Self‐efficacy,self‐esteem,and entrepreneurship among the unemployed

This study focuses on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, general self‐efficacy, and global self‐esteem and on their role in the entrepreneurial process. Apart from providing evidence of the relationship between these self‐beliefs and entrepreneurial intention, it also demonstrates how they are related to actual business start‐up. Longitudinal data were obtained from 332 unemployed individuals. After 1 year, official confirmations of new firm registrations were collected. Higher levels of all 3 self‐referent beliefs were positively associated with entrepreneurial intention. Multivariate analyses showed that entrepreneurial and general self‐efficacy beliefs were important predictors of this intention. Self‐referent beliefs accounted for an additional 12% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention and for an additional 4% of the variance in actual business start‐up beyond the demographic variables.     

Social desirability, personality questionnaires, and the “better than average” effect

It is well established that respondents are much more likely to rate themselves highly on personality questionnaire items with high social desirability (SD) than on items with low SD. However, conflicting explanations have been offered for this phenomenon. In the present study, 286 participants were randomly assigned to four groups that rated 119 items from two well-known personality questionnaires. One group of participants rated themselves, a second group rated their family and friends, a third rated “people in general,” and a fourth rated the items’ SD. It was found that mean SD ratings of personality items were highly correlated with mean self-ratings and with mean ratings of family and friends for the same items (all rs > .800), but not with mean ratings of “people in general.” In other words, participants strongly tended to rate themselves, their family, and their friends as high on socially desirable qualities, but this tendency did not extend to ratings of people in general. These results support the conclusion that respondents’ personality ratings of themselves, their family and friends, but not of people in general, are influenced by the form of self-serving bias known as the “better than average effect.”     

Chicken,Eggs, and Speciation 1

Standard biological and philosophical treatments assume that dramatic genotypic or phenotypic change constitutes instantaneous speciation, and that barring such saltation, speciation is gradual evolutionary change in individual properties. Both propositions appear to be incongruent with standard theoretical perspectives on species themselves, since these perspectives are (a) non‐pheneticist, and (b) tend to disregard intermediate cases. After reviewing certain key elements of such perspectives, it is proposed that species‐membership is mediated by membership in a population. Species‐membership depends, therefore, not on intrinsic characteristics of an organism, but on relationship of an organism to others. A new definition of speciation is proposed in the spirit of this proposal. This definition implies that dramatic change is neither necessary nor sufficient for speciation. It also implies, surprisingly, that an organism can change species during its lifetime.     

Early‐Entrant Advantage,Word‐of‐Mouth Communication,Brand Similarity,and the Consumer Decision‐Making Process

To better understand the competitive dynamics between an early and a later entrant, in this study we examined the extent to which word of mouth (WOM) regarding the later entrant and the later entrant's similarity to the early entrant influences the consumer decision process. We hypothesized that the influence of WOM and similarity depends on the nature of the decision‐making task, which is theorized as either a stimuli‐based or memory‐based task. A 3‐stage, sequential‐logit model with 2 focal brands (the early and later entrants) was developed to test the influence of independent measures on the likelihood of (a) retrieval; (b) consideration, given retrieval; and (c) choice, given consideration for both the early entrant and the focal follower. Data from 2 experiments provides support for the multistage conceptualization of the consumer decision process and demonstrates that the effects of WOM communication and similarity depend on the nature of the decision‐making task.