Businessman or Host? Individual Differences between Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners in the Hospitality Industry

Stephanie Wagener, Marjan Gorgievski and Serge Rijsdijk

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Prior research has identified individual characteristics that distinguish business owners from non-business owners. We tested our contention that not every successful business owner can be characterized by such typical “entrepreneurial” characteristics. Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) on a unique dataset of 194 business owners in the hospitality industry revealed that several individual characteristics discriminated between entrepreneurs and small business owners. Entrepreneurs possessed higher levels of independence, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking propensity, innovativeness, and leadership qualities, but not of market orientation and self-efficacy. We conclude that “entrepreneurial” characteristics identified in the literature may be useful predicting a specific type of business ownership. However, other criteria need to be developed in order to describe other groups of business owners operating in the service industry.

Keywords: business success; dienstensector; entrepreneurship; job performance; personality characteristics; small business owners (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 M M13 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-11-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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