1,721,060 research outputs found
The quest for the entrepreneurial culture: psychological Big Data in entrepreneurship research
No full textHighlights\ud
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• The paper gives an overview over entrepreneurship research.\ud
• The paper highlights the role of culture as a driver of entrepreneurial activity.\ud
• It summarises new research on entrepreneurial culture.\ud
• This research is based on psychological Big Data.\ud
• This Big Data has delivered important new insights on entrepreneurial culture.\ud
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Entrepreneurship is an important topic of our time due to its effect on economic development and social change. However, economic research struggled to explain entrepreneurial activities of regions with standard economic models, assuming perfect rationality of individuals and populations. Economic research has thus developed a strong interest in understanding the more ‘hidden’ informal institutions such as cultural factors. Here, a new generation of psychological research based on Big Data delivers a series of interesting results. Drawing from a personality-based approach to assess and to study the effects and origins of an entrepreneurial culture, this new research illustrates the great potential of psychological Big Data for economic, sociological, geographical, and psychological approaches to entrepreneurship. However, future research should employ new, complex analytic methods that utilise the full potential of Big Data
Who reaps the benefits of social change? Exploration and its socioecological boundaries
No full textWe investigated the interplay between the personality trait exploration and objective socioecological conditions in shaping individual differences in the experience of two individual-level benefits of current social change: new lifestyle options, which arise from the societal trend toward individualization, and new learning opportunities, which accrue from the societal trend toward lifelong learning. We hypothesized that people with higher trait exploration experience a greater increase in lifestyle options and learning opportunities––but more so in social ecologies in which individualization and lifelong learning are stronger, thus offering greater latitude for exploring the benefits of these trends. We employed structural equation modeling in two parallel adult samples from Germany (N = 2,448) and Poland (N = 2,571), using regional divorce rates as a proxy for individualization and Internet domain registration rates as a proxy for lifelong learning. Higher exploration was related to a greater perceived increase in lifestyle options and in learning opportunities over the past 5 years. These associations were stronger in regions in which the trends toward individualization and lifelong learning, respectively, were more prominent. Individuals higher in exploration are better equipped to reap the benefits of current social change––but the effects of exploration are bounded by the conditions in the social ecology
Entrepreneurial intention as developmental outcome
No full textWhat predicts adults' entrepreneurial intentions? Utilizing a cross-sectional sample of 496 German scientists, we investigated a path model for the effects of entrepreneurial personality (Big Five profile), control beliefs, and recalled early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence (early inventions, leadership, commercial activities) on two types of entrepreneurial intentions (conditional and unconditional intentions). As expected, entrepreneurial personality and early entrepreneurial competence on the one hand and both types of entrepreneurial intentions on the other were associated. Findings of structural equation modeling further revealed indirect effects via control beliefs (e.g., mediation effects). The results highlight the importance of a life span developmental approach in entrepreneurship research and support the idea that entrepreneurship can be promoted early in life. The findings are discussed against the backdrop of the economic and societal values that entrepreneurship has in today's societies
Perceived new demands associated with socioeconomic change: A challenge to job security?
No full textOur study focuses on everyday manifestations of contemporary socioeconomic change. For a sample of young- and middle-aged German employees gathered in 2008 (N = 281), we investigate the relationship of perceived rising demands regarding <i>(a)</i> the labor market and <i>(b)</i> the workplace context with subjective job insecurity. Regression analyses reveal a positive effect of rising labor market demands on job insecurity, which is buffered by education. The effect of education on job insecurity is mediated by rising labor market demands. Rising workplace demands show no effect on job insecurity for West German employees. In contrast, East Germans who experience rising workplace demands report lower levels of job insecurity. Results are discussed with a particular focus on rising demands in employment relationships
The effects of work-related demands associated with social and economic change on psychological well-being: A study of employed and self-employed individuals
No full textThis study examined perceived work-related demands emanating from social and economic change (i.e., increasing labor market uncertainties, nonstandard work hours, and job autonomy), with a special focus on work status (self-employed vs. employed). We studied a sample of young and middle-aged adults from Germany (N = 1,017). Increasing job autonomy buffered the negative effect of increasing nonstandard work hours on job satisfaction. Mediation analyses suggest that the self-employed, compared to wage-earners, enjoy higher levels of job satisfaction because they are confronted with fewer negative manifestations of change. We further found different job satisfaction effects of increasing nonstandard work hours and job autonomy in employed versus self-employed individuals, which merits further clarification in future research
Public business advice in the founding process: An empirical evaluation of subjective and economic effects
No full textWe investigate economic and subjective effects of public business advice delivered to nascent entrepreneurs in Germany. We analyze data from the Thuringian Founder Study, an interdisciplinary research project on innovative entrepreneurship. Employing cluster analysis, we first explore the actual scope and intensity of business advice used. Two distinct groups of policy take-up can be identified: <i>(1) use of intense assistance across all areas, and (2) use of less-intensive assistance being limited to operational issues</i>. Then we analyze personal entrepreneurial resources (human and social capital, entrepreneurial personality profile) as predictors of take-up and perceived usefulness taking into account the different patterns of utilized advice. Finally, we assess economic effects by studying subsequent business performance employing propensity score matching. We cannot reveal that business advice translated into better start-up performance, but our results indicate that advice may help founders with fewer resources to overcome barriers in the founding process. We find that a lack of personal entrepreneurial resources predicts take-up of business advice in general as well as perceived usefulness of comprehensive business advice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Integrating psychological approaches to entrepreneurship: The Entrepreneurial Personality System (EPS)
No full textUnderstanding the psychological nature and development of the individual entrepreneur is at the core of contemporary entrepreneurship research. Since the individual functions as a totality of his or her single characteristics (involving the interplay of biological, psychosocial, and context-related levels), a person-oriented approach focusing on intraindividual dynamics seems to be particularly fruitful to infer realistic implications for practice such as entrepreneurship education and promotion. Applying a person-oriented perspective, this paper integrates existing psychological approaches to entrepreneurship and presents a new, person-oriented model of entrepreneurship, the <i>Entrepreneurial Personality System</i> (EPS). In the empirical part, this model guided us to bridge two separate research streams dealing with entrepreneurial personality: research on broad traits like the Big Five and research on specific traits like risk-taking, self-efficacy, and internal locus of control. We examine a gravity effect of broad traits, as assumed in the EPS framework, by analyzing large personality data sets from three countries. The results reveal a consistent gravity effect of an intraindividual entrepreneurial Big Five profile on the more malleable psychological factors. Implications for entrepreneurship research and practice are discussed
Entrepreneurship as a twenty-first century skill: Entrepreneurial alertness and intention in the transition to adulthood
No full textGiven the importance of entrepreneurial thinking and acting as a meta-skill in the future world of work, we focus on the emerging entrepreneurial mind-set in the transition to adulthood. We study the role of personality characteristics and age-appropriate entrepreneurial competencies (leadership, self-esteem, creativity, and proactivity motivation) in the prediction of entrepreneurial alertness and career intention. Using two-wave longitudinal data from high schools in Helsinki, Finland (N = 523), we tested a mediation model with competencies as mediators between personality and entrepreneurial alertness and intention. The findings suggest that entrepreneurial alertness and career intention \ud
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(a) are rather independent career development constructs of the emerging entrepreneurial mind-set, \ud
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(b) are both an expression of an entrepreneurial personality structure, and \ud
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(c) are predicted by different underlying competencies: leadership and self-esteem mediated the personality-entrepreneurial intention link, and leadership, creativity, and proactivity motivation the personality-entrepreneurial alertness link.\ud
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Consistent with the balanced skill approach to entrepreneurship, the intraindividual variety of these competencies was also a valid mediator; it did not show incremental predictive power though. Implications for research and practice are discussed
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