The personality characteristics of
entrepreneurial teams. A case study of the
Speed UP! Europe program.
Master Thesis
Master Business Administration Tessa Jurrema Student no.: 10220674 Thesis supervisor: Tsvi Vinig Date: 29/06/15
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Acknowledgements
Although writing a Master Thesis is most often seen as a lonely process, this study could not have been finished without the help and support of many people. First of all, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Tsvi Vinig, who has been supportive in the entire process. Even in times when I had some setbacks, he trusted me and he was always enthusiastic about my thesis. I am also really grateful to all the people who helped me with the distribution of the questionnaires, especially Sharon Costas, Ronald Kleverlaan, Pauline Massé and Olaf-Gerd Gemein. Furthermore, I would like to thank all the team members who took the time to fill in the questionnaire and all the interviewees of this study. I could not have writing this thesis without the cooperation of all these people, therefore I am really grateful.
4 Table of Content Abstract ... 5 1. Introduction ... 6 2. Literature review ... 7 2.1 Entrepreneurial personality ... 8
2.1.1 The general Big Five personality ... 8
2.1.2 Entrepreneurship’s Big Five ... 9
2.2 Entrepreneurial team evolution ... 11
2.3 Entrepreneurial team composition ... 13
2.3.1 General Big Five personalities within a team ... 13
2.3.2 Entrepreneurship’s Big Five personality traits within a team ... 14
2.4 Speed UP! Europe ... 15
3. Conceptual model ... 15
4. Methodology ... 20
4.1 Research design and strategy ... 20
4.2 Variables and measurement scales ... 21
4.3 Sample technique ... 23
5. Results ... 24
5.1 Sample distribution ... 24
5.2 Analytical strategy ... 26
5.3 Results of the one-way ANOVA tests and regression model ... 29
5.4 Post-hoc analysis ... 32
6. Discussion ... 34
7. Conclusion ... 38
References ... 42
Appendix ... 47
Appendix 1: Infographics of Speed UP! Europe ... 48
Appendix 2: Covering letter and questionnaire ... 49
Appendix 3: SPSS Output demographics ... 53
Appendix 4: Results of the one-way ANOVA tests ... 55
Appendix 5: Hierarchical multiple regression models ... 58
Appendix 6: Interview protocol ... 60
Appendix 7: Questions for the post-hoc interviews ... 62
5
Abstract
According to Chowdhurry, the existence of entrepreneurial teams is an emerging reality (Chowdhurry, 2005). Despite the benefit of selecting the optimal combination of entrepreneurial team members, little research has investigated entrepreneurial teams from a social psychological perspective (Forbes, Borchert, Zellmer-Bruhn & Sapienza, 2006). This study made a beginning in filling this gap in the literature by investigating the personalities of entrepreneurial teams within a venture capital program called Speed UP! Europe, which is supported by the European Union. The main research question of this study is: ‘To what extent have the selected team members of Speed UP! Europe entrepreneurial
personalities?’ To formulate an answer on the main research question, this study used four personality
traits of the Entrepreneurship’s Big Five model created by Vecchio (2003); self-efficacy, need for autonomy, need for achievement and internal locus of control. Focusing on these personality characteristics, the results of the online questionnaire showed that there is no significant difference between the personalities of the team leaders and the team members, which supports the supplementary model. Several comparisons between the average personality scores of this study’s sample and similar researches, suggest that the teams within the Speed UP! Europe program score equally or even higher on self-efficacy and need for autonomy than the entrepreneurs in the sample of Chen et al. (1998) and Rahim (1994). However, both the team leaders and the team members of this study scored on average lower on internal locus of control than the managers of Rahim’s study (1994).
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1. Introduction
According to Grilo and Irigoyen (2006), a majority of their surveyed population perceived the lack of financial support in European countries as an obstacle to start their own business. Also the administrative complexities to start a new venture had a significant negative effect on self-employment in the European countries. Therefore, Grilo et al. (2006) suggest that governments should play an more supporting role to stimulate entrepreneurs to start their own business in European countries. Especially while the entrepreneurial activities play an important role in the economic growth and productivity of the European countries (Grilo et al., 2006). With the introduction of Speed UP! Europe in 2014, the European Union aims to stimulate entrepreneurial teams in the agriculture, smart cities and clean tech industries by using a specific software; FIWARE. In 2014 hundred team projects got granted with €50.000 each to start their own project. Speed UP! Europe facilitates that every team will be allocated to several coaches and mentors for one year, to support the team projects with the implementation of their ideas (“The program,” n.d.).
In order to create a successful team, team members have to work well together. Although traditional literature about entrepreneurship often investigate entrepreneurship as an ‘economic battle of lonely hero’, the existence of entrepreneurial teams is an emerging reality (Chowdhurry, 2005). In the past, there has been done extensive research on finding the ideal individual entrepreneur based on their personality traits. However, little is known about the personality traits of entrepreneurial teams (Chowdhury, 2005). Despite the benefit of selecting the optimal combination of entrepreneurial team members, there is a lack in the existing literature (Kickuk & Wiesner, 1997). Two models are dominating the strategic management literature on team formation; the rational process model and the social psychological model (Aldrich & Kim, 2007). In the rational process model a team member is selected based on pragmatic instrumental criteria, such as a team’s lack of a certain skill or experience (Aldrich et al., 2007). A team member is added to the team by using their specific skills to enhance the new venture’s performance. However, the assumption that adding a new member with a different skillset has a positive effect on the team’s performances, does not always hold true. The study of Ensley, Carland and Carland (1998) shows that teams with a divers set of skills had a negative effect on the new venture’s growth and revenue. Their findings indicates that skill heterogeneity within a team rather limits than enhances firms’ performances.
The social psychological model focuses on the interpersonal fit between team members and how team members are collaborating well together (Aldrich et al., 2007). Most of the existing literature focuses on the rational process model, whereas little research has investigated the teams from a social psychological perspective (Forbes, Borchert, Zellmer-Bruhn & Sapienza, 2006). According to Forbes et al. (2006), the social psychological model is often underestimated in the team creation process, but the results of their study showed that interpersonal attraction between team members is
7 most often the primary motivation to add a new member in a team. Therefore, this study will take a social psychological perspective to investigate the personalities of entrepreneurial team members. The aim of this study is to investigate the personality differences within entrepreneurial team and to explore to what extent the selected team members of the Speed UP! Europe program have entrepreneurial personality characteristics. Due to the extensive research on finding the ideal individual entrepreneur based on their personality traits, there exists literature which supports the argumentation that entrepreneurs have different personality traits compared with other occupational groups (McCelland, 1961; Vecchio, 2003; Zhao & Seiber, 2006). With the introduction of Speed UP! Europe in 2014, the European Union aims to stimulate entrepreneurship. However, an interesting question will be to what extent Speed UP! Europe attracts people with entrepreneurial personality characteristics. Therefore, the main research question of this study is:
‘To what extent have the selected team members of Speed UP! Europe entrepreneurial personalities?’
The managerial implication of this study for Speed UP! Europe is that the results of this study gives them a deeper and better understanding of the team members’ personalities and how those personalities fit together to collaborate with each other. Besides, the results of this study can be a foundation for future research to investigate if teams with certain personality combinations perform better or worse compared with other teams, to find the optimal combination of personalities within an entrepreneurial team. To formulate an answer on the research question, several literature studies will be discussed. Thereafter, an conceptual model is drawn that elaborates on the existing literature. The conceptual model consists of several hypothesis which will give an theoretical answer on the main research question. Further, the methodology describes how the data will be collected and which research methods are used in this study. In the next chapter, data is analyzed and the results are represented. At the end of this paper, an answer on the main research question is formulated in the discussion section of this paper and several recommendations for future research are drawn.
2. Literature review
The aim of this study is to investigate the personality differences within entrepreneurial teams and to explore to what extent the selected team members of the Speed UP! Europe program have entrepreneurial personality characteristics. In the existing literature there are various definitions of an entrepreneurial team. To prevent confusion, the definition of an entrepreneurial team in this study is a team of two or more individuals who hold shares in their organization, work actively in the firm, have influence upon the strategic direction of the organization and took part in the early development phase of the new venture (Khan, Breitenecker & Schwarz, 2015).
To formulate an theoretical answer on the research question, different literature studies are included in this paper. In the beginning of this chapter, several studies about the entrepreneurial
8 personality will be discussed, particularly which characteristics distinct entrepreneurs from other occupational groups. Because entrepreneurial teams evolve overtime and cannot be studied as immutable entities (Clarysse & Moray, 2004), other literature are discussed about the evolution of entrepreneurial teams during the critical stages of a new venture. Furthermore, literature has been found about which personality compositions within a team are working well together and how those personality combinations have a significant impact on the teams’ performances. In the end, background information about the Speed UP! Europe program is provided.
2.1 Entrepreneurial personality
In the last decade extensive research has been done about the inner nature of an entrepreneur. Most studies have focused on the personal characteristics, otherwise called the “trait approach” (Hansemark, 2003, pp. 302), to differentiate entrepreneurs from other occupational groups such as managers. Other research toke an different research scope and investigated why some individuals become entrepreneurs while others do not, to determine which characteristics influence entrepreneurial behavior (Brockhaus, 1979; Simon, Houghton & Aquino, 1999).
2.1.1 The general Big Five personality
One of those studies is the study of Zhao and Seiber (2006). They used meta-analytical techniques to compare the personality traits of managers and entrepreneurs by using the general Big Five personality traits. The Big Five personality traits consists of conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism, extraversion and agreeableness.
Conscientiousness describes someone’s degree of persistence, responsibility, hard work and commitment in achieving a specific goal. The results of Zhao’s et al. (2006) study indicates that entrepreneurs have a significant higher degree of conscientiousness compared with managers. This was in line with their hypothesis. One of their explanations for this finding was that a high need for achievement would drive individuals to start their own venture to become an entrepreneur (Zhao et al., 2006). Besides, by starting their own ventures entrepreneurs have more control and responsibility about the direction of the new venture.
Also entrepreneurs scored significantly higher on openness to experience than managers. Openness to experience is characterized by individuals that are curious, explore new ideas and new experiences. Founding a new venture give entrepreneurs the opportunity to explore new ideas without being bounded by any rules created by higher management, whereas managers are more likely to follow several policies and strategies (Zhao et al., 2006).
When an individual has a high degree of neuroticism, someone is anxious, insecure and emotionally. Previous studies have shown that entrepreneurs are characterized as highly self-confident individuals with a strong belief that they can control the outcomes in their environment (Simon et al.,
9 1999). Zhao et al. (2006) elaborate on these findings and show that entrepreneurs score significantly lower on neuroticism than managers.
Extraversion is defined by the extent to which individuals are dominant, talkative, enthusiastic and assertive. Although Zhao et al. (2006) expected that entrepreneurs should have a higher degree of extraversion than managers, there was no significant relationship to support this hypothesis. However, Zhao et al. (2006) used a meta-analysis technique for their research. This technique combines several findings of previous researches to collect data. The credibility interval (CRI) indicates the variability between the findings of the different studies. The CRI of extraversion in Zhao’s et al. (2006) research showed considerable variability between the findings of the different studies. Therefore, there is a possibility that extraversion can be a distinctive factor between entrepreneurs and managers in a majority of studies (Zhao et al., 2006). For instance, McClelland’s (1961) pioneering research has shown that entrepreneurs score significantly higher on extraversion than managers.
The last general Big Five personality trait is agreeableness, which focuses on someone’s interpersonal orientation (Zhao et al., 2006). Agreeableness describes a person’s flexibility, trustiness and cooperativeness. The results of Zhao et al. (2006) indicates that entrepreneurs score lower on agreeableness than managers. Due to less legal protection and private involvement of the entrepreneur in the new venture, entrepreneurs have more to loose from small bargaining disadvantages than managers. According to Zhao et al. (2006), that could be a possible explanation why entrepreneurs compromise less easily with other parties and why they score significantly lower on agreeableness compared with managers.
2.1.2 Entrepreneurship’s Big Five
Although the general Big Five personality traits is a reliable personality test and most often used to evaluate peoples’ personalities, there are other studies that focus on more specific entrepreneurial traits. According to Vecchio (2003), the most common entrepreneurial traits in the existing literature are risk-taking, need for achievement, need for autonomy, self-efficacy and internal locus of control. He refers to these personality characteristics as the “Entrepreneurship’s Big Five” (Vecchio, 2003, pp. 307).
2.1.2.1 Risk taking
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (“The voice of small businesses,” 2014), the survival rate of a new venture within 10 years is one-third. So intuitively, risk-taking propensity could be expected to be higher for entrepreneurs compared with managers. Risk-taking propensity is the amount of perceived risk the person believes he or she takes (Busenitz, 1999). However, research on risk-taking propensity among entrepreneurs have been inconclusive. For example, Carland et al. (1995) concluded that founders scored significantly higher in risk propensity compared to non-founders. Similar results were reported by Begley and Boyd (1987) and Stewart, Watson, Carland and
10 Carland (1998). However, several researches of Brockhaus did not found any significant difference on risk taking between managers and entrepreneurs (Brockhaus, 1980; Brockhaus & Nord, 1979). Busenitz (1999) investigated this paradox. His findings are indicating that entrepreneurs perceive less risk in chosen business opportunities, because of their overconfidence and ability to generalize from limited experiences (Busenitz, 1999). Therefore, he expects that other studies could not find a significant difference in risk propensity between entrepreneurs and managers, because entrepreneurs perceive and think about risk in different ways than managers of large organizations. Entrepreneurs act upon and exploit a window of opportunity, whereas extensive data collection and risk probability analyses are too time consuming (Shapira, 1995). Consequently entrepreneurs take more risky decisions before all the information is collected. However, due to the overconfidence of entrepreneurs, they do not experience those decisions as risky (Busenitz, 1999). Therefore, they take risky decisions more easily than managers.
2.1.2.2 Need for Achievement
Need for achievement has been associated with the entrepreneurial personality since the pioneering research of McClelland (1961). People who have a high need for achievement set challenging goals, compete with their own standards and continuously want to improve their own performances (Begley et al., 1987). The results of Stewart et al. (1998) show that entrepreneurs score significantly higher in achievement motivation than both small business owners and corporate managers. Also in the sample of Begley et al. (1987) scored the founders of a new venture higher in achievement motivation than non-founders. According to McClelland’s research (1961), people can attain more achievement satisfaction as an entrepreneur than could be derived from other positions. So people with a high need for achievement prefer an entrepreneurial position above other types of jobs. Managers on the other hand, tend to have a relatively low need for achievement and have a higher need for power (McClelland, 1969). Other research has shown that in the process of setting challenging goals, entrepreneurs often are too optimistic and over evaluating their chances of success which often leads to entrepreneurial failure (Chen, Liao, Redd & Wu, 2013).
2.1.2.3 Need for Autonomy
Another personality trait that is often associated with entrepreneurs is their intrinsic need for autonomy. Need for autonomy is related to someone’s avoidance of restrictive environments where they are bounded by rules and procedures (Vecchio, 2003). These environments stifles the entrepreneurs in their creativity and rarely results in the intrinsic rewards which are important for them (Cromie, 2000). According to Cromie and O’Donoghue (1992), entrepreneurs scored significantly higher on need for autonomy compared with other occupational groups. Other research showed that the need for autonomy is the underlying motive for MBA student to prefer working for smaller firms (Harrell & Alpert, 1979). Further research of Cromie (2000) showed that the main driver for entrepreneurs to start a new venture is their intrinsic need for autonomy. These researches are based on
11 the argumentation that larger firms suppress personal freedom and potential for entrepreneurial initiatives (Vecchio, 2003).
2.1.2.4 Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy refers to the confidence a person has in successfully performing various tasks in uncertain situations (Chen, Greene & Crick, 1998). Entrepreneurs most often operates in dynamic and risky environments, where they need to take fast decisions based on little information (Shapira, 1995). People with high self-efficacy should feel more competent to cope with uncertain situations and they are more likely persevere when problems arise (Vecchio, 2003). Due to their confident they see bigger opportunities in risky situations and take more risks (Krueger & Dickson, 1994). Also people who score high on self-efficacy show a high degree of personal initiative (Speier & Frese, 1997), have higher hope for success and take long-term perspectives (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995). Other research has shown that self-efficacy has a positive influence on business creation and success (Poon, Ainuddin & Junit, 2006). The results of Boyd and Vozikis (1994) indicate that self-efficacy is an important trait to determine people’s entrepreneurial intentions and the likelihood those intentions will result in entrepreneurial actions. Also Chen et al. (1998) showed that founders scored significantly higher on entrepreneurial self-efficacy than non-founders.
2.1.2.5 Internal Locus of Control
People with an internal locus of control believe they have the ability to control their environment (Rauch & Frese, 2000). They less likely believe in external forces such as luck, destiny or other powerful forces (Begley et al., 1987). On the other hand, people with an external locus of control are more passive and belief that their outcomes are controlled by others (Rauch et al., 2000). Several researches came to the conclusion that entrepreneurs scored on average higher on internal locus of control than managers (Bonnett & Furmham, 1991; Cromie & John, 1983, Rahim, 1996).
Whereas both self-efficacy and locus of control are personality traits with a cognitive component and about control, there are two important distinctions. First, self-efficacy measures behavior control while locus of control focuses on both behavior- and outcome control (Chen et al., 1998). Second, internal locus of control is a general construct covering very different situations, whereas self-efficacy is task related, i.e. an evaluation of a person’s belief about his or her ability of performing various tasks. Therefore, it is possible for someone to have a strong internal locus of control in general, but have little confidence in performing specific task (i.e. low self-efficacy).
2.2 Entrepreneurial team evolution
Several researchers investigated entrepreneurial teams as immutable entities. However, the findings of Clarysse and Moray (2004) and Vanaelst, Clarysse, Wright and Lockett (2006) suggest that the entrepreneurial teams evolve overtime and cannot be studied as immutable entities. Both studies focused on the pre-start up and the post start-up stages. According to Clarysse et al. (2004), very little
12 research has focused on entrepreneurial team evolution processes during the first critical stages of a new venture. After their longitudinally research of twenty months, Clarysse et al. (2004) developed a model that consists of four phases; idea phase, pre start-up phase, start-up phase and post start-up phase. In the first phase, the idea phase, teams had an idea and saw a market opportunity. Clarysse et al. (2004) observed that within teams, one member privileged himself as the project leader. In most cases the person who came up with the entrepreneurial idea was assigned to be the project leader.
Figure 1: The entrepreneurial team evolution (Clarysse et al., 2004).
After the entrepreneurial teams pass through the idea phase, the team evolves into the second stage; the pre start-up phase (Clarysse et al., 2004). In this particular phase, the idea will worked out further into a detailed business plan. The project leader evolve in the champion of the entrepreneurial team. The champion is the motivator in the team and has put the team together. Clarysse et al. (2004) pointed out that the champion of the entrepreneurial team is seldom the best manager, but often the most straightforward solution to manage the new venture.
The pre start-up phase of Clarysse et al. (2004) corresponds with the ‘organization in gestation phase’ of the model developed by Vanaelst et al. (2006). In the organization in gestation phase of Vanaelst et al. (2006), the pre-founding team evolves in a founding team. However, Vanaelst et al. (2006) observed that the pre-founding team does not necessary has the same team members as the founding team. Some of pre-founding team members left the founding team due a lack of team commitment or personal conflicts.
The next phase of the entrepreneurial team evolution is called the start-up phase (Clarysse et al. 2004). After registration, a new venture has started and the champion of the team becomes the CEO of the company. Clarysse’s et al. (2004) study is in line with Burgelman’s (1983) longitudinal research, where the transformation of the product champion to the venture manager happened almost
13 automatically and naturally. However, Clarysse et al. (2004) came to the conclusion that in most of their cases the champion of the team is not suited to be a CEO, because the new venture rapidly outgrow the champion’s managerial capacity. The final phase is called the post start-up phase, which is characterized by gaining strategic focus and professionalizing the organization (Clarysse et al., 2004).
2.3 Entrepreneurial team composition
According to Forbes, Borchert, Zellmer-Bruhn and Sapienza (2006), there are two general models which could explain the team formation process; the interpersonal attraction model and rational process model. The interpersonal attraction model is driven by social psychological needs of existing team members, whereas team members prefer someone where their personalities fit with the new team member’s personality. In the rational process model, members are added in the entrepreneurial team to fulfill particular resource needs.
Whereas a lot of literature studied the team formation process from a rational process perspective, there is evidence that in reality the formation of a team is better explained by the interpersonal attraction process (Forbes et al., 2006). In the literature there exists two contradictive theories that are trying to explain which personality combinations within a team results in the highest interpersonal attraction; the supplementary model and the complementary model. The supplementary model suggests that the team’s interpersonal attraction are improved when the team members have similar characteristics, also called homogeneous teams. According to this model team members are more capable of communicating with each other and more motivated to work together, when their characteristics are similar. In contrast, the complementary model suggests that a team’s interpersonal attraction is improved when the team members’ characteristics are diverse, also called heterogeneous teams. In a way a person behaves and interacts within a team, is a function of his or her personality (Kickuk & Wiesner, 1997). Teams’ deep-level personality traits have an impact on the cohesion within the team which could influence the teams’ performances (Khan et al., 2015).
2.3.1 General Big Five personalities within a team
Therefore, Kickuk et al. (1997) studied several personality combinations of team members to investigate which combinations of personalities contribute to the team’s cohesion and performances. They used the general Big Five personality factors (i.e. conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and openness to experience) as a framework to measure the personality characteristics of team members. Their results indicate that successful teams are characterized by higher levels of extraversion, general cognitive ability, agreeableness and lower levels of neuroticism compared with the unsuccessful team. According to Kickuk et al. (1997), one of the implications of their research is that their findings are helpful in the creation of a team. They suggest that employees who score high on extraversion, general cognitive ability, agreeableness and low on neuroticism, should be put together to enhances the performances of the teams. Although the sample of Kickuk et al. (1997)
14 consists of product design teams instead of entrepreneurial teams, there are certain similarities between the two teams. Both teams look for opportunities within the market to development something new, whereas innovation is an important component in both teams. Further, the design teams in the sample of Kickuk et al. (1997) are involved in the project from beginning to end, just like the project teams of Speed UP! Europe.
Research of Neuman, Wagner and Christiansen (1999) both contradicts and supports the findings of Kickuk et al. (1997). Also Neuman et al. (1999) used the Big Five personality traits for their research. However, Neuman et al. (1999) investigated both the average level of a given trait within the team, called the ‘team personality elevation’ (TPE), and the variability of personality traits within the teams, called the ‘team personality diversity’ (TPD). Their findings indicate that a high level of conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience has a positive impact on the teams’ performances, which is align with the results of Kickuk et al. (1997). However, the results of Neuman et al. (1999) also suggest that a high diversity in extraversion and emotional stability is positively related to the team performance. One of their possible explanations for this finding was that it could be more effective for a team to have some members who are outgoing and enthusiastic, while other members fill the role of being reserved and following.
2.3.2 Entrepreneurship’s Big Five personality traits within a team
Despite the benefit of selecting the optimal combination of entrepreneurial team members, there is a lack in the existing literature. Little is known about the entrepreneurship’s big five personality traits within entrepreneurial teams (Chowdhury, 2005). However, the research of Khan et al. (2015) is an exception. They investigate to what extent diversity in need for achievement is desirable for an entrepreneurial team. Need for achievement is often associated with entrepreneurial behavior, firm success and is one of the core factors that drives the innovative business (Khan et al., 2015). Khan et al. (2015) argue that diversity within entrepreneurial teams could have consequences for the teams’ functioning. They base their argumentation on the similarity attraction paradigm, which is align with the supplementary model. According to the similarity attraction model, people can easily identify themselves and interact with others when they have similar characteristics, whereas they have the feeling they belong to a certain group (Khan et al., 2015). Members that are dissimilar from the group are being viewed more negatively than the similar members. According to Khan et al. (2015), entrepreneurial team members with a divers need for achievement are belonging to different groups. Therefore, they have dissimilar feelings towards each other which could undermine team functioning.
Furthermore, a high diversity in need for achievement could result in “free riding” (Khan et al., 2015). While the team member with a high need for achievement are working hard to achieve the challenging goals, the other team members with a low need for achievement lack motivation to distribute something for the team. Therefore, diversity in need for achievement could causes fraction within the entrepreneurial team. Khan et al. (2015) investigated this phenomenon by measuring the
15 diversity in need for achievement, teams’ performances and the relationship conflicts within the entrepreneurial teams. Previous research had proven that relationship conflicts within a team lowers the team members accessibility towards each other (Pelled, 1996) and increased the feeling of being threatened by the other team members (Staw, Sandelands & Dutton, 1981) which could lead to dysfunctional teams (de Wit, Greer & Jehn, 2012). The results of Khan et al. (2015) support the similarity-attraction model and show that a diversity in need for achievement lowers the teams’ effectiveness and efficiency which resulted in lower team performances. Khan et al. (2015) argue that perhaps people find it more pleasurable to work with colleagues who have similar characteristics. 2.4 Speed UP! Europe
Speed UP! Europe is a project that started in 2014, with the aim to stimulate entrepreneurship in Europe. Speed UP! Europe has a total budget of €5.5 million, which is supported by the European Union. Every team with a good idea can join the program under condition that the teams consist of a minimum of three- and a maximum of five members and each member must be resident in a country that is part of the seventh Framework program1 (“The program,” n.d.).
The first deadline of Speed UP! Europe to hand in the proposals was at December 10th 2014. In the selection procedure, evaluators had to grade each proposal along three criteria; the innovative use of FIWARE technology, the societal and economic impact of the product or service and the teams’ qualities based on their previous experiences and capacity to implement their project idea. Every criteria was evaluated on a scale from 1 till 10, whereas a 6 was equal to a threshold. When teams where evaluated equally, the teams with a higher team quality factor had the priority above the team with the lower team quality factor. The teams’ impact factors had the second priority. According to the infographics of Speed UP! Europe (Appendix 1) was the average total scores of the winners 23.3, whereas the impact factor varied between 6 till 9 and the team factor scores varied from 8 till 9.5. Most of the team members were living in German (262), followed by Sweden (36) and the Netherlands (22). Whereas a distinctive amount of teams were originated from one country (82%), 18% of the entrepreneurial teams included members who are originated from different countries. Further, the gender distribution of the team leaders is 86% males and 14% females.
After the evaluation in the beginning of 2015, hundred projects were selected and earned €50.000 each. This €50.000 is meant to cover the cost of development software and equipment, travel costs, facility rental costs and grant for living costs if necessary. After the selection, Speed UP! Europe facilitates that every team will be allocated to several coaches, mentors and workshops for one year, to support the team projects with the implementation of their ideas. The program aims to cover the entire entrepreneurial journey from the entrepreneurial idea to prototype (“The program,” n.d.).
3. Conceptual model
1 Including EU countries, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia,
16 Team diversity is a broad concept which refers to compositional distribution of team members’ personal characteristics (Rico, Molleman, Sánchez-Manzanares & van der Vegt, 2007). Some of these characteristics are easily detectable, such as gender and age, whereas other characteristics stay more fixed and stable overtime, such as personality (Rico et al., 2007). The aim of this study is to investigate the compositional personality distributions of the team members and to investigate to what extent the selected team members of the Speed UP! Europe program have entrepreneurial personality characteristics. The personalities of the entrepreneurial leaders and team members are the independent variables in this study, whereas the entrepreneurial personalities traits are the independent variables. In the end of this section an theoretical answer is formulated on the main research question: ‘To what
extent have the selected team members of Speed UP! Europe entrepreneurial personalities?’
The study of Clarysse et al. (2004) explored the entrepreneurial team evolution during the first critical stages of a new venture. They developed an entrepreneurial team evolution model that contains four critical phases; idea phase, pre start-up phase, start-up phase and post-start-up phase. In the beginning of the entrepreneurial team evolution model, one person comes up with an entrepreneurial idea and sees a market opportunity, whereas he or she needs a team to implement the idea into a new venture. Clarysse et al. (2004) observed that within the entrepreneurial teams, one member privileged himself as the project leader. In most cases the person who came up with the entrepreneurial idea was assigned to be the project leader. This transformation of entrepreneurial team member to entrepreneurial team leader happened almost automatically and naturally (Clarysse et al., 2004). Clarysse et al. (2004) are referring to the entrepreneurial leader as the champion of the entrepreneurial team. The team champion showed personal initiative in putting the team together, because he or she beliefs in the entrepreneurial idea and is confident enough to take the risk of starting a new venture.
An entrepreneurial personality trait that refers to taking personal initiatives and feeling confident enough to perform various tasks in uncertain situations, is self-efficacy. The results of Boyd and Vozikis (1994) indicate that self-efficacy is an important trait to determine people’s entrepreneurial intentions and increase the probability that those intentions will result in entrepreneurial actions. Also Chen et al. (1998) showed that founders scored significantly higher on entrepreneurial self-efficacy than non-founders. Judging on the definitions of Chen et al. (1998) the difference between a founder and a non-founder, is that the founder came up the entrepreneurial idea and the non-founder is leading a company that someone else started. Assuming that the team leader was the member within the team who came up with the project idea, it is arguable that within the entrepreneurial teams of Speed UP! Europe the entrepreneurial leaders can be seen as the founders, whereas the other team members can be seen as the non-founders. Due to the findings of Chen et al. (1998), founders score significantly higher on self-efficacy than non-founders. Therefore, this study expects that the entrepreneurial team leaders score higher on self-efficacy compared with their other teams members. Besides, the entrepreneurial team leader showed personal initiative to bring the team
17 together and is confident enough about his idea to perform in a risky and uncertain environment. Therefore, one of the predictions of this study is:
Hypothesis 1: “Entrepreneurial team leaders score significantly higher on self-efficacy compared with the other team members.”
According to Clarysse’s et al. (2004) description of an entrepreneurial team leader, the team leader has a dominant and enthusiastic role within the team. Extraversion is defined by the extent to which individuals are dominant, talkative, enthusiastic and assertive (Zhao et al., 2006). Results of Neuman et al. (1999) indicates that a high diversity degree of extraversion within a team has a positive effect on the team’s performances. Their explanation for this finding was that it could be more effective for a team to have one team member who is outgoing, dominant and enthusiastic, while other members fill the role of being reserved and following. This result of Neuman et al. (1999) are suggesting that it is most effective for an team, that the team leaders score high on extraversion, whereas the other team members score low on extraversion.
Research of Koestner and Gaetan (1996) showed that extraversion is significantly associated with one of the five entrepreneurial personality traits; need for autonomy. Need for autonomy is related to someone’s avoidance of restrictive environments, where they are bounded by rules and procedures (Vecchio, 2003). Entrepreneurs have the tendency to neglect the rules dictated by other people. Instead, they want to make their own rules (Vecchio, 2003). Therefore, entrepreneurs prefer an entrepreneurial position, to lead a company and to make their own rules. Besides, a restrictive environment could also suppresses the personal freedom and potential for entrepreneurial initiatives (Vecchio, 2003). Past research showed that a high intrinsic need for autonomy is the main driver to start a new venture (Cromie, 2000).
Assuming that the main entrepreneurial idea was coming from the entrepreneurial team leader and brought the team together to participate in the Speed UP! Europe program, the entrepreneurial team leader was the driver to start the entrepreneurial project within the Speed UP! Europe program. Whereas the team leader could have sent his idea to existing firms, he decided to join the Speed UP! Europe program. This suggests that the team leader has an intrinsic need for autonomy. Due to Neuman’s et al. (1999) argument that is more effective for a team to consist of one member that is more dominant and outgoing, whereas the other members fill the role of being reserved and follow the rules, this study expects that the entrepreneurial team leaders score significantly higher on need for autonomy than the other team members. Such that the entrepreneurial team leader is the most dominant component of the team and makes the rules, whereas the other entrepreneurial team members will be the followers. Therefore, one of the predictions of this study is:
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Hypothesis 2: “Entrepreneurial team leaders score significantly higher on need for autonomy compared with the other team members.”
People with an internal locus of control believe they have the ability to control their environment (Rauch & Frese, 2000). They are less likely to believe in external forces such as luck, destiny or other powerful forces (Begley et al., 1987). On the other hand, people with an external locus of control are more passive and belief that their outcomes are controlled by others (Rauch & Frese, 2000). Several researches came to the conclusion that entrepreneurs scored on average higher on internal locus of control than managers (Bonnett & Furmham, 1991; Cromie & John, 1983, Rahim, 1996). Instead of waiting for something to happen, entrepreneurs take a proactive stand and take control of their own destiny by starting a new venture. Previous studies have showed that entrepreneurs are characterized as highly self-confident individuals with a strong belief that they can control the outcomes in the environment (Simon et al., 1999). They believe in their own strength and capacity to handle uncertain risky situations.
Research has shown that internal locus of control is derived from one of the general Big-Five personality traits; neuroticism (Morrison, 1997). When an individual has a high degree of neuroticism, someone is anxious, insecure and emotionally. Morrison (1997) concluded a strong negative correlation between neuroticism and internal locus of control. A possible explanation for this finding is that the individuals whom have a high internal locus of control can more easily adapt to emotionally unexpected stressful situations, which results in a low degree of neuroticism (Perlow & Latham, 1993). Research of Neuman et al. (1999) indicates that teams whose members differ in neuroticism perform better than teams whose members score similar on neuroticism. Sometimes neuroticism is referred in the literature as emotional stability, whereas a high degree of neuroticism indicates a low degree of emotional stability (Neuman et al., 1999). Other research has shown that both extraversion and emotional stability are related to leadership (Sorrentino, 1973). These results suggest that the leader of the entrepreneurial team should have a high emotional stability, which correlates with a high internal locus of control. Based on the assumption that the team leaders of the Speed UP! Europe came up with entrepreneurial idea and brought the team together, the team leader was the person in the team who took a proactive stand and took control over his destiny. Therefore, one of the predictions of this study is:
Hypothesis 3: “Entrepreneurial team leaders score significantly higher on internal locus of control compared with the other team members.”
According to the entrepreneurial team evolution model of Clarysse et al. (2004), the idea generation phase is followed by the pre start-up phase. The main task in the pre start-up phase is the development of a detailed business plan where the team members need to have common team goals and beliefs, such that the direction of the new venture is clear for all the team members (Clarysse et
19 al., 2004). It is important that those common team goals overlap with the team members’ personal beliefs and desires. One of the entrepreneurial personality traits that refers to setting challenging goals to improve performances, is need for achievement. According to Khan et al. (2015), conflicting goals could be caused by team members who have dissimilar needs for achievement. The results of Khan et al. (2015) showed that diversity in need for achievement has a negative effect on the entrepreneurial team efficiency. An entrepreneurial team that contains members with a diverse range of need in achievement has different attitudes and ways of interpreting and analyzing information which results in different opinions about the strategic directions of the new venture (Khan et al., 2015). Team members with a high need for achievement are setting more challenging goals and have higher expectancies of their actions compared with team member with a lower need for achievement. Further, a high diversity in need for achievement could result in “free riding” (Khan et al., 2015). While the team member with a high need for achievement are working hard to achieve challenging goals, the other team members with a low need for achievement lack motivation to distribute something for the team. Therefore, diversity in need for achievement could causes fraction within the entrepreneurial team, which could lead to relationship conflict within the entrepreneurial team.
Observations of Vanaelst et al. (2006) support this line of argumentation. They showed that in the pre start-up phase, personal conflicts could arise between team members due to conflicting goals and not being able to agree with each other on the most appropriate direction of the new venture. These differences in opinions often led to one member leaving the team, before the team evolves in the start-up phase, which leaves the team with members who have the same achievement goals (Vanaelst et al., 2006). According to Clarrysse’s et al. (2004) entrepreneurial team evolution model, all the teams of the Speed UP! Europe program are in the their start-up phase. Khan et al. (2015) argue that it is unlikely that in the context of early stage entrepreneurial teams, team members with a divers need for achievement will form a team, because it could lead to relationships conflicts within teams. Based on this line of argumentation, this study does not expect that the entrepreneurial team leaders score significantly higher on need for achievement compared with their other team members. However, due to the fact that need for achievement is an entrepreneurial characteristics and all the team members decided to join the program, it is expected that the teams in the Speed UP! Europe program score relatively high in need for achievement. To verify this argumentation, need for achievement is one of the control variables in this study.
Other control variables in this study are gender, age, nationality, educational background and industry. All these variables could impact the findings of this study. Although from an economic perspective the European market is one single market, it contains countries with very different cultures. For instance, research of del Junco and Brás-dos-Santos (2009) showed that German and Spanish entrepreneurs scored very high on uncertainty avoidance (AVI), whereas the Italian entrepreneurs scored low on AVI. According to Hofstede’s definition (1994), uncertainty avoidance is
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a culture’s degree of feeling threatened by uncertain or unknown situations which could have an impact on the entrepreneurial traits, such as self-efficacy and internal locus of control. Therefore, nationality is one of the control variables in this study, to exclude the impact of cultures on the findings in this study.
One of the Entrepreneurship’s Big Five personality traits that is not taken into the account in this study is risk taking. Due to the contradictive literature, it is not clear if entrepreneurs scores significantly higher on risk taking compared with other occupational groups. Besides, every team member joined the Speed UP! Europe program voluntarily where the rewards of their efforts are uncertain, make it apparent that all team members took a certain risk by participating in the program. Therefore, there is decided to exclude risk taking in this study.
4. Methodology
This section describes the research methodology and the procedures that have been followed to collect data. First, the research design and strategy are explained. Second, the variables and measurement scales are discussed followed by a description of the sample technique.
4.1 Research design and strategy
The aim of this study is to investigate the personality differences within entrepreneurial teams and to what extent the selected team members of the Speed UP! Europe program have entrepreneurial personality characteristics.
This study is theory driven and adapt a theoretical perspective, which was tested trough data collection. According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2012), a deductive approach is used to answer to main research question. Elaborated on previous researches, a conceptual model was drawn with several hypothesis that formed a theoretical answer on the main research question. These hypothesizes are tested trough data collection. The research strategy of this study is a mixed method research, which combines two research strategies to formulate an answer on the research question; a case study and a survey. According to Saunders et al. (2012), the aim of a case study is to get an completer and deeper insight in the context of the research. This study focuses on the team members within the Speed UP! Europe program to get an better understanding of their personalities.
A survey is usually associated with a explorative and deductive approach, which is used to test possible relationships between variables (Saunders et al., 2012). Data was collected by using questionnaires which is an effective data collection tool, because it focuses on the perceptions of the respondents and the answers of the respondents are easy to compare (Saunders et al., 2012). Besides, questionnaires gave me the opportunity to collect a large amount of data in relatively a short period of time. The respondents can fill in the questionnaire at an appropriate time and place, which increases the willingness to participate. Further, the anonymity of a questionnaire is high, which decreases the
21 possibility of social desirable answers and increases the reliability of the research (Saunders et al., 2012).
Due to the fact that Speed UP! Europe has teams originated from very different European countries, the questionnaire is in English. The teams of Speed UP! Europe needed to write their proposal in English which suggests that their English is proper enough to understand the questionnaire. The structure of the questionnaire contains three subcategories; general questions about yourself, general questions about your team and questions about you. The questionnaire contained thirteen questions in total, whereas nine questions were multiple choice and four questions were open ended (Appendix 2). Before the questionnaire was sent to teams of Speed UP! Europe, a pilot test was conducted to verify if all the questions were formulated clearly and if the scoring scales provided the participants with appropriate answers. Due to a limited of time, it was not possible to pilot test the questionnaire on this study’s target group. Instead, the pilot test questionnaire was sent to 21 of my friends and family, whereas they we ask to be critical. After the pilot test, some small adjustments have been made in the introduction letter and to some questions. However, all the adjustments that have been made are being discussed in the followed ‘variables and measurement’ section of the methodology.
However, one of the main disadvantages of questionnaires is that the questions are premeditated and fixed. Therefore, there is little room for respondents to express themselves which could lead to misinterpretation of the data. To diminish this disadvantage, several post-hoc interviews has been taken after the questionnaires. The aim of these interviews is to gain a deeper understanding in the personalities of the team members and to explain possible discrepancies of the data collected from the questionnaires.
4.2 Variables and measurement scales
This section explain the definitions of the variables and which scales are used to measure the variables. To avoid improper questionnaires with misunderstanding questions, different parts of existing questionnaires with a proper Cronbach’s alpha (> .70) are used in this study. Cronbach’s alpha is a statistic which measures the internal consistency or reliability of a measurement scale. In other words, Cronbach’s alpha indicates how well a set of questions measures a single variable (Saunders et al., 2012). A Cronbach’s alpha higher than .70 suggests that the questions are reliable enough to measure a certain variable.
Need for achievement: is a personality traits that refers to a person’s need to set challenging
goals, to compete with their own standards and the need to continuously improve their own performances (Begley et al., 1987). To measure this personality trait among the team members of Speed UP! Europe, the need for achievement item of the 30 Preliminary International Personality Item Pool (“Index of Scale Labels,” n.d.) scale was used. This IPIP scale was developed to measure the
22 Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) model of Cloninger, Przybeck, Svrakic and Wetzel (1994). Need for achievement is measured by ten statements, such as “I try to surpass others’ accomplishments” and “I want to be the very best”. Participants needed to answer to what extent these statements are align with their personality using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘very inaccurate’ to ‘very accurate’ (Appendix 2). According to the IPIP scales, the Cronbach’s alpha of need for achievement is .78 (“Index of Scale Labels,” n.d.).
Self-efficacy: refers to the confidence someone has in successfully performing various task in
uncertain situations (Chen et al., 1998). To measure this personality trait, the self-efficacy item of the IPIP scales is used in the questionnaire of this study (Appendix 2), which is similar to California Psychological Inventory model of Gough (1996). Self-efficacy is measured by ten statements, such as “I can handle complex problems” and “I am quick to understand things”. Also here participants needed to answer to what extent these statements are align with their personalities using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘very inaccurate’ to ‘very accurate’. According to the IPIP scales, the Cronbach’s alpha of self-efficacy is .81 (“Index of Scale Labels,” n.d.).
Internal locus of control: refers to a person’s believe in their ability to control the environment
and their destiny (Rauch & Frese, 2000). The items of Levenson (1972) are used in this study to measure the internal locus of control. The internal locus of control is measured by 7 statements, such as “when I make plans, I am almost certain to make them work” and “I can pretty much determine what will happen in my life”. Participants needed to answer to what extent these statements are align with their personalities using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘very disagree’ to ‘very agree’. The Cronbach’s alpha of the internal locus of control is .77 (Levenson, 1972).
Need for autonomy: is a personality trait which is associated with someone’s avoidance of
restrictive environments, where they are bounded by rules and procedures (Vecchio, 2003). The measurement scale of Hughes and Morgan (2007) were used to measure need for autonomy. They used 5 statements to measure need for autonomy. However, some adjusted have been to the original scales created by Hughes et al. (2007). The study of Hughes et al. (2007) investigates how much need for autonomy entrepreneurs are given their employees. But this study wants to explore a person’s need for autonomy. Therefore, the original statements are slightly adjusted. First, any reference to employees are rephrased in the first person. Second, this study want to investigate a person’s intrinsic need for autonomy, therefore starts every sentence with “In my ideal job”. As an example, one of the original statements of Hughes et al. (2007) was “Employees are permitted to act and think without interferences”, which is rephrased into “In my ideal job, I am permitted to act and think without interference”. However, the scoring grid in this study is kept similar to the scoring grid of Hughes et al. (2007); a 7-point Likert scale. The Cronbach’s alpha per statement is ranging from .74 to .80 (Hughes et al., 2007).
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Control variables: This study expects that the team members within the Speed UP! Europe
program score relatively high in need for achievement. However, this study also expects that the team leaders will not score significantly higher on need for achievement compared with the team members. To verify this argumentation, need for achievement is one of the control variables in this study. Other variables that will be kept controlled in this study are gender, age, nationality, educational background and industry. Due to the fact that a lot of different nationalities can join the Speed UP! Europe program, the question asking for a person’s nationality is kept open ended. Age is also an open ended question, because this would generate more accurate data than when the age was divided into different categories. The industry distinctions of Speed UP! Europe are used for the industry variable; clean technology, agriculture and smart cities. One of the remarks of the pilot test was that the open ended question about someone’s educational background was too vague and not precise enough. Therefore, this study has chosen for an educational background scale with fixed options (Appendix 2).
4.3 Sample technique
To get an better and deeper insight into the Speed UP! Europe teams, this study only investigates the entrepreneurial team members within the program. As a consequence, it is harder to generalize the findings of this study to the overall entrepreneurial teams. Due to the administration of the Speed UP! Europe program, it was possible to get accurate information about the distribution of teams within their program (Appendix 1). However, it was not possible to contact every team member within Speed UP! Europe, because the program only had the email addresses of the team leaders. Therefore, team leaders were asked if they could forward the questionnaire link to their team members. Due to a limited of time and lack of access of the team members’ contact information within the program, I was obliged to use a convenience sampling technique. The project coordinator of the entire program has agreed to send the questionnaires, via their internal communication network, to all the team leaders of the program.
The survey was open for 5 weeks, started from April 30th in 2015. In the beginning, the response rate was low and the ratio of incomplete surveys relatively high. A possible explanation for the incomplete surveys could be that Speed UP! Europe works with a pointing system, where teams get points when they fill in different kind of paperwork. However, when the team members click on the survey link, they first saw an introduction letter mentioning that participation in this survey is voluntarily. Therefore, team members did not get rewarded by points if they fill in the questionnaire. The extremely short response time of several participants, supports this line of argumentation. To increase the response rate, I visited a couple of times the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam where all the Dutch teams are located. I told them the propose of this study and ask if they were willing to fill in a questionnaire. Thereafter, several reminder emails were sent to all the team leaders in Europe. In total 76 responses were collected (N = 76). Unfortunately, 14 participants only read to the introduction
24 letter, therefore these items were deleted from the database. At the end 62 questionnaire were completed and used for analysis (N = 62).
After the questionnaires were analyzed, I visited for the second time the beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, to ask the team members if they were willing to do an interview for the post-hoc analyze part of this study. The aim of these interviews is to gain a deeper and better understanding of the results from the questionnaire. Four interviews has been taken from two team leaders and two team members. Unfortunately, due to time limitations and busy schedules of the teams members it was not possible to perform more interviews.
5. Results
This section shows the results of this study and tests if the hypothesizes can be supported. First, the distribution of the sample is represented. Second, the analytical strategy is explained followed by the results of the one-way ANOVA tests and regression models.
5.1 Sample distribution
The questionnaire link included with an introduction of myself and my master thesis, was sent to 89 team leaders, whereas 32 of them had participated in the survey. This gives a response rate of 35.96%, which is higher than an average response rate of 24% (Saunders et al., 2012). The response rate is calculated based on the number of team leaders who participated in the survey divided by the total amount of team leaders who received the questionnaire link. This was the most appropriate approach to calculate the response rate, because the amount of team leaders who have sent the questionnaire to their team members is unknown. The survey was open for five weeks and after sending several reminder emails, 30 team members have filled in the questionnaire. So 32 team leaders and 30 team members, creates a total sample of 62 people who have participated in this survey. See table 1 for the more detailed sample distribution of this study.
25 Further, a few analyses about the team characteristics has been executed. Every team within the program has an identical team number provided by Speed UP! Europe. According to these team numbers, the sample of this study contains 39 different teams. To verify the reliability of the participants’ answers, the team numbers in the database were compared with the real team numbers, which resulted in three not existing team numbers. Further, analysis showed that 87.18% of the teams contained members who were all originated from one country and 5.13% of the teams contained members who were originated from multiple countries (Figure 2). This is to some extent align with Speed UP! Europe’s overall multinational national ratio, where 18% of the teams have multinational team members and 82% of the team have members with the same nationality (Appendix 1).
Figure 2: Origin of the teams.
The sample of this survey contained participants with divers nationalities, ranging from Dutch to Serbian. However, the majority of the participants in this survey were German (50%), followed by Dutch (11%) and Italian (10%) (Figure 3).
26 5.2 Analytical strategy
The data was collected by using a free software called Qualtrics, to create an online questionnaire. After the survey was closed, the data was downloaded into a SPSS file. Several steps has been taking before the hypothesizes of this study could have been tested. First, there were a few missing values in the database, that needed to be corrected before performing any analysis. Second, some statements were negatively keyed-items, where high values indicate a low score for the dependent variables. Therefore, those items needed to be recoded. Thereafter, the reliability and correlation matrix are shown. In the end, the assumptions of the one-way ANOVA model are verified.
Missing values: a few values were missing in the database. This could be intentionally or
participants could have overlooked some questions. To exclude the fact that these missing values could be caused intentionally, a Little’s Missing Completely at Random (MCAR) test was executed. Fortunately, the results of the Little’s MCAR tests failed to reject the null hypothesis (p >.10), which indicates that the missing data are probably missing at random. Next, the expectation maximization algorithm is used to replace the missing values. The missing values of the dependent variables (i.e self-efficacy, internal locus of control and need for autonomy) were putted in separate expectation maximizations algorithms, so that the replaced values are align with the scale that was used to measure the independent variables. The expectation maximization algorithm predicts what the missing value should be, based on the previous answers of the respondents (Field, 2009).
Recoding: The survey contained in total six negatively-keyed items, one statement of need for
achievement and five statements of self-efficacy. The underlying reason to include these items is to detect the acquiescence bias (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2012). In other words, the just saying ‘yes’ bias to verify if the respondents actually read the statements. High values on these negatively-keyed items, indicates a low score for the relevant variable. Therefore, the items were transformed into their reversed values, whereas an old value of 5 was transformed into a new value of 1 (and vice versa). After recoding the negatively-keyed items, new variables were created in SPSS to calculate the average total scores of each dependent variable; AchieveTot, SelfEffTot, ControlTot and AutonomyTot.
Reliability and correlation matrix: to check if nothing went wrong in the recoding process and
to verify the reliability of statements, a reliability test was performed. The output of the reliability test showed the Cronbach’s alpha of all the dependent variables. Cronbach’s alpha shows the internal consistency within a single variable. In other words, a Cronbach’s alpha measures how well a set of statements measures a single variable (Saunders et al., 2012). Normally a Cronbach’s alpha higher than .70 indicates that the questions are reliable. Unfortunately, not all the variables in this study are above .70, which is a limitation of this study. The Cronbach’s alpha of both self-efficacy and internal locus of control was .67 (see Cronbach’s alpha in brackets of table 2). Whereas, the Cronbach’s alpha
27 of self-efficacy between the team leader and team member are more or less the same, the Cronbach’s alpha of internal locus of control is very different between the team leaders and team members (Table 3 and table 4). This indicates that the low Cronbach’s alpha for internal locus of control is caused by the team members, because the Cronbach’s alpha for internal locus of control of the team leaders is above .70.
Furthermore, the matrix in table 2 shows the means, standard deviations and correlations for both team leaders and team members combined. Correlations are defined as a relationship between two or more variables without making any statements about cause and effect (Field, 2009). There are a few variables correlating significantly negative from each another. Nationality both negatively correlates with age (r = -.33; p < .01) and industry (r = -.54; p < .01). Also need for achievement correlates significantly negatively with gender (r = -.40; p < .01). In the database males were labeled with a value of one, whereas female were labeled with a value of two. A negative correlation between gender and need for achievement indicates that when gender increases, need for achievement decreases. A additional ANOVA test showed that the average means in need for achievement are significantly higher for males than for females, F (1, 60) = 11.22; p < .01.
However, there are also variables positively correlating with each other. Need for achievement, self-efficacy, internal locus of control and need for autonomy are all significantly correlating with each other, except need for achievement and need for autonomy (r = .39; p > .05).
Table 2: Means, standard deviations and correlation for both groups (N = 62).
Because this study compares the personalities of the team leaders with the personalities of the team members, two additional matrixes are created that show the different means, standard deviations and correlations within the two groups.
