A Study on the Entrepreneur's Psychological Traits and Entrepreneurship : Focus on the Process Model
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Kim Beom-Seong 
Published: June 2018

The goals of this study are theoretically to build the comprehensive model of the relationships between entrepreneur’s psychological traits and entrepreneurship from a process perspective, and practically to suggest the bases for the development of diagnostic tools for the entrepreneur or the education and training agents who need comprehensive diagnosis on the psychological traits related with entrepreneurship. To achieve the research goals, the following specific objectives are established. First, it is to suggest a parsimonious and comprehensive process model of entrepreneurship from a process perspective. Second, it is to select the empirically supported psychological traits significant to the entrepreneurial processes. And third, it is to analyze and synthesize the influence of entrepreneur’s psychological traits on the entrepreneurial processes through the literature review.
To achieve the research goals and the specific objectives, literature review is performed from the process perspective. While reviewing literatures, meta-analysis results are mainly used and complemented by the results of the individual studies. The focus of this work is on the individual level, especially entrepreneur’s psychological traits related with ‘will do’ factors like personalities and motivations.
This paper is constructed with building the research model on the entrepreneurship, selecting the personality traits related with entrepreneurship, analyzing and synthesizing the relationship between the entrepreneur’s psychological traits and entrepreneurship processes by reviewing the related literatures, and suggesting the significance and limitations of this paper and the future research directions. In line with this order the more specific descriptions of this paper are as follows:First, we suggest the parsimonious and inclusive process model about entrepreneurship based on the process perspective and literature review. In this two stage process model, the processes are divided by venture creating stage and venture running stage and each stage is divided by intention-behavior-outcome. The venture creating stage is consisted with three phases like entrepreneurial intention - recognition of opportunities / resource rearranging - venture creation. The venture running stage is consisted with three phases like strategic intent - entrepreneurial strategy and organizational management - venture success.
Second, the definition of entrepreneur is focused on the innovation, growth, and opportunities based on the Schumpeter’s entrepreneurship. And several significant psychological traits are selected using the meta-analysis results about the relationship between psychological traits and entrepreneurship. 13 psychological traits are finally selected as an objects of analysis like “Big Five”, three traits of entrepreneurial orientation, and five motivation factors. Big Five are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. Three factors of entrepreneurial orientation are innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking propensity. Five motivation factors are need(need for achievement, need for autonomy), beliefs(self-efficacy and locus of control), and stress-tolerance.
Third, by the literature review about the relationship between the entrepreneur’s psychological traits and entrepreneurship, the following results are presented. (1) Psychological traits generally have significant relationships with entrepreneurial intentions, venture creation, venture success. In relation to such three psychological traits as agreeableness, risk-taking propensity, and need for autonomy, the unexpected results are presented.