General versus specific personality traits for predicting entrepreneurship

The Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory: A Spanish Adaptation and Further Validation in Adult Population

Social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills encompass a broad range of interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities that are crucial for establishing and maintaining relationships, managing emotions, setting and pursuing goals, and exploring new learning opportunities. To address the lack of consensus regarding terminology, definition, and assessment of SEB skills, Soto et al. developed the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI), which consists of 192 items, 32 facets, and 5 domains. The objective of the current study was to adapt the BESSI to Spanish (referred to as BESSI-Sp) and enhance the overall understanding of the BESSI framework. A sample of 303 people was employed with a mean age of 30.35 years (SD = 14.73), ranging from 18 to 85 years. The results indicate that the BESSI-Sp demonstrates strong psychometric properties. Its facet- and domain-level structure aligns with the theoretical expectations and closely resembles the English-language source version. The facets exhibit high reliability (mean ω = .89), and the scores demonstrate adequate stability after 3 to 4 weeks (mean rICC = .77). The BESSI-Sp also displays evidence of convergent validity and integrates well with the Big Five framework, providing incremental validity for various outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the assessment of SEB skills and future research in this field.

Influence of students' personality, gender, income and age on their intentions to create new information technology and telecommunications ventures

Businesses associated with information technology and telecommunications have increased in importance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic due to transformations in working and buying. Currently, universities in Latin America are making efforts to strengthen entrepreneurial attitudes and skills in their students. In this context, it is of interest to understand how the combination of personality traits, gender, income and age/generation affect entrepreneurial intentions toward these kinds of businesses. This research analyzes the responses of 788 university students from Chile and Ecuador to an online self-report survey using regression models with the aim of evaluating the effect of Big Five personality traits on the intention to undertake information technology and telecommunications businesses and measuring the moderation of gender, family income, and belonging to the centennial generation. The findings support a significant influence of the traits of neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness on entrepreneurial intention and suggest that female gender and higher family income have a negative impact on the intention to undertake these businesses. Moreover, an important moderating effect of female gender and lower family income levels is supported. This study sheds new light on students' characteristics that affect their participation in information technology and telecommunications ventures through the identification of a unique combination of relevant personality traits, gender and income levels. The findings are useful for designing and developing appropriate programs aimed at developing this kind of technology business in Latin America as well as promoting the entrepreneurship of groups that express a lower intention to undertake businesses, such as female students.

The key enablers of competitive advantage formation in small and medium enterprises: The case of the Ha'il region

The primary objective of this research is to establish the extent to which small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the Ha'il region benefit from a significant competitive advantage brought about by an entrepreneurial mindset (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy). To achieve these objectives, the study used a questionnaire to collect data. A total of 220 SMEs in the Ha'il region were surveyed. The participants completed an online self-administered survey and used the PLS-SEM technique. The researchers found a robust link between differentiation advantage and higher levels of innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggression, and autonomy. In addition, the outcomes of the survey reveal that a greater cost advantage is substantially associated with vastly greater innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, and competitive aggression overall. However, cost advantage is not strongly correlated with autonomy. These findings are significant because they shed new light on how competitive advantages are formed through the entrepreneurial orientation of entrepreneurs in the Ha'il region. This is a significant theoretical contribution to the literature on entrepreneurial orientation, specifically in the context of SMEs. The findings may also be valuable in supporting SMEs in being successful by enhancing their competitiveness, as SMEs are key contributors to the development and growth of the economy.

Curious enough to start up? How epistemic curiosity and entrepreneurial alertness influence entrepreneurship orientation and intention

Epistemic curiosity as the desire to acquire new knowledge and ideas is considered as an important attribute for successful entrepreneurs among practitioners, yet there is lacking empirical evidence of epistemic curiosity having an effect on entrepreneurial outcomes. This study aims to put a spotlight on epistemic curiosity as a predictor for entrepreneurial intentions and orientation. We found that epistemic curiosity has a stronger influence on entrepreneurial outcomes in comparison to the Big Five personality trait openness to experience, which is a widely used and conceptually related predictor for entrepreneurship. Furthermore, we found evidence for a mediating role of entrepreneurial alertness which gives further insights about how personality influences the ability to recognize business opportunities and leads to the formation of entrepreneurship orientation and intentions. Our findings contribute to the field of entrepreneurship research by emphasizing that epistemic curiosity may be one of the most important personality indicators for the emergence of entrepreneurial intentions and behavior.

Research on the Influence of Non-Cognitive Ability and Social Support Perception on College Students' Entrepreneurial Intention

The entrepreneurship of college students is an important issue related to the harmony and sustainable development of society as a whole. At present, the existing research in the industry pays less attention to the influence mechanism of non-cognitive ability and social support perception on college students' entrepreneurial intention. Using 450 survey data, this paper examines the relationship between non-cognitive ability and college students' entrepreneurial intention in terms of five dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. At the same time, it focuses on the role of social environmental factors, namely, social support perception in the relationship between the non-cognitive ability and entrepreneurial intention, and explores the influence path. The results show that openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and emotional stability have significant positive effects on entrepreneurial intention; agreeableness has no significant effect on entrepreneurial intention; openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability have significant positive effects on social support perception. The mediating effect of social support perception is as follows-it is part of the intermediary effect between openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability on entrepreneurial intention; within the influence of agreeableness on entrepreneurial intention, it plays a complete intermediary role. This paper enriches the research results on the impact of non-cognitive ability on entrepreneurial intention, reveals the intermediary effect of social support perception on the impact of non-cognitive ability on college students' entrepreneurial intention, and broadens the field of vision for the study of college students' entrepreneurial intention. The research results can provide a decision-making reference for the promotion of the entrepreneurial intention of college students, alleviating the employment pressure of college graduates in China and promoting sustainable economic development.

The Impact of Psychological Factors on Women Entrepreneurial Inclination: Mediating Role of Self-Leadership

The worth of women's entrepreneurship is accepted globally, but there is less focus on it in developing countries, and societal expectations mean women often lack the confidence to start their own business. The core purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of personality traits on women's inclination toward entrepreneurship. The personality traits are measured through the dimensions of openness, neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Further, the study introduced the mediator of self-leadership on personality traits and entrepreneurial intentions of women. The study is quantitative in nature and used a questionnaire survey to collect the data by convenience sampling technique. The data was collected in the context of Pakistan, and Smart PLS was chosen for further analysis. The findings revealed the significance of the relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, the study also highlighted the significance of self-leadership as a mediator and proposed significant relationships. The study suggested that personality issues should be considered and used from a business perspective, and self-leadership is important for women. The study provides room for policymakers and institutes to inform educational policies to motivate women entrepreneurs for the future.