Personality and self-employment: A journey into the craft's way of doing business

Petrik Runst and Jörg Thomä

No 38/2023, ifh Working Papers from Volkswirtschaftliches Institut für Mittelstand und Handwerk an der Universität Göttingen (ifh)

Abstract: The renewed scholarly interest in the craft-based mode of competition, work, learning and innovation suggests that there are some unique aspects of the craft's way of doing business. Using a large panel data set, the present paper takes a closer look at this issue by examining the personality characteristics of business owners. Our results confirm that an individual's personality affects the likelihood of self-employment, but certain traits have a different effect in the case of crafts vis-à-vis non-crafts. We interpret this as evidence for the specificity of the 'crafts' at the fundamental level of human personality. Thus, personality traits can influence self-employment decisions differently, depending on the sector or field of entrepreneurship. The paper concludes with implications for policy and research.

Keywords: Crafts; Self-employment; Personality; crafts entrepreneurship; craftsmanship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 L26 M13 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023, Revised 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-ino and nep-sbm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifhwps:382022

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