7; causes rather than facilitates economic change. But since the entrepreneur operates in a multiplicity of social situations, a range of sociological and psychological factors become part of the process of economic development. Under the influence of Schumpeter’s work Kirzner (1973; 1989) stresses that human action is guided partly by maximizing criteria and partly by alertness, creativity and judgement - features typical of the entrepreneur.The people school of entrepreneurship stresses the importance of the “right stuff” (see e.g., Ronstadt, 1984). In its utmost meaning the point is that an individual having “entrepreneurial characteristics” always finds the path to entrepreneurship regardless of the environmental conditions. The mainstream of “people school” research uses the so-called “trait approach” in explaining both entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial success. Perhaps the most widely used traits are need for achievement (McClelland, 1961) and locus of control (Rotter, 1966). Also tolerance of ambiguity and creativity have often been linked to entrepreneurship. Bateman and Crant (1993) defined a measure for proactive personality. This “new trait” seems to be rather promising a determinant of entrepreneurial behavior. The trait approach has found various linkages between personal characteristics and entrepreneurship. Also these relationships are usually quite weak, but it can be argued that traits in general possess at least some explanatory power on entrepreneurship. The critique towards the trait approach has focused, for example, on the fact that it has not succeeded in defining a unique entrepreneurial stereotype with a certain pattern of characteristics, and that the relationship between a trait and actual behavior is weak (Chell, 1985).Survival vs. SuccessThis indicates that a variety of additional criteria that are important to define survival and...
