Successful Entrepreneurship as Developmental Outcome
A Path Model From a Lifespan Perspective of Human Development
Abstract
Applying a lifespan approach of human development, this study examined pathways to entrepreneurial success by analyzing retrospective and current data. Along the lines of McClelland’s ideas of early entrepreneurship development and Rauch and Frese’s Giessen-Amsterdam model on venture success, we investigated the roles of founders’ adolescent years (early role models, authoritative parenting, and early entrepreneurial competence), personality traits (Big Five pattern), and entrepreneurial skills and growth goals during venture creation. Findings were derived from structural equation modeling studying two comparable samples of founders (N = 531) and nascent founders (N = 100) from Germany. Across both samples, reports on age-appropriate entrepreneurial competence in adolescence and an entrepreneurial Big Five profile predicted entrepreneurial skills during venture creation, which in turn predicted founders’ setting of ambitious growth goals and entrepreneurial success. Early entrepreneurial competence was related to the availability of entrepreneurial role models and authoritative parenting during adolescence as well as to an entrepreneurial Big Five profile. In line with prospective reports on early precursors of entrepreneurship, the findings illuminate the development of entrepreneurship in general and entrepreneurial success in particular over the lifespan, especially with regard to factors relevant in the adolescent years and the interplay with personality across different developmental periods.
References
(2006). Amos 7.0 user’s guide. Chicago: SPSS.
(2007). The entrepreneurial society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
(2006). Life span theory in developmental psychology. In , Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (pp. 569–664). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
(2004). The relationship of entrepreneurial traits, skill, and motivation to subsequent venture growth. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 587–598.
(2004). Calendar and question-list survey methods: Association between interviewer behaviors and data quality. Journal of Official Statistics, 20, 185–218.
(1971). Lives through times. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft.
(2008). The Q-sort in character appraisal: Encoding subjective impressions of persons quantitatively. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
(1993). Psychopathology and early experience: A reappraisal of retrospective reports. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 82–98.
(1987). Moving against the world: Life-course patterns of explosive children. Developmental Psychology, 23, 308–313.
(1996). The Life History Calendar: A research and clinical assessment method for collecting retrospective event-history data. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 6, 101–114.
(2005). Personality development: Stability and change. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 453–484.
(1994). Founder competence, the environment, and venture performance. Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, 18, 77–89.
(1991). Adolescent competence and the shaping of the life course. American Journal of Sociology, 96, 805–842.
(2005). A cross-cultural variation of autobiographical memory: On the universality and cultural variation of the reminiscence bump. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36, 739–749.
(1993). Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
(2007). Are credit ratings valuable information?. Applied Financial Economics, 17, 1061–1070.
(2006). What lies beneath: Parenting style and implicit self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 1–17.
(2003). Arriving at the high-growth firm. Journal of Business Venturing, 18, 189–216.
(1994). Toward a theory of entrepreneurial careers. Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, 19, 7–21.
(1994). Time, human agency, and social change: Perspectives on the life course. Social Psychology Quarterly, 57, 4–15.
(2006). The Oslo Agenda for Entrepreneurship Education in Europe. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from ec.europa.eu/enterprise/entrepreneurship/ support_measures/training_education/doc/oslo_agenda_final.pdf.
(2007). Business owners’ action planning and its relationship to business success in three African countries. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1481–1498.
(2005). Learning opportunities and learning behaviors of small business starters: Relations with goal achievement, skill development and satisfaction. Small Business Economics, 25, 97–108.
(2004). Role models in career development: New directions from theory and research. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65, 134–156.
(2000). Hochtechnologie 2000: Neudefinition der Hochtechnologie für die Berichterstattung zur technologischen leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands
[High-technology 2000: A redefinition of the high-technology sector for the report on Germany’s technological performance] .Karlsruhe/Hannover, Germany: Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).(2006). Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science, 312, 1900–1902.
(2007). Entrepreneurship research and practice: A call to action for psychology. American Psychologist, 62, 575–589.
(1999). ML estimation of mean and covariance structures with missing data using complete data routines. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 24, 21.
(2005). Principles and practice of structural equation modelling. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
(2000). Aggression in childhood and long-term unemployment in adulthood: A cycle of maladaptation and some protective factors. Developmental Psychology, 36, 463–472.
(2003). Shared beginnings, divergent lives: Delinquent boys to age 70. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
(2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57, 705–717.
(1998). The development of competence in favorable and unfavorable environments. American Psychologist, 53, 205–220.
(2010). The significance of childhood competence and problems for adult success in work: A developmental cascade analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 22, 679–694.
(2006). A new Big Five: Fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality. American Psychologist, 61, 204–217.
(1961). The achieving society. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.
(1999). A five-factor theory of personality. In , Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 139–153). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
(1996). Measuring performance in entrepreneurship research. Journal of Business Research, 36, 15–23.
(2010). Entrepreneurial intention as developmental outcome. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77, 63–72.
(1990). Sprache und Persönlichkeitsstruktur: Zur Validität des Fünf-Faktoren-Modells der Persönlichkeit
[Language and personality structure: Toward the validation of the five-factor model of personality] . Regensburg, Germany: S. Roeder.(2007a). Let’s put the person back into entrepreneurship research: A meta analysis on the relationship between business owners’ personality traits, business creation, and success. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 16, 353–385.
(2007b). Born to be an entrepreneur? Revisiting the personality approach to entrepreneurship. In , The psychology of entrepreneurship (pp. 41–65). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2000). Cultural differences in planning/success relationships: A comparison of small enterprises in Ireland, West Germany, and East Germany. Journal of Small Business Management, 38, 28–41.
(2001). Eltern und Kinder. Der Züricher Kurzfragebogen zum Erziehungsverhalten (ZKE).
[Parents and children: A short questionnaire for the assessment of parenting] . Diagnostica, 47, 196–207.(1997). Who starts new firms? Preliminary explorations of firms-in-gestation. Small Business Economics, 9, 449–462.
(2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 1–25.
(1998). Retrospective recall recalled. In , Methods and models for studying the individual (pp. 219–243). Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage.
(2008). Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Cheltenham: Elgar.
(1989). Role model performance effects on development of entrepreneurial career preference. Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, 1, 53–71.
(2004). Pathways to successful entrepreneurship: Parenting, personality, entrepreneurial competence, and interests. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65, 498–518.
(2007). The long way to entrepreneurship: Personality, parenting, early interests, and competencies as precursors for entrepreneurial activity among the ‘Termites’. In , Approaches to positive youth development (pp. 205–224). London: Sage.
(2001). Teenage job aspirations and career attainment in adulthood: A 17-year follow-up study of teenagers who aspired to become scientists, health professionals, or engineers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 124–132.
(2008). The illusions of entrepreneurship: The costly myths that entrepreneurs, investors, and policy makers live by. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
(2010). Human development and social change: Concept and results. London: Sage.
(2004). Narrative identity and meaning making across the adult lifespan: An introduction. Journal of Personality, 72, 437–459.
(2007). Conceptualizing parental autonomy support: Adolescent perceptions of promotion of independence versus promotion of volitional functioning. Developmental Psychology, 43, 633–646.
(2000). Parental monitoring: A reinterpretation. Child Development, 71, 1072–1085.
(2001). We know some things: Parent-adolescent relationships in retrospect and prospect. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 11, 1–19.
(1991). Authoritative parenting and adolescent adjustment across varied ecological niches. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1, 1–36.
(1980). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16, 282–298.
(1981). Natural history of male psychological health, X: Work as a predictor of positive mental health. American Journal of Psychiatry, 138, 1433–1440.
(1986). Career development: A life-span developmental approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2003). Aspiring for, and achieving growth: The moderating role of resources and opportunities. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1919–1941.
. (2009). Educating the next wave of entrepreneurs: Unlocking entrepreneurial capabilities to meet the global challenges of the 21st century. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum.
(2009). Rule breaking in adolescence and entrepreneurial status: An empirical investigation. Journal of Business Venturing, 24, 436–447.
