A Comparison of Common Features and Personality Traits Between Entrepreneurs and Managers

Introduction

There is no doubt that the world economy is an enormous dynamic system. Businesses, which are vital units of the nation's economy, might need to be performed very efficiently in order to able to survive from this constant wave of change, and able to stay in their marketplaces. Although entrepreneurs and managers both play an important role in running business organizations (Wickham, 2003:2), it is generally thought that entrepreneurs are more special than managers. Entrepreneurs seem to be persons who can successfully establish and run businesses whereas managers are those who can only maintain the business organizations.

As a result of many greatly successful stories of entrepreneurs such as Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook (Kuratko, 2009:xviii), several questions about them have been raised; What is the reason that made them so successful? , Do they have some special abilities? , In what way they differ from managers? Some people believe that entrepreneurs are heroes who born with personality traits for achieving success. Others, however, believe that they are just similar to normal managers who have a special style of management (Wickham, 2003:19).

Over the half centuries, there have been many studies that attempt to distinguish entrepreneurs from managers. It would appear that the problems of discriminating still remain. One of the criteria that possible to describe the different between entrepreneurs and managers is personality traits (Chell, 2008:88).

The aim of this project is to distinguish entrepreneurs from managers. First, it will evaluate the method for discriminating entrepreneurs from managers in terms of task, economy and personality. Second, three personality traits; need for achievement, internal locus of control and risk-taking propensity in entrepreneurs and managers will be compared and contrasted. Finally, it will conclude the main ideas and some discussion will be given.

1. Methodology of Discrimination

This section will evaluate the method for discriminating entrepreneurs from managers. Distinguishing can be done in broad aspects of entrepreneurs and managers due to their insufficient clear-cut definitions. As business context is concerned, Wickham (2003:7) suggests that entrepreneurs and managers are the persons who can be recognized in three different dimensions; task, economy and personality. Consequently, the dimensions may possibly be able to set the framework of distinguishing.

1.1 Task dimension

Most of the general ideas about entrepreneurs and managers relate to their responsibilities or their tasks. The meaning of "entrepreneur" is written in Cambridge Dictionary Online (2011) as "someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing