Entrepreneruial leadership entrepreneurial leader traits leader entrepreneur entrepreneurship

1. Student: Bakr Buji
1
TAKE-HOME
EXAMINATION
BED-3030
Entrepreneurial Leadership
Bakr Buji
SUBMITTED:
16th August 2012

2. Student: Bakr Buji
2
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to build a model of entrepreneurial leadership which combines the concept of entrepreneurial leadership and my opinion as well, and applying it on a real case. In this paper I make a summary of 4 articles which are relevant to entrepreneurial leadership, and analyze the articles through by comparing the materials mentioned in each of the articles. The constructed model is based on the presented information by the articles and my own understanding. The model illustrates the leader’s traits and skills required to make him entrepreneurial.
Background
Entrepreneurship is a new topic, but it has a positive relation with the economic growth1, so it became one of the important topics recently, and needs more research and study to develop this science further. Leadership is strongly relevant to entrepreneurship, since is based on the leader who can lead the entrepreneurial activities correctly and actively. However entrepreneurship is a broad area and has many definitions in different dimensions, but here I need to go through different definitions of entrepreneurial leadership. One of definitions defines it as the dynamic process of presenting vision, making commitments among followers and risk acceptance when facing opportunities that cause efficient use of available resources, along with
1 http://people.few.eur.nl/thurik/Research/Books/Thurikf.pdf

3. Student: Bakr Buji
3
discovering and utilizing new resources with respect to leader’s vision. In fact, entrepreneurial leadership includes all necessary abilities for constant value creation of managers with respect to company’s goals. Entrepreneurial leaders consider entrepreneurship as a basis to gain a competitive advantage and to outshine rivals (Lee & Venkataraman, 2006, pp.114). In other definitions of entrepreneurial; Leadership is organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal using proactive entrepreneurial behavior by optimizing the risk, innovating to take advantage of opportunities, taking personal responsibility and managing change within a dynamic environment for the benefit of the organization (Roebuck 2004).
The used articles
No.
Title
Author(s)
Year
Journal/
Publisher
Reference Name 1 A theory of entrepreneurial opportunity identification and development Alexander Ardichvilia, Richard Cardozob, Sourav Rayc. 2003 Universities of Illinois,Minnesota,Concrodia (Ardichvilia,2003)
2
Personality and Entrepreneurial
Leadership: A Study of the Heads of the UK’s Most Successful Independent Companies
Nigel Nicholson
1998
European Management Journal/ Elsevier
(Nicholson, 1998) 3 Designing a Scale for Measuring Entrepreneurial Leadership in SMEs Seyed Amir Mousavi Hejazi, Mohamad Mehdi Maleki and Mohammad Javad Naeiji 2012 Islamic Azad University – Tehran North Branch (Hejazi,2012)
4
Personality Traits among Entrepreneurial and
H. Mushtaq Ahmad
2010
Department of Management Sciences, Bahria
(H. Mushtaq Ahmad, 2010)

4. Student: Bakr Buji
4
Methodology approach
Different methodological approaches have been used in the used articles. Each approach serves a different purpose. One kind of research methodology doesn’t fit all purposes. Purposes of research is classified to four categories, exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, emancipatory (Robson ,2002).
In the summarized articles, they have been used in many different methodological researches approach, which enhance their results. Research approaches are classified in
two main categories:
 Quantitative research
In this strategy, unstructured flexible design is used. For example in the first article (Ardichvilia,2003) they have used Dubin’s theory building method to judge the research method. Dubin is building theory is considered as the most comprehensive method. Dubin’s theory is still built on translation of a theoretical model to testable hypothesis, and through the identification of hypothesis 2 .In article (Ardichvilia,2003) entrepreneurial opportunity identification and development have been used to create the hypothesis . In the article (Ardichvilia, 2003), the units of theory have been used are; entrepreneurial alertness, information asymmetry and prior knowledge, social networks, and personality traits.
2 http://www.idheap.ch/idheap.nsf/9a665b63d3a8260cc1256a0800365df0/1b86cf7620a1a808c1257538004a544d/$FILE/Chermack%202005.pdf
Professional CEOs in SMEs
University Islamabad

5. Student: Bakr Buji
5
In the second article (Nicholson, 1998) , they have used the NEO PI-R to measure the personality through the five major domains of personality and the six facets that define each domain. ( again try not to use the same words so close in a sentence) The five domain scales and thirty facet scales of the NEO PI-R facilitate a comprehensive and detailed assessment of normal adult personality. The NEO PI-R is recognized internationally as a gold standard for personality assessment3. The purpose here is to create a comparison between; leaders, Leaders, Managers and NEO Norms. In (Nicholson, 1998), they used a managerial control sample within a population numbered around 200, and it was quite various - or which varied in nationality, kind of firms, and function. Also the target leadership sample was around 68 participants, even they offered 116 companies’ chief executives to participate in the study.
 Qualitative research
In this strategy unstructured flexible design is used, for example, in the study by (Ardichvilia,2003), the researcher used the survey by Hills et al. (1997) to test hypothesis about social networks to assert if the entrepreneurs who have extended networks identify significantly more opportunities more than others. Also they used survey Hills et al. (1997) about personality traits. In the third article (Hejazi,2012), the researcher used statistical society of founders and top managers of SMEs in manufacturing and service categories in Tehran Province. He sent to 34 companies in service and 27 companies in manufacturing category. In
3 http://www.unifr.ch/ztd/HTS/inftest/WEB- Informationssystem/en/4en001/d590668ef5a34f17908121d3edf2d1dc/hb.htm

6. Student: Bakr Buji
6
the fourth article (H. Mushtaq Ahmad, 2010), the researcher gathered data in his study from 386 founders and from top managers in the manufacturing and service SMEs Data and tested by factor analysis. The questionnaire contained 4 different factors: strategic, communicative, personal, and motivational entrepreneurial leadership. The results explain that demographic, variables like gender, age, educational level and experience of entrepreneurial activities in Pakistan. Therefore in total 124 participants were included, 62 entrepreneurial CEOs and 62 professional CEOs. The study was carried out in 2 different cities in Pakistan, and they selected successful participants in their field.
I believe the various study approaches enhance the study about the entrepreneurial leadership, even though it might be sort of uncertainties in some studies because of the number of definitions of entrepreneurial leadership and no accurate in attitude evaluating tools which used to analysis people perspective- that have been used in many present studies-, also it is possible for error due to self-expression during the questionnaire or survey.
The summary of the articles
 Articles 1: A theory of entrepreneurial opportunity identification and development (Ardichvilia,2003)
This paper has been talking about identification the entrepreneurial opportunity and it’s development. While elements of opportunity are recognized, so it needs careful investigation.

7. Student: Bakr Buji
7
The successful opportunity development process leads to successful businesses. And the most important part of this article which we focus on it more is about the entrepreneur who conduct the opportunity until it becomes a business and the elements which influence the entrepreneur to make him identify business opportunities to create and deliver a value for the stakeholders. The first unit of theory is entrepreneural alertness which means the recognition of opportunity, by showing high alertness, and being sensitive to information about everything relevant to the opportunity like the market, the user problems, unmet needs and interests, and novel combination of resources. Higher alertness increases the possibility of an opportunity being recognized. The second unit of theory information asymmetry and prior knowledge, Entrepreneur will catch the opportunity according to his prior knowledge which allows him to recognize the opportunity. The prior knowledge can be in the markets and how to serve it, and the customer’s problem.The third is social network, the strength of weak ties which can provide unique information more than strong ties. So the entrepreneur who extended his network can identify more opportunities plus the quality of the network contacts affect others characteristics like creativity and alertness. The opportunity is evolved by three cognitive activities, information gathering, thinking through talking, and resources assessing. These activities can be run through the social network as well. The fourth Personality traits, and here the most important 2 traits are; the connection between optimism and higher opportunity recognition –the optimism is inside view of the potential success of the venture-, and the second traits is the creativity to discover opportunities that others do not see.

8. Student: Bakr Buji
8
The study also concluded that entrepreneurial alertness appears as a more powerful concept, and the relationship between opportunity identification and personality traits except creativity and optimism seems to be weak.
The study also talked about how the opportunity types can be based on the market needs or value sought if it’s identified or unidentified, and based on value creation capability if it’s identified or unidentified. And the best opportunity can be found if both of them are identified.
 Article 2 : Personality and Entrepreneurial Leadership (Nicholson, 1998)
This article holds a comparison between leaders, managers and NEO norms through the five major domains of personality through questionnaire between them to show the differences in personality traits. The five major domains that were used here in this article are neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness. Through this study it concludes that leaders differ from NEO norm in scales lower neuroticism, higher extraversion, and lower agreeableness. Specifically in the facets of high activity, lower aesthetics, lower straightforwardness, lower altruism, higher achievement-striving. Also the study shows that leaders differ from manager in lower gregariousness, higher order, and higher self discipline.
Leaders differ from managers and NEO norms higher conscientiousness domain, and specifically lower depression, lower self-consciousness, lower vulnerability, higher assertiveness, lower action, lower compliance, and higher dutifulness facets.

9. Student: Bakr Buji
9
In this study, they hypothesized that even the assertiveness score was higher than both the managers and the NEO norm sample, but it still can’t be considered like a strong requirement for leadership. And activeness score doesn’t differ from managers, so it can be considered important for being a manager generally.
In the present article (Nicholson, 1998), they divided the leadership for 3 kinds according to the link between the traits and the role attainment. The first one is the strongest; that the leader has many traits which make him/her possesses a sufficient psychological profile to maintain his position. The second is a weaker cause of the presence or absence of certain traits which makes it difficult to attain the leadership position since some of the traits are essential to sustain the position. The third is a weaker cause certain traits are desirable for individual to lead
Article 3: Designing a Scale for measuring entrepreneurial leadership in SMEs (Hejazi,2012)
The purpose of this article (Hejazi,2012) is to building a new identification of entrepreneurial leadership and assess how to evaluate it differently than other traditional evaluation tools. In this study, they combined three theories, transformational leadership, team oriented leadership, and value oriented leadership, it also considers the expert’s perspectives as well. They used new scales for the evaluation like firstly; strategic factors, secondly; communicative factors, thirdly; personal factors, and fourthly; motivational factors which is the most exclusive in this research and haven’t been used before.

10. Student: Bakr Buji
10
Demographical variables of the study show that gender has an impact on strategic and communicative factors, in case of men, the response average was high on a strategic factor, and in case of women the average response was high on communicative factor. Non one of the previous studies have taken the demographical side in the consideration. Even researches shows that men were more successful than women when it comes to strategic management field. Also the study shows that young entrepreneurs have shown a higher response with motivational dimension of entrepreneurial leadership.
The study also shows the educational level has a big impact on some strategic factors like; assigning vision, establishing a system for gathering information and predicting future problems.
This study also has referred to two important points; entrepreneurial leaders are affected by organizational systems. For example in bureaucratic structures, there are less opportunities to exploit the entrepreneurial leader’s capabilities, and social intelligence role in showing leader’s entrepreneurial behaviors.
 Article 4: Personality Traits among Entrepreneurial and Professional CEOs in SMEs (H. Mushtaq Ahmad, 2010)
The purpose of this study (H. Mushtaq Ahmad, 2010) is to explore what differentiating what between entrepreneurial CEOs and professional CEO’s or top managers when it comes to psychological attributes, through examining how the five motivational motives like need for achievement, locus of control, risk taking propensity, ambiguity tolerance, and type-A

11. Student: Bakr Buji
11
personality. The study revealed that the entrepreneurial CEOs have higher score on need for achievement, locus of control, risk taking propensity, ambiguity tolerance, but the study shows that professional CEOs have higher score on Type-A personality than entrepreneurial CEOs.
The study concluded that Type-A personality is the strongest variable of professional CEOs, but the need for achievement is the strongest variable of entrepreneurial CEOs, followed by locus of control: risk taking propensity, and ambiguity tolerance for entrepreneurial CEOs.
The present study (H. Mushtaq Ahmad, 2010) categorized all managers in 3 categories of non-conscious motivational groups; being motivated by achievement, affiliation, power. Achievement motive distinguishes the entrepreneurial CEOs than others since entrepreneurial CEOs score better in this point, but others make decisions to increase their popularity. Affiliation motive leads sometimes to trying to secure job for the family through taking a decision to build a business. Power motive leads to make a decision in order to feel dominant over organization or to feel the ability to influence others. The combination of non-conscious motives creates effective, motivated leaders. Mangers who are motivated by power can be highly responsible toward the company and the most effective.
Key findings
After going through the present articles, I see there are censuses about entrepreneurial leadership and an entrepreneurial leader concept. Some articles looked at the entrepreneurial leadership from a different perspective according to their interest in the study or perhaps for

12. Student: Bakr Buji
12
societal reason which could give benefit to the society and develop the entrepreneurial leadership concept.
In the study by (Ardichvilia,2003), I can see that the entrepreneurial alertness is the most important factor effecting the identification of the opportunity, since the entrepreneur with high entrepreneurial alertness has more possibilities to recognize more opportunities. In the third article by (Hejazi,2012), the study concluded that the education level is important for being entrepreneurial. In my point of view I think the good education will heighten the entrepreneurial alertness, since it’s about recognizing all the relevant items of the opportunity, and the recognition comes from having knowledge about all these items which you get through the education. So after finding out the link between entrepreneurial alertness and the education level, I believe that the both studies reached to the same point even though they look to the subject from different dimensions.
In the first article by (Ardichvilia,2003), the study concluded that the creativity is important trait and relevant to being entrepreneurial, and in the second article by (Nicholson, 1998), the study concluded that creativity is important trait for being entrepreneurial, but it’s irrelevant for being managers. I agree with the 2 articles about that because if we look to the definition of being an entrepreneurial leader and a traditional manager, we see that the entrepreneurial leader should come up with new strategies or new ideas continuously, and that is exactly what the creativity brings.

13. Student: Bakr Buji
13
In the first article by (Ardichvilia,2003), it’s mentioned that the entrepreneurial is continuously looking for new opportunities. And in the second article (Nicholson, 1998), we can see Excitement seeking scores a high level amongst the CEO’s. So both studies enhance the same concept as we can see.
The articles talked about the taking risk trait in the entrepreneurial leader, they almost agreed about that the entrepreneurial leader should take the risk carefully. I completely agree with that, but I would agree more with the first study by (Ardichvilia,2003), when it talked about taking the calculated risk.
My entrepreneurial leadership model
Here I build this model (figure1) according to the present articles. My model is divided into 3 domains; the first domain is a psychological profile which includes all the important traits which s/he is born with- for being an entrepreneurial leader. The second domain includes all the external factors which help to create entrepreneurial leaders, and it can be gained through education or through the social life or through the cultural influence. Between the first and second elements, I find that the most important area is entrepreneurial alertness and the model clarifies- from my point of view- the most important traits or elements which associated directly to the entrepreneurial alertness. The third domain is a complementary domain in this model which includes the tangible elements that help him/her to show the entrepreneurial skills. So if the elements in the first and second domain are able to

14. Student: Bakr Buji
14
create the entrepreneurial alertness, then the entrepreneurial leader will have the capability to see the opportunity.
figure1: The entrepreneurial leadership model from my point of view.
Conclusion
During my reading of the present studies, I believe that the entrepreneurial leader has some traits which s/he born with that help him/her, such as; creativity, optimism, activity, and some other- please refer to the model- to be entrepreneurial, but also the natural traits can’t be enough and don’t make that professional entrepreneurial leader without the external factors which can be through the education, culture’s influence, or practicing. The atmosphere around the person plays an important role to motivate for being an entrepreneurial leader, like

15. Student: Bakr Buji
15
the affiliation motive, which leads to seek for something that can save the future for the family for example, or being in competitive environment which motives one to achieve something new.
Implication of the model on my business future
After building the model as how I think the entrepreneurial leadership can be, I then set a comparison between the traits in each domain in the model, and what I have and I should have. I conclude that I have to focus on the second domain which contains the external factors like education. So since I have background in I.T. and I’m planning to do another course in another subject which is going to increase my knowledge. And other interests coupled with my prior work/life experience is to having the social network in the area where I’m going to settle in, I have small social network during the university, work, and social life. I still need to improve my communicative skills which I think can be achieved through practice and education.

16. Student: Bakr Buji
16
References
1. Ardichvili, Alexander, Richard Cardozo, and Sourav Ray. "A Theory of Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification and Development." Journal of Business Venturing 18.1 (2003): 105-23. Print.
2. Nicholson, Nigel. "Personality and Entrepreneurial Leadership: A Study of the Heads of the UK’s Most Successful Independent Companies." (1998)
3. Hejazi, Seyed, Mohamad Maleki, and Mohamad Naeiji. "Designing a Scale for Measuring Entrepreneurial Leadership in SMEs." (2012): 71-77. Print.
4. Ahmad, H. Mushtaq. "Personality Traits among Entrepreneurial and Professional CEOs in SMEs." (2010): 203-13. Print.
5. Acs, Zoltan, and David Audretsch. "The Impact of Entrepreneurship on Economic Growth." The Impact of Entrepreneurship on Economic Growth (July 2002)
6. Chermack, Thomas J. "Studying Scenario Planning: Theory, Research Suggestions, and Hypotheses." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 72.1 (2005): 59-73. Print.
7. Costa, Paul T. "NEO-PI-R - Manual." NEO-PI-R - Manual. Hogrefe Testsystem, 2007. Web. 14 Sept. 2012. <http://www.unifr.ch/ztd/HTS/inftest/WEB- Informationssystem/en/4en001/d590668ef5a34f17908121d3edf2d1dc/hb.htm>.