Culture of Entrepreneurship (C-ENT)/ Kultur der Selbständigkeit: Konzeptualisierung und erste Validierung eines Fragebogens zur Erfassung einer unternehmertumsförderlichen Kultur

How supportive is a culture of entrepreneurship? To answer this question researchers have used cultural value models (e.g., Hofstede, 2001) designed to measure national culture in a broad and all encompassing way. However, as only a small percentage of people within a nation actually engage in entrepreneurial activity such broad cultural dimensions are not likely to be specific enough to capture cultural aspects relevant for entrepreneurship (Hayton et al., 2002). Moreover, value measurement itself is plagued with various biases (e.g., Peng et al., 1997). Measuring culture through cultural practices can overcome these biases. Hence, the psychological model of “Culture of Entrepreneurship” (C-ENT) was specifically designed to measure cultural practices relevant to entrepreneurship such as capability beliefs, the openness to and the seeking of opportunities, entrepreneurial motivation, appreciation of entrepreneurial traits and willingness to take responsibility. The C-ENT questionnaire was developed over the course of three cross-sectional studies of students (N=3000) and one longitudinal study of entrepreneurs and experts for entrepreneurship (N=127). Participants came from the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, East- and West-Germany. Using structural equation modelling the C-ENT model could be confirmed to have equal meaning across cultural and across sample types (students vs. experts for entrepreneurship). Furthermore, the C-ENT measure showed good internal reliabilities and proved to be retest reliable over short (2 weeks) and long time periods (2 years). Inter-rater agreement indicated that aggregation to the country level of analysis was justified and meaningful culture differences were found. At the country level of analysis, C-ENT was positively associated with entrepreneurship rates and economic growth and showed convergent validity with related cultural practices measures from project GLOBE (House et al., 2004). At the individual level, the perception of C-ENT contributed to the prediction of entrepreneurial intentions, related to perceptions of economic climate and was not biased by a persons’ dispositional optimism. Construct validity of C-ENT was further corroborated by correlating C-ENT as a measure of cultural practices with the corresponding measures of self-referent, i.e. self-rated personality traits: Culture-rated and self-rated C-ENT proved to be separable concepts. In a longitudinal study, C-ENT proved to be both stable and sensitive to relevant changes in macro-economic conditions. Taken together, the evidence suggests the C-ENT questionnaire to be a useful tool for future entrepreneurship research and that information about a nation’s culture of entrepreneurship could provide valuable insights for political decision making and the evaluation of entrepreneurship policy initiatives.