The effects of entrepreneurial personality, background and network activities on venture growth*

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of entrepreneurial personality traits, background and networking activities on venture growth among 168 Chinese entrepreneurs in small and medium sized businesses in Singapore. Personality traits include need for achievement, internal locus of control, self‐reliance and extroversion; background comprises education and experience; networking activities consist of size and frequency of communication networks. A structural equation modelling technique – partial least squares (PLS) – is used to estimate a path model with latent variables. The results indicate that experience, networking activities, and number of partners as well as internal locus of control and need for achievement all have positive impact on venture growth. Two other personality traits, self‐reliance and extroversion have negative impact on number of partners and positive impact on networking activities, respectively. The impact of education on venture growth, however, is moderated by firm size, positive for larger firms and negative for smaller firms. Our findings indicate that among all the factors that we have considered, an entrepreneur’s industrial and managerial experience is the dominating factor affecting venture growth.