Narrow Results

This paper examines the impact of motivation (i. e., "need for achievement") and, personality traits (i. e., "individualism/collectivism", "introversion/extraversion") on entrepreneurial potential (EP). The study draws on a sample of 503 students enrolled in business courses at a university in the United Arab Emirates. Statistical analysis reveals that need for achievement is the most significant determinant of entrepreneurial potential. Extraversion is also significantly related to entrepreneurial potential. Statistical examination of interactions (i. e., combined effects) of variables reveals that entrepreneurial potential is explained by the interactive effects of need for achievement, extraversion and collectivism. Surprisingly, and contrary to general expectations, greater entrepreneurial potential is not explained by individualistic aspirations, nor is it found to be gender-related. Practical and theoretical implications of the main findings are discussed.

The present paper examines how the influence of prior entrepreneurial exposure on entrepreneurial intention is contingent on national culture. Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior, we test our hypotheses on a dataset of 253 students from Germany and Ethiopia. We find evidence that individuals from individualistic societies preferably draw on their own entrepreneurial experience in establishing their entrepreneurial intention. In contrast, individuals from collectivistic cultures mostly prefer in-group-referenced resources and knowledge provided by entrepreneurial role models. Our study contributes to resolving previously inconclusive findings regarding the relationship between prior entrepreneurial exposure and entrepreneurial intention by considering culture as boundary condition.

Applying Ajzen’s planned behavior theory, we study the impact of control beliefs (reflected by an internal locus of control) and normative beliefs (investigated via individualistic cultural orientation) on entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intentions of final year university students. We particularly explore the interactive effect of internal locus of control and culture when explaining entrepreneurial attitudes, which consequently shapes self-employment intentions. The data were collected at a German university and three universities in East Africa. We received 590 complete responses. We used PROCESS Macro to test our model and hypotheses. Our findings show that both internal locus of control and culture predict entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intention. The effects of international locus of control are mediated by entrepreneurial attitudes. Moreover, the indirect effect is further conditioned by culture. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

In this paper, I advance and empirically support the indigenous religious values hypothesis, which holds that religions espouse values indigenous to the countries in which they developed. To identify the indigenous values of a religion’s homeland, I rely on the negative relationship between individualism and rainfall variation. I find strong empirical support for the hypothesis that contemporary individualism depends on rainfall variation in the homelands of religions to which a country’s population adheres. Indeed, this relationship explains over a quarter of the international variation in individualism. This effect is robust to controls for the role of religion in institutional and technological transfers and the confluence of conversion and colonisation. In keeping with the explicitly religious nature of the mechanism proposed here, I also find that rainfall variation in religion homelands plays a greater role in explaining the values of countries with greater religious freedom and the values of individuals who are more religious or members of religious minorities.