Parental role models and the decision to become self-employed: The moderating effect of personality
Simone Chlosta
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Holger Patzelt
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Sabine B. Klein
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Christian Dormann
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S. B. Klein WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, INTES Institute of Family Business
, Burgplatz 2, 56179 Vallendar,
Germany
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H. Patzelt Max-Planck-Institute of Economics
, Kahlaische Strasse 10,
07745 Jena, Germany
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S. Chlosta (&) European Business School, European Family Business Center
, Rheingau Palais, Soehnleinstrasse 8/D, 65201 Wiesbaden,
Germany
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C. Dormann Department for Work
, Organizational,
and Economic Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
, Wallstrasse 3, 55099 Mainz,
Germany
This paper uses social learning theory to examine the influence of parental role models in entrepreneurial families. We distinguish between paternal and maternal role models and investigate how their influence on offsprings' decision to become self-employed is moderated by personality, specifically the offsprings' openness. We use data on 461 alumni from eight German universities. Our results show not only that the presence of a parental role model increases the likelihood that individuals become self-employed, but that the influence of role models also depends on the individual's openness. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on entrepreneurial families, role models, and the psychology of the entrepreneur.
1 Introduction
Why individuals become self-employed has been a
central question of entrepreneurship research since
the very beginning of the field. This interest is due to
the relevance of entrepreneurial activities to nearly all
economies around the globe, and it explains why
entrepreneurial families have been an important topic
of study for both entrepreneurship and family
business scholars.
We define entrepreneurial families as those with a
heritage of entrepreneurship and business ownership.
This includes at least one self-employed parent owning
and managing a business within an entrepreneurial
family. Growing up in an entrepreneurial family offers
the opportunity to learn from the self-employed parent
serving as a role model and getting a realistic job
preview of self-employment. Two explanations from
very different angles dominate the discussion on why
an individual becomes self-employed: a
personalitydriven explanation and a behavioral explanation. While
the personality-driven explanation stresses that
individuals with certain traits have a higher probability of
becoming self-employed (Rauch and Frese 2007; Zhao
and Seibert 2006; Barrick and Mount 1991), the
behavioral explanation highlights the fact that
individuals tend to learn from others who are role models for
them (Mancuso 1974; Bandura 1986). Researchers
have found that early exposure to parental role models
in the family business will affect the childrens attitude
towards becoming self-employed themselves (Dyer
et al. 1994; Carr and Sequeira 2007) and that growing
up in a family with self-employed family members may
lead to a general probusiness attitude of the children
(Dunn and Holtz-Eakin 2000). Finally, children in an
entrepreneurial family can benefit from being
mentored by their parents and by accessing the business
networks of their parents (Kim et al. 2006; White et al.
2007).
While the above-cited and other studies
demonstrate that role models in entrepreneurial families are
generally influential for the motivation of their
offspring to become self-employed, this evidence
has not always been unambiguous. For instance,
some studies have found that parental role models do
not stimulate individuals to become entrepreneurs
(Kets de Vries 1977; Brenner et al. 1991; Kim et al.
2006; Ghazali et al. 1995), and in many
entrepreneurial families children do not take over the
businesses of their parents (Kepner 1983; Rodriguez
et al. 1999). Thus, there appears to be considerable
variance in the effect of parental role models on
individuals decisions to enter self-employment.
In this paper we provide an explanation, so far
unexplored, for why parental role models in some
entrepreneurial families stimulate self-employment
among their offspring, while in other families they do
not. We draw on social learning theory (Bandura
1986), which suggests that individuals learn by
observing the actions of their parents and transferring
these cues into internal codes. These internal codes
form a part of the offsprings mental models and
determine their decision policies (Bandura 1986;
Rosenthal and Bandura 1978; Rotter et al. 1972;
Bandura and Walters 1963), including their later
occupational choice (Schulenberg et al. 1984;
Scherer et al. 1989) and the decision to become
self-employed (Schr oder and Schmitt-Rodermund
2006).
However, we also know that personality plays a
role in decision-making. In particular, openness
appears to be a key personality trait in predicting
self-employment decisions. Openness refers to the
tendency to be creative, innovative, untraditional
(Zhao and Seibert 2006), and free from conformity
and securit (...truncated)