THE ROLE OF THE WORKING INDUSTRY AS A MODERATOR BETWEEN THE LINK OF THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS AND THE SUCCESS OF ENTREPRENEURS IN EUROPE

This study is looking into the relationship between both the personality traits of the Big Five, the Entrepreneurial Performance, and the moderating effect of the working industry for entrepreneurs in Europe. The Big Five contains the following personality traits: Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness and Neuroticism. In previous research the perfect entrepreneurs scores higher on extraversion, Openness to experience, and Conscientiousness, and lower on Agreeableness and Neuroticism. The working industry will be researched with the industry-fit theory in mind. This theory explains that a specific individual fit a specific job. In this research there is searched if the industry people work in affect the relationship between a certain personality trait of an entrepreneur and the performance of that entrepreneur. The original cross-sectional dataset contains 541 randomly selected entrepreneurs within Europe and only partly confirms the expectations for this research. A positive effect between Entrepreneurial Performance and Agreeableness is found. Even as a moderation effect of the working industry for the relationship between Agreeableness and Entrepreneurial Performance. For all the other relationships no significant evidence is found that support the hypotheses.