Entrepreneurial Personality Theory Of Entrepreneur

As noted above, despite the existence of capital contributes a crucial role to entrepreneur career choice, the gap between would be and actual self-employment depends on specific personality characteristics that individuals possess. According to Schumpeter who is the first economist research on entrepreneurship, new business creators are leader, innovative, autonomy, ingenuity, willing to conquer constraints (Schumpeter, 1934). In addition, when discussing about psychology of entrepreneurs, McCelland denoted the sets of entrepreneurial personality such as high need for achievement, moderate risk-taking propensity, willingness to have responsibility for success or failure and preference for energetic and/or novel activity (McClelland, 1961).

This paper will discuss about some specific type of personality such as need for achievement, risk attitude, locus of control, self-confidence, innovativeness and need for autonomy

• Need for autonomy

As proven in the second part, despite decision of choosing entrepreneur career depends on various factors, but the ambition to achieve autonomy or independence is the most appropriate explanation of why people prefer becoming self-employed to employee. Autonomy is essential non-financial work benefits (Matthias Benz, Bruno S. Frey, 2004). According to previous psychology literature, not only does autonomy provide motivated individuals a good opportunity to create and develop their new ideas, but they also experiment new ventures that they have not obtained in currently boring job or consider the work sectors they find more interesting (Baum, J. R. & Locke, E., 2006) (Matthias Benz, Bruno S. Frey, 2004). In related work, Rauch and Frese have indicated that entrepreneurs are people who always seek for independence in making their decision and flexibility to rearrange their work schedule,

According to the work of McClelland in 1961, individuals endowed with need for achievement are people who make use of their ability to generate their goals, couple with setting up solutions and strategies to accomplish their objectives. In addition, they prefer dealing with problem by their own knowledge, skills or efforts to depending on external factors such as chance or luck (McClelland, 1961). In the several reports, some authors suggested that individuals with high need for achievement are more likely to choose entrepreneurial career, even they can obtain greater attainment than others groups in running business (McClelland, 1961) (Shaver, K.G. and Scott, L.R., 1991). Meanwhile others argued that individual with high score of need for achievement probably are attracted to different types of careers (Cromie, S., & Johns, S., 1983) (Cromie, S., & O' Donoghue, J., 1992) (Koh, 1996) (Chell, 2008) . On one hand, it is possible claimed that compared to low need for achievement individuals, the high ones have more energetic motivation, higher responsible awareness and aspiration for acquisition. Not only are high achievers independent in finding solution for their dilemmas, but they are also wise to choose tasks involving their skills and knowledge with moderate challenge (Chell, 2008) (McClelland, 1961)