Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
983219 Procedia Economics and Finance 2014 10 Pages PDF
Abstract

It is often asked what it takes to be an entrepreneur or self-employed. However, less attention is given to the actual image of self-employed. A positive or negative image may contribute to what extent people associate themselves to self-employment. The goal of this paper is to determine the mirror image of Dutch speaking self-employed in Belgium. The image is expressed as personality traits from the Big Five personality trait framework. A quantitative online survey utilizing a five point Likert scale was applied as a methodology to gather the required ratings on various lower-level personality traits. In total 775 Dutch speaking self-employed business owners in Belgium filled out the questionnaire. This data was collected through the Socratos survey system from iVox utilizing the member database of Zenito, a Belgian non-profit service organization aimed at self-employed business owners. The ratings for each personality trait were expressed as a weighted arithmetic mean and expressed as their distance to the mean to determine a positive or negative tendency to the respective trait. These were then attributed to their respective dimension of the Big Five personality trait framework and averaged out to determine which higher-level trait was the most dominant. The main findings of the paper indicate that self-employed assume to be seen as conscientious (distance to the mean 0.55); however, assume not to be seen as agreeable (distance to the mean – 0.24).

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics