How does An Entrepreneur’s Ability Influence the Propensity to Exploit Novel Opportunities? The Moderating Role of Personality and Environment

Abstract

While prior research has examined the influence of entrepreneurs’ ability and personality on entrepreneurial behavior separately, our study’s contribution is to confirm their joint effects, as well as their interaction effects with the dynamism of the environment on entrepreneurs’ opportunity exploitation behavior. Our study’s findings are consistent with the emerging opportunity-exploiter nexus framework of Shane and Venkataraman, which posits that the rate and nature of entrepreneurial exploitation activities are jointly determined by the nexus of environmental factors that shape the emergence of opportunities and the supply of opportunity-seekers with the right entrepreneurial personalities and abilities to exploit such opportunities. Specifically, we found that highly critical entrepreneurs who are high in extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, independence, and emotional stability have higher propensity to exploit novel opportunities in uncertain environments