The Big Five personality traits and their influence on entrepreneurial action have been repeatedly studied using a trait-based approach. The present paper partly deviates from this perspective by analysing the role of personality prototypes in relation to entrepreneurship. This person-centred approach suggests that combinations of Big Five traits form individual personalities. By using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that at least three prototypes can be identified, one of which — the resilient type — can be hypothesized to significantly increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial action. Our regression results provide evidence of a positive impact of this prototype on the likelihood of and transitioning into self-employment but not the likelihood of exit. We also show that the prototyping approach explains individual self-employment decisions over and above what can already be explained by the profiling approach, another person-centred Big Five approach. The paper concludes with implications for policy and research.

人们使用基于特质的方法反复研究了大五人格特质及其对创业行动的影响。本文通过分析人格原型在创业精神中的作用，部分偏离了这一观点。这种以人为本的方法表明，大五特征的组合形成了个人性格。通过使用德国社会经济小组（SOEP）的数据，我们表明至少可以识别出三种原型，其中之一——弹性类型——可以假设显着增加创业行动的可能性。我们的回归结果提供了证据，证明该原型对自营职业和过渡到自营职业的可能性产生积极影响，但对退出的可能性没有影响。我们还表明，原型法对个人自营职业决策的解释超出了剖析法（另一种以人为本的五大方法）已经可以解释的范围。本文最后提出了对政策和研究的影响。