The Entrepreneurial Engineer: A Quantitative Analysis of Personality Factors in the Social Cognitive Career Theory

Which personality traits foster Entrepreneurship in Engineering? What implications for Engineering/Entrepreneurship Education can be derived? Until today, most of the research about Personality and Entrepreneurship compared Entrepreneurs to Managers. This work focuses on Engineers and combines two validated constructs: the Big Five Personality Traits (BFPT: Openness to new experiences, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability [1]) and the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT [2]). The research question is: How can we describe the relationship between the BFPT and SCCT constructs? We conducted a (mainly quantitative) onlinesurvey (n=465) among Alumni of the Stanford School of Engineering who graduated between 1 and 17 years ago and who had successfully the course ME203: Design and Manufacturing. Over 20 percent of the respondents had founded a venture. Results show that three out of the five personality traits have a significant positive relationship to certain SCCT constructs: a. Openness to new experiences and Extraversion are correlated to Entrepreneurial Self Efficacy, Entrepreneurial Intention, Entrepreneurial Outcome Expectations, Innovation Self Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Learning Experiences. and b. Emotional Stability correlated to Innovation Self Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Learning Experiences. Finally, we draw practical implications of these relationships for Entrepreneurship and Engineering Education, while at the same time keeping in mind that you cannot just “make” someone an Entrepreneur or change his or her personality. This paper is an explorative starting point that results in various findings that suggest future research. We recommend focusing on the three personality traits that showed significant results.