The Entrepreneurial Personality: A Few Ghosts Laid to Rest?

Abstract

Dr. Elizabeth Chell is Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour in the Department of Business and Administration, at the University of Salford, England. This paper considers critically three approaches to entrepreneurship; the psychodynamic, social development and trait models. It appears that the psychodynamic model relies on the stereotypic notion of the entrepreneur as a deviant; the social development model reduces to four stereotypes which are said to characterize the entrepreneur at different stages of life; and the trait approach is unable to identify reliably a trait which characterizes entrepreneurs and distinguishes them from other business persons. Other possible modification of the trait approach is to take into account the interaction of traits and situations as modifiers of behaviour. An alternative conceptualisation of entrepreneurship is put forward in which 'cognitive social learning variables' are substituted for traits, and Harr6's Situation-Act model is used as the basis for analysing how entrepreneurs relate to their business situation. Recent theoretical and empirical studies of entrepreneurship are used to provide the key concepts of person (entrepreneur) situations (business environment) fit.