شخصیت های کارآفرینی: نقش خودشیفتگی

Research has established a number of personality features and behaviours associated with business creation and success. The similarities between these traits and narcissism, a concept with roots in clinical psychology and psychiatry, led the authors to conduct this study, which proposes to measure whether entrepreneurs score higher on a narcissism scale than other vocational groups. The second goal of this study is to measure the role of narcissism on intention to start a business. Student entrepreneurs have been compared with non-entrepreneur students, city workers, and employees and managers from a branch of a large financial institution. Then, students filled out measures of general self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity as well as a narcissism scale. Results indicate that student entrepreneurs score significantly higher than all other vocational groups on a measure of narcissism. Results also indicate that narcissism is positively correlated with general self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity. Moreover, narcissism plays a significant role in explaining entrepreneurial intentions, even after controlling for self-efficacy, locus of control and risk propensity. Overall, these findings shed new light on the underlying personality traits of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial intentions and suggest new directions in the study of entrepreneurs’ personality profile.

Career choice theory (Holland, 1997) and person-environment fit theory (Judge & Kristof-Brown, 2004) stipulate that individuals chose careers and work environments that best fit their values, needs and personality. Narcissistic individuals fantasize about fame and power (Raskin & Novacek, 1991); see themselves as more intelligent and attractive (Gabriel, Critelli, & Ee, 1994) and are in constant search of admiration and superiority (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). Narcissists are attracted to celebrity (Young & Pinsky, 2006) and tasks that support their superiority to others in a competitive way (Morf, Weir, & Davidov, 2000). In fact, not surprisingly, narcissists seem to seek out leadership positions in organizations (Campbell & Campbell, 2009) and what better position for leadership and power than owning a business? It is well recognized that entrepreneurship fosters the myth of generating wealth, among entrepreneurs and in society in general (Shane, 2009). Consequently, entrepreneurship could attract individuals with greater narcissistic personality than other vocational choices. However, to our knowledge, narcissism in entrepreneurs has never been empirically studied. This study proposes to test whether entrepreneurs are more narcissistic than other vocational groups. Furthermore, our study measures the role of narcissism in explaining entrepreneurial intentions. We think that bridging clinical and personality psychology with entrepreneurial studies may help shed light into the study of “who is the entrepreneur” and better understand the underlying personality construct related to well-studied entrepreneurial personality traits.