Role, Values, Person and Context: A Story of ‘Bent’repreneurship

Richard J. Arend ()
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Richard J. Arend: School of Business, College of Management & Human Service, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME 04104, USA

Administrative Sciences, 2024, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: We prove a fundamental attribution error connecting rule-breaking behavior to entrepreneurs. We do so in the research context of the US, where we recently sampled from medium-sized venture entrepreneurs and their corporate executive peers (as an applicable reference point). We chose the US not only for its high entrepreneurial activity, but also because of the not uncommon relationship between business leaders and religion. By including various measures of religiosity in the study, we could control for factors that would likely influence rule-breaking, which standard models like the fraud triangle do not explicitly consider. In fact, we add contingency theory ideas to the fraud triangle to determine whether it is the decision conditions that determine rule-breaking rather than the role of the person (i.e., as an entrepreneur). We find that once demographic, religious, firm and industry contingencies are controlled for, any statistically significant influence of being an entrepreneur (relative to being a corporate executive with similar opportunity, motivation, capability and rationalization) disappears when it comes to self-admitted value-bending behaviors at work. Our contribution consists of a novel analysis, results and discussion of the ‘bent’repreneur—adding to conversations on the under-researched nexus of entrepreneurship with religiosity and ethical decision-making.

Keywords: rule-bending; entrepreneurs; executive peers; fraud triangle; religiosity; survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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