the
empirical literature and may have judged traits as important for
entrepreneurship accordingly. We suggest that future research should use
a sophisticated task analysis to match traits to entrepreneurial behaviour (cf.
Markman, 2007). For example, extraversion has been shown to be
important for success in salespeople but not in other occupations (Vinchur
et al., 1998). In a similar way, the tasks of the entrepreneurs could be
matched to predictors.
Another concern relates to the issue of aggregation. We aggregated data
on success and presented overall effect sizes based on these aggregations.
While we share such an approach with narrative reviews, meta-analysis
provides some useful tools to test the issue of aggregation. For instance, we
were able to show that our overall results are valid for different comparison
groups (managers vs. ‘‘others’’). However, our post hoc analyses revealed
that key informant ratings produced higher effect sizes than measures of
organizational performance. Future studies on personality need to include
different measures of success.
Finally, we used a broad definition of entrepreneurship as ownership and
active management of business ventures (Stewart & Roth, 2001). This
definition is frequently used although some scholars defined entrepreneur-
ship more narrowly (Gartner, 1985; Carland, Hoy, Boulton, & Carland,
1984). While there were not enough studies in our meta-analysis to tackle
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this question, definitional issues can, in principle, be fruitfully analysed
within the meta-analytic framework.
CONCLUSION
The importance of considering the personality traits of business owners for
becoming successful busines s owners has been shown in this study. The
relationships are of small and moderate size, and there is evidence that
future studies should search for moderators. We suggest the development of
a fuller contingency theory of owners’ personality traits (along the lines of
Situation 6 Traits interactio ns; cf. Magnussen & Endler, 1977). However,
some relationships are quite large (e.g., between generalized self-efficacy and
success). Therefore, models of entrepreneurial success should include
owners’ personality traits as supplemental variables. Otherwise, these
models will be misspecified. In other words, entrepreneurship research
cannot develop a consistent theory about entrepreneurship if it does not
take personality variables into account as well.
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