SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY TRAITS

Abstract

Social entrepreneurs have certain different personality description which describes their behaviors/actions. Personality traits are partially developed by innate nurturing, socialization, and education. These implicit traits play an important role in driving social entrepreneurial decision-making. Thus, personality traits may influence the manner in which the individual acts. This paper has made an attempt at determining the personality traits that influence social entrepreneurs. This paper is a conceptual paper and I have developed hypotheses based on past research and literature review that reinforce the assumption that personality traits do influence entrepreneurship in general. This paper examines the influence of the Big Five personality traits on social entrepreneurship dimensions. Social entrepreneurs’ dimensions are as follows: social vision, sustainability, social network, and innovation. This paper concludes that a high degree of neuroticism has a negative influence on three dimensions of social entrepreneurship, i.e. sustainability, social networks, and innovation. Also, a high degree of agreeableness has a positive influence on social vision, social networks, and sustainability. For future study, these hypotheses can be tested by developing valid and reliable scales for measuring dimensions of social entrepreneurship and their influence on personality traits.

Keywords

• Social entrepreneurship
• personality traits