The mediating role of self-efficacy in the development of entrepreneurial intentions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of self-efficacy in the development of students' intentions to become entrepreneurs. The authors used structural equation modeling with a sample of 265 master of business administration students across 5 universities to test their hypotheses. The results showed that the effects of perceived learning from entrepreneurship-related courses, previous entrepreneurial experience, and risk propensity on entrepreneurial intentions were fully mediated by entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Contrary to expectations, gender was not mediated by self-efficacy but had a direct effect such that women reported lower entrepreneurial career intentions. The authors discuss practical implications and directions for future research.     

创业失败与再创业意向的作用机制

近年来, 我国政府对创业支持力度不断加强, 创业活动日益活跃, 但失败率却居高不下。如何让创业者在遭遇失败后仍能保持再创业的意向是当前亟待解决的现实问题。拟综合采取横向问卷调查、纵向时间对比以及情景模拟实验的方法, 一方面探讨成就目标导向和社会比较在创业失败和创业失败学习之间的有中介的调节作用; 另一方面分析创业失败学习、创业自我效能感在创业失败和再创业意向之间的链式多重中介作用机制, 寻求由创业失败到再创业意向的不同路径, 这种探讨具有理论创新价值。依据实证研究的结论在实践中指导创业者通过上行比较, 锁定学习目标, 激发再创业意向; 通过提高自我怜悯水平, 使创业者摆脱消极情绪的困扰, 激发掌握性学习动机, 确立再创业的意向, 对于创业者具有重要指导意义。社会比较和自我怜悯的干预研究具有鲜明的中国文化特色。     

创业进展与创业努力的多层次关系：创业自我效能的中介与调节定向的调节作用

基于动机性自我调节框架,通过两项独立研究,探讨前期创业努力对随后创业进展的影响及其内在机理——创业自我效能的中介与调节定向的调节作用。对115名新创业者进行为期6个月(研究1)和对70名新创业者进行为期15个月的追踪调查(研究2),分别构建多层次跨期中介效应检验模型和多层线性回归模型进行数据分析。结果发现:(1)创业自我效能在前期创业进展对随后创业努力的影响中起中介角色;(2)从总体上看(即不考虑调节定向作用时),前期创业进展通过正向影响创业自我效能,负向影响随后创业努力;(3)促进定向水平越高,创业自我效能对随后创业努力产生越强的负向影响,从而前期创业进展与随后创业努力的间接负相关关系越强;(4)预防定向水平越高,创业自我效能对随后创业努力产生越弱的负向影响,从而前期创业进展与随后创业努力的间接负相关关系越弱。这一结果弥合了过往创业自我调节过程研究的混淆结论,拓展了创业情境下的动机性自我调节框架与调节定向观研究,对于揭示创业过程的动态性、复杂性具有积极作用。     

Person–city personality fit and entrepreneurial success: An explorative study in China

While the study of personality differences is a traditional psychological approach in entrepreneurship research, economic research directs attention towards the entrepreneurial ecosystems in which entrepreneurial activity are embedded. We combine both approaches and quantify the interplay between the individual personality make‐up of entrepreneurs and the local personality composition of ecosystems, with a special focus on person–city personality fit. Specifically, we analyse personality data from N = 26,405 Chinese residents across 42 major Chinese cities, including N = 1091 Chinese entrepreneurs. Multi‐level polynomial regression and response surface plots revealed that: (a) individual‐level conscientiousness had a positive effect and individual‐level agreeableness and neuroticism had a negative effect on entrepreneurial success, (b) city‐level conscientiousness had a positive, and city‐level neuroticism had a negative effect on entrepreneurial success, and (c) additional person–city personality fit effects existed for agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. For example, entrepreneurs who are high in agreeableness and conduct their business in a city with a low agreeableness level show the lowest entrepreneurial success. In contrast, entrepreneurs who are low in agreeableness and conduct their business in a city with a high agreeableness level show relatively high entrepreneurial success. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Entrepreneurial personality: The role of narcissism

Research has established a number of personality features and behaviours associated with business creation and success. The similarities between these traits and narcissism, a concept with roots in clinical psychology and psychiatry, led the authors to conduct this study, which proposes to measure whether entrepreneurs score higher on a narcissism scale than other vocational groups. The second goal of this study is to measure the role of narcissism on intention to start a business. Student entrepreneurs have been compared with non-entrepreneur students, city workers, and employees and managers from a branch of a large financial institution. Then, students filled out measures of general self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity as well as a narcissism scale. Results indicate that student entrepreneurs score significantly higher than all other vocational groups on a measure of narcissism. Results also indicate that narcissism is positively correlated with general self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity. Moreover, narcissism plays a significant role in explaining entrepreneurial intentions, even after controlling for self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity. Overall, these findings shed new light on the underlying personality traits of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial intentions and suggest new directions in the study of entrepreneurs’ personality profile.     

Globalizing Canadian Education from Below: A Case Study of Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurship Between Seoul, Korea and Vancouver Canada

Witnessing the rise of the international education industry for the last two decades, this study examines the role of Korean immigrant entrepreneurs who play an important role in promoting Canadian education in the global market. Relying on close social and cultural linkages between Korea and Canada, the ways in which Korean immigrant entrepreneurs operate their transnational business demonstrate how globalization actually works in practice. Exploring immigrant participation at the heart of the knowledge economy (education), we also ask if the entrepreneurial opportunities that are being cultivated by Korean-immigrants represent an innovative shift from traditional and low-level ethnic niche economies toward more lucrative opportunities.     

Psychological Determinants of Entrepreneurial Success and Life-Satisfaction

The presented study focused on different stages of the entrepreneurial process. The first group comprised those starting a new business and the second group those who have been through the whole process of creating a new business and have now been operating in the market. The general aim of the article was to examine the relationship between action orientation, hope, goal commitment, entrepreneurial success, and life satisfaction, and to determine the role of psychological characteristics (hope, action orientation) in the entrepreneurial process. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 344 potential entrepreneurs in the prelaunch stage and 127 actual entrepreneurs in the post-launch stage. To analyze these relationships, multiple-group analysis was conducted.     

大学生的冒险性与创业意向的关系：感知的创业文化的调节作用

为探讨大学生的冒险性、感知的创业文化与创业意向之间的关系,采用Kogan-Wallach困境选择问卷(CDQ)、感知的创业文化问卷和大学生创业意向量表调查了996名大一至大四年级学生。结果表明:男大学生的创业目标意向和创业执行意向水平均显著高于女大学生;冒险性、感知的创业文化能够直接正向预测大学生的创业目标意向;感知的创业文化能够调节冒险性与创业目标意向之间的关系,具体来讲,对于感知的创业文化水平较高的大学生,冒险性能够积极预测创业目标意向,而对于感知的创业文化水平较低的大学生,冒险性与创业目标意向之间不存在联系。     

连续创业情境下自恋人格与关键创业行为变化机理

优化行为是提升创业质量的关键。创业行为的显著特征是与环境的动态匹配, 因此研究需从关注行为本身转向追踪行为动态变化。基于行为受人格、认知和环境共同影响的理论判断, 重点考察创业者自恋人格对行为变化及其效果的影响机制, 构建以“自恋-行为变化-绩效”为主线的理论模型。融合创业理论与人格心理学中相关知识, 以解构关键创业行为变化的要素为切入点, 考察自恋人格如何与经验交互影响行为变化, 探索在不同认知状态和环境背景下, 行为变化的效果差异, 建构行为变化优化模型。旨在深化和丰富创业行为和创业心理研究, 指导创业教育实践, 对创业者提升决策能力有重要意义。     

A Comparative Analysis of Entrepreneur and College Business Student Values

ABSTRACT Both entrepreneurs and senior-level college business students were surveyed to determine similarities and differences in their values, under the premise that students who share similar values with those held by entrepreneurs may have promise of entrepreneurial potential. All respondents were administered the Rokeach Value Survey which, through a process of rank-ordering, is used to determine two hierarchies of value importance for individuals. The first hierarchy reflects an individual's terminal value system, or those values associated with end-states of existence. The second hierarchy reflects an individual's instrumental value system, or those values associated with modes of conduct. The resulting data provided a tabulation of medians, rank order composites and levels of significance for the terminal and instrumental values, respectively, of both samples. Rank order composites were used as general indices in comparing the position of a particular value in the total hierarchy of values and for comparing the position of a particular value across the two groups. Emphasis was placed on those values which were ranked very low or very high by the entrepreneurs. Comparisons of student value rankings relative to those values the entrepreneurs held highest and lowest were then conducted. The findings indicated that there were value differences between the total sample of entrepreneurs and students, as well as between female entrepreneurs and female student values, but there were few differences between male entrepreneur and male student values. In addition to the above comparisons, median analysis between entrepreneur and student terminal and instrumental values were conducted. An examination of the general population of entrepreneurs and students revealed that twelve of the eighteen terminal values of the entrepreneurs and students were significantly different at the (.05) level Only four of the eighteen instrumental values were significantly different (.05) level between the entrepreneurs and students. The median analysis between male entrepreneurs and male student values showed no significant differences. However, the median analysis between female entrepreneur and female student values showed that seven of the eighteen instrumental and eleven of the eighteen terminal values were significantly different at the (.05) level. Although not examined, it is likely that individual students in the sample do share the value profiles of the entrepreneurs. If so, and if generally accepted value profiles are established for entrepreneurs, such students might be counseled to consider the entrepreneurial life.     

Resilience facilitates positive emotionality and integration of negative memories in need satisfying memory networks: An experimental study

Resilience has been associated with the capacity to experience positive emotions in the midst of negative life events or following the recall of such events. Apparently, resilient people are able to self-generate those positive emotions because they tend to integrate and associate such past negative life events with other positive past events in memory networks. However, study designs on resilience have remained either cross-sectional or longitudinal. The causal effect of resilience on these outcomes remains to be shown as a third variable or unknown factor could be at play. In this study, we used a resilience intervention from a self-help clinical program to induce resilience and compared this condition against Jacobson type relaxation and neutral music background. Results showed that the resilience intervention increased positive emotionality following the recall of a negative self-defining memory and facilitated the integration of that memory within more positive and need satisfying memory networks.     

Immigrants’ Transnational Entrepreneurial Activities: the Case of Ghanaian Immigrants in Canada

Immigrant entrepreneurship comes in two forms: domestic and transnational entrepreneurship. Domestic immigrant entrepreneurs depend on the host society for business success while transnational immigrant entrepreneurs depend on the contacts and partners in their countries of origin and other countries. In recent years, immigrants’ entrepreneurial activity has moved from the domestic to the transnational level because of the simultaneous business activities that such entrepreneurs conduct between their home and host countries. Transnational entrepreneurship has become one of the pathways that immigrants use to settle and integrate into the host society’s labor market, and at the same time contribute to their countries of origin. From this perspective, this paper explores the causes, nature, and practices of transnational entrepreneurial activities of Ghanaian immigrants in Canada. Using in-depth interviews and focus groups, the study finds that transnational entrepreneurship has become an essential strategy among Ghanaian immigrant entrepreneurs due to the large and growing number of immigrant communities and demand for ethnic products and services that are not produced in Canada. The study also finds that transnational entrepreneurship has become an avenue for immigrants to connect and create ties with Ghana and contribute to its economic development.     

What Makes Muslim Women Entrepreneurs Successful? A Field Study Examining Religiosity and Social Capital in Tunisia

The present study sheds light upon critical factors that help explain the entrepreneurial success among Muslim women living in a democratic Tunisia, a Muslim-majority country considered by many to be the lone Arab Spring success story. We hypothesized that successful entrepreneurs need social capital, including the capital that comes from marriage and high levels of wasta (the Arabic concept of having personal connections with influential others). Moreover, given the lack of empirical attention paid to the role of the culture, language, and customs associated with Islam on women’s empowerment, we examine whether religiosity is related to entrepreneurial performance among Tunisian women. Data collected with 84 female entrepreneurs participating in entrepreneurship training programs across Tunisia reveal that two forms of social capital, marital status and wasta, are related to training center directors’ ratings of women entrepreneurs’ performance, suggesting that social capital is a critical asset for Muslim women entrepreneurs. Religiosity, on the other hand, had no statistically significant relationship with entrepreneurial performance. Our study contributes to research on entrepreneurship by identifying wasta as a form of social capital that may be necessary for women entrepreneurs to succeed in the Middle East and North Africa and by taking an initial step towards better understanding the empirical (and controversial) relationship between religiosity and career success among Muslim women. We recommend that training organizations supporting entrepreneurs directly assist women in the development of social capital and acknowledge, rather than ignore, that nepotism and wasta are linked to entrepreneurial success in some cultures.     

On bad mood and white bears: The effects of mood state on ability to suppress unwanted thoughts

Does temporary mood influence people's ability to engage in effective thought suppression? Based on past research on mental control and recent work on affective influences on social cognition, this experiment predicted and found that negative mood improved and positive mood impaired people's ability to suppress their thoughts when instructed not to think of a neutral concept, white bears. We also found clear evidence for ironic rebound effects: on a subsequent generative task, intrusions of the suppressed thought were greater in the negative than in the positive mood group. Participants received positive or negative feedback about performance on a supposed creativity task to induce positive or negative moods, and then engaged in two consecutive generative writing tasks, the first accompanied by instructions to suppress thoughts of white bears. Those in a negative group reported fewer “white bear” intrusions when attempting to suppress, but more “white bear” intrusions (an ironic rebound effect) in the subsequent task when the suppression instruction was lifted. The implications of these results for everyday tasks of mental control, and for recent affect–cognition theories are discussed.     

Depression history, depression vulnerability and the experience of everyday negative events

This study examined whether deficits in dealing with daily problems emerge before a depressive episode (i.e., pre-existing vulnerability) or after a depressive episode (i.e., psychosocial scar). Participants completed a 30-day daily diary in which they reported their most negative event of the day, their appraisals of that event, and their mood. Three years later, they completed a structured depression interview. The sample consisted of 350 college students, 24 of whom had a past history of depression and 54 of whom experienced a depressive episode subsequent to dairy completion. Multilevel modeling revealed that students with past depression blamed others more than the never-depressed and those with subsequent depression, which supported the scar hypothesis. In support of the vulnerability hypothesis, as compared to the never-depressed group, participants with past depression demonstrated steeper declines in positive mood on more stressful days but did not significantly differ from the subsequent depression group. Overall, our findings do not provide clear support for either hypothesis; however, this study is the first to use a daily diary design to directly compare individuals with past depression to individuals who would subsequently experience depression.     

Enterprise trainees' self-construals as entrepreneurs

Although the past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in the economic and political aspects of the entrepreneur, most psychological studies have tended to concentrate on the identification of the “entrepreneurial personality” or the repertoire of traits that identify successful entrepreneurs. Even in career theory, the entrepreneur has received only passing attention, usually as an aberration from a neat stage development model or in the context of a psychodynamic explanation for individual work behavior. This article starts from the premise that the social representation of the entrepreneur, reflecting the past 10 years of public promotion, does not vary significantly among various groups but that aspiring entrepreneurs with realistic levels of aspiration reveal distinct construals of themselves as self and as entrepreneur. Using a range of subjects from a variety of enterprise training courses, all of whom aspired to be entrepreneurs, I used locus-of-control and attitude scales and business performance questionnaires to determine likely business success and strength of self-concept. The first-stage repertory grids, on which this article is based, attempted to reveal each subject's construal of self and ideal self in relation to parents and business roles. The second- and third-stage grids, not reported here, will explore the construal of business problems and business motivation.     

The Mediating Effect of Financial Motives in the Association between Entrepreneurial Experience and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Japan

This study investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial experience and subjective well-being. Using an original survey on subjective well-being, entrepreneurial experience, level of wealth (inferred from observed variables of income, cash, and assets), and personal attributes of 10,001 individuals in Japan, we examine the factors that mediate the association between entrepreneurial experience and subjective well-being. We measure entrepreneurial experience as an individual’s experience in funding, owning, and running a corporation. We consider the mediating effect of the level of wealth on subjective well-being because entrepreneurial well-being is associate with wealth derived from income, cash, and assets. Our results provide no significant evidence that individuals with entrepreneurial experience have higher subjective well-being. However, we find a positive indirect effect of entrepreneurial experience on subjective well-being through wealth and a negative indirect effect through debt. The findings of this study indicate the importance of considering the mediating effect of financial motives in entrepreneurial well-being.

     

Capturing Entrepreneurial Values

This research was designed to identify entrepreneurial value orientations by comparing them with the value orientations of professional managers. The SYMLOG values measuring instrument was administered in Thailand to Thai entrepreneurs ( n = 55) and Thai professional managers ( n = 200). Results show that the value orientation of the entrepreneurs differed significantly from that of professional managers on several dimensions, particularly with regard to those elements that almost always contribute to teamwork effectiveness. Implications for training and staffing are discussed.     

How do employees react to leaders’ unethical behavior? The role of moral disengagement

Concerns over unethical leader behavior persist in today's workplace. Although some employees continue to support their leaders after learning of their unethical actions, others do not. In this paper, we integrate social cognitive theory with social information processing theory to propose that the support employees give to leaders who act unethically hinges on their propensity to morally disengage. Specifically, we develop a conditional indirect effects model, wherein moral disengagement propensity mitigates the negative impact of unethical leader behavior on leader-directed support via employees’ perceptions of value congruence with and trust in the leader. The sum result is an improved understanding of when and why employees offer support to versus withhold support from leaders who act in ethically questionable ways.     

Risk propensity differences between entrepreneurs and managers: a meta-analytic review

Research examining the relative risk-taking propensities of entrepreneurs and managers has produced conflicting findings and no consensus, posing an impediment to theory development. To overcome the limitations of narrative reviews, the authors used psychometric meta-analysis to mathematically cumulate the literature concerning risk propensity differences between entrepreneurs and managers. Results indicate that the risk propensity of entrepreneurs is greater than that of managers. Moreover, there are larger differences between entrepreneurs whose primary goal is venture growth versus those whose focus is on producing family income. Results also underscore the importance of precise construct definitions and rigorous measurement.