An Empirical Study on the Effect of Entrepreneur’s Psychological Characteristics Upon Business Performance: Focusing on the Moderating Effect of Social Support
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Lim Hee-Jin , Kim Jae-Hong , Park Ji-yun 
Published: December 2024

The personality traits of entrepreneurs have been studied in the context of entrepreneurship that drives entrepreneurial performance. In addition to the personality characteristics of entrepreneurs, it can be con- sidered that the material and spiritual support of family and acquaintances can have a significant impact on corporate performance. Focusing on this point, this study conducted an empirical study on how it affects the social support by focusing on corporate performance as a moderating effect.
This study investigated the effect of the characteristics of the entrepreneur on the performance of the enterprise by controlling social support. For this study, among the characteristics of start-ups, autono- mous desires, self-efficacy, stress tolerance, and patience for ambiguity among independent variables were adopted as independent variables, demonstrating and verifying which of these characteristics could have a significant impact on corporate performance. In particular, it was revealed whether social support would explain a significant link to corporate performance. As a result of the empirical results, it has been found that among the characteristics of start-ups, patience with self-interest, self-efficacy, stress tolerance and ambiguity has a significant impact on corporate performance, while achievement desire do not affect corporate performance. Differences from prior research resulted from the result that the desire for achievement cannot be asserted as a key personality characteristic that drives corporate perform- ance in terms of human network and self-confidence. In addition, patience with ambiguity was suggested to be one of the most important character characteristics to be dealt with in the current start-up ecosystem as a major characteristic of start-ups responding to uncertain environmental changes. The impact of social support on corporate performance as a control variable was demonstrated and, as a result, in- dependent variables other than self-efficacy had no significant impact. What these findings suggest is that the entrepreneur is more independent and self-reliant than the general wage earner and is not much affected by the social support of his family or acquaintances.
The implications of this study are as follows: First, through prior research, the psychological character- istics of entrepreneurs were examined in the context of entrepreneurship. In the preceding studies, research was conducted focusing on innovation, initiative, and risk sensitivity, which are the sub-variables of entrepreneurship. but in this study, the need for achievement, the need for autonomy, stress tolerance, and ambiguity, which are relatively uncovered in the preceding studies, differing in perspective.
Second, the effect of each variable of the entrepreneur’s psychological characteristics on the corporate performance was verified. In the results of this study, it was found that among the psychological character- istics of entrepreneurs, the need for autonomy, self-efficacy, stress tolerance, and patience for ambiguity had a positive effect on corporate performance, and the desire for achievement did not have a significant effect on corporate performance.
Third, the patience for ambiguity, including autonomy, self-efficacy, and stress tolerance, was found to be the same as the results of previous studies, and if we look at the stress tolerance among the characteristics of entrepreneurs, which are relatively lacking in discussion in existing studies, this is a business during corporate activities. It is defined as the characteristics of entrepreneurs who endure large and small stresses such as failure of the company and financial pressure. In this study, this tendency was found to be the main characteristic that can drive corporate performance.