PERSONAL CHARACTERISTIC INFLUENCING PERFORMANCE AND SUCCESS OF THE ENTREPRENEURS



ABSTRACT
This seminar study is aimed at determining the personal characteristic influencing performance and success of the entrepreneurs. The paper surveyed empirical literature to identity the contributions of entrepreneurs the development of the society. The study was looked at the followings classification of the entrepreneurs/functions of entrepreneurs in business organization and entrepreneurs in business organization and entrepreneurship and business failure. The paper therefore summarized and recommended that conducive environment, provision of loan facilities, good infrastructural development and so on should be provided with entrepreneurs for effective and efficient performance.


CHAPTER ONE
1.0                                               INTRODUCTION
            The overview of personal characteristics influencing performance and success of the entrepreneur cannot be over emphasis without reflecting our mind toward the concept of personal characteristics. Personal refers to individual then characteristics refer to attitude or behavior toward an issues or some thing. Therefore personal characteristics is viewed according to McClelland as the qualities exhibit by an individual such as technical competence, risk taking, High initiative, good judgment, intelligence to analyze and solve problem areas, leadership qualities, confidence, positive attitude, high level of energy, creativeness, honesty, integrity, emotional stability and fairness. All these qualities mentioned above define the personal characteristics and this however, influences the performance and success of the entrepreneur.
            Meanwhile, entrepreneur is a person who sees opportunities where others can not; he is a visionary, a problem solver, a creative genius, an innovator, wealth generator, an inventor, one who produces jobs for others. According to Hisrich and Peters (1989) defines entrepreneur as process of creating something different with value by devoting the necessary time and effort by assuming the accompanying financial social, psychological mental, spiritual, risks; and receiving the resulting rewards of monetary and personal gratification.
            Therefore, a personal characteristic helps in either promoting or demoting the performance and success of the entrepreneur in any business sector. In this seminar work we emphasized on the following outline as the frame work thus; Success characteristics of individual entrepreneur, classifications of entrepreneur, personal characteristics influencing performance of    entrepreneur; personal characteristics influencing success of entrepreneur. Problems of an entrepreneur.
1.1       FUNCTION OF THE ENTREPRENEUR
1.         He provides the capital required for investment.
2.         He does the management. In a sole proprietorship It is easy to see this business function but in large scale business units e.g limited companies, he delegates this functions to paid manager who coordinate the various activities.
3.         He often engages in speculation and by doing that avoids serious loss of profits or sales.
4.         He does the planning. In doing so, he decides on what is to be produced what type of productive unit to be adopted, how to produce the goods, where to site the industry or firm and when to market the goods. This function is very important because his profitability depends to a large extent on the decisions he takes.
5.         He may diversity activities so that losses in one area are paid off by gains in others.
1.2       FUNCTIONS OF ENTREPRENEUR IN A BUSINESS ORGANIZATION           
According to D Kaiz and R. Kahn in the social psychology of organization 2nd edition (New York) 1987 the following four reasons were advanced.
Firstly incompleteness of organization design since there is no perfect or ideal organization designed to take care of every  member is activities at all times, entrepreneurship is necessary to coordinate and direct behaviour toward goal accomplishment.
Secondly, changing environmental conditions: entrepreneurial leadership functions to maintain the stability of an organization in a turbulent environments by allowing for rapid adjustment and adaptation to changing environmental condition.
Thirdly internal Dynamics of organization entrepreneurship leadership is very important as it can assist in the coordination of activities in the various organization units. It can also act as a buffer between conflicting parties.
Fourthly, Nature of Human membership in Organization: there are different interest groups in the organization with different needs. Entrepreneurship can play a major role in maintaining need satisfaction and personal goal attainment

1.3       ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND BUSINESS FAILURE
            All over the world businesses are failing every day. Recently in the USA, long established world businesses like WORLDCOM, ENRON and the giant accounting firm, Anderson coorper and many others like parmalat failed. In Nigeria, young and old enterprises of small, medium and large scale dimensions fail per second. It is for example a business maxim that 80% of small medium business registered at the Nigerian corporate affairs commission fail and die in their first five years. Failure encompasses both public sector (Nigeria airways Nigeria Railways, NITEL etc) and private sector corporations such as CONCORD Newspapers, concord Airlines, Orient airlines, Igbinedion Airlines, Kabo Airlines and so many others.
CAUSES OF BUSINESS FAILURE
There are many known and established causes of business failure and success. In the Banking sector for example, the CAMEL test has been applied to banks for centuries “C: refers to cash flow, ‘A” to adequacy of Funds, ‘M” to suitability and appropriateness of management structures, “E” to Efficiency and Effectiveness and ‘L” to Liquidity. At any point in the life of a bank where Customers cannot withdraw their deposits that bank shall be declared as Distressed”, Bankrupt” or “failed”.
Indeed, such tests apply to all known businesses the world over as when a company can no longer supply its goods and services to its own customers on demand, then there must be a death cast on the line some where.
1.4       SUCCESS CHARACTERISTIC OF INDIVIDUAL
ENTREPRENEUR
            An entrepreneur should have the first hand knowledge of the product, processes and end uses to bring inventive abilities and sound judgment of the planned project. Flexibility, good social behaviour, open mind and desire to take personal responsibilities will fill in the qualities of a true entrepreneur.
            The complimentary characteristics that are necessary for success of an enterprise are:
1.         Long term involvement: The commitment from the entrepreneur for longer period may be 5 to 10 years is necessary for conceptualization, building and running an enterprise over night operator will not fit in building an enterprise.
2.         Initiative: An entrepreneur must have initiative to use the available resources and draw plan of action for all those who are involved in an enterprise.
3.         Goal setting: An entrepreneur must be able to set realistic but challenging goals for him as well as for others in the organization.
4.         Takes risk: An entrepreneur is a learner from his failures and risk at every stage of the growth of an enterprise.
5.         High energy level: Managing resources and running an enterprise call for long hour of work for longer period of time so an entrepreneur is a man of high energy level.
6.         Problem solver: In the initial stage of an enterprise, many problems do occur and an entrepreneur is a creative problem solver to turn difficulties into advantages.
7.         Team Boulder and Motivator: He builds up team, educates them, keeps high level of motivation and also provide an environment for creative and focused to work culture.
8.         Mental Ability and Clarity in Objectives: He is a man of high level of intelligence, creative, positive thinking and decision maker with clear objective in mind.
9.         Communication Skills: As a leader an entrepreneur communicates effectively with all concerned such as financials, employees, customers, suppliers and all who are concerned with the enterprise.
10.       Good Human Relation: tactful and warm human relation is an important factor which brings success to entrepreneur.

CHAPTER TWO
2.0       Personal characteristics influencing success of the Entrepreneur
(a)       Existence of a good business opportunity: The objective of an entrepreneur is to make profit. Profit however can not be made unless there exist a good business opportunity which the entrepreneur has seen and want to exploit.
Part of the quality of good entrepreneur is the ability to visualize a good business opportunity when others do not see it.
(b)       Effective Communication: Is the process of exchanging information between one person and the other or between one person and a group or between an enterprise and the third parties or customers. Inside the enterprise, there is the need to communicate with the workers so that management function will be accomplished. Communication provide link between people in an organization. He should know the hints to good human relation: He should address his workers by name; smile at people; be warm to people; show interest to people and their problems; act like a member of a team; be humble.
(c)       Motivation: It is an important personal characteristic to be possessed by an entrepreneur, since he works with subordinates and therefore should know how to motivate them. Since motivation is a process of inducing people to work willingly. In the literature people have isolated money as a key motivator, but there are motivations such as: Good working environment, appreciation for work well done job security, promotion on time.
(d)       Good Human Relation: Possession of good human relation is one of the personal characteristic influencing performance of the entrepreneur. Since entrepreneur is the factor that organizes other factors of production; land is a non human factor of production. So also is capital, but labour is a human factor of production. It is the ability to manage this human factor of production that leads to excellent business performance. Possessions of good human relations skill ensures that the entrepreneur gets along well with the following:
The employees, business associates, customers, supplies and government.
(e)       Creativity: Here is defined as the ability to process and arrange information that leads to new knowledge. The new knowledge will now be deployed to invent new product, modify existing products or provide better service to customers. Creative people are innovative people, they have a lot of characteristics; they generate new idea in a short time; they are motivated by challenges;
They convert problems to opportunities; they believe in themselves; they value their mental independence; they experiment with new ideas.
f.          Another personal factor influencing performance of an entrepreneur is technical competence. Technical competence ordinarily refers to the ability of the entrepreneur to understand the business in question and also posses the relevant knowledge and skills to engage in the business e.g a photographer must understand the handling of cameras, film and even film processing. A doctor that engaged in medical services must know how to treat common sickness. Like malaria or else if he fails repeatedly to do this, patients will desert his clinic. A hairdresser that lacks the ability to do hairstyles will sooner or later lose valuable customer which means that the first thing to do by entrepreneur is to have skill of the business he wants to start up that is technical competence.
g.         High mental ability:           It refers to the capacity to understand. It enabled the entrepreneur to think and develop strategies that will lead to success in a highly competitive environment. They ability to think enlarges entrepreneur vision and assist to generate ideas on how to see the competition from a larger view. High mental ability enables the entrepreneur to anticipate the move of the competitors in advance and then take necessary steps to protect his business from invasion by competitors.
2.1       PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS INFLUENCING PERFORMANCE
OF THE ENTREPRENEUR
The feature or qualities of an entrepreneur as an individual are essential to influence performance of the entrepreneur. McClelland stated the personal qualities or characteristics of a successful entrepreneur as:
Technical competence: An entrepreneur before starting up a business must be well trained in that field for him to be able to organize his business well and also supervise his workers effectively. If he does not have the required skill on the business in quote, he will be acting on ignorance unless he employs another competent person to manage the business for him.
High level of energy: An entrepreneur should be a hard working person knowing fully well that the business is his own and that the success and failure is in his hand; If he is a lazy type, his workers will look up to him and take their work for granted which will have serious effect on the business.
Team Builder and Motivator: An entrepreneur builds up his team and be friendly with his workers and not to fill too big and neglect the services of his employee which will go a long way to demoralize them. He should with his skill educate his worker and motivate them materially and morally to increase productivity.            
Good human relation: He should be able to relate well with all those involved in the production and distribution channel knowing fully well that an injury to one customer is always an injury to many and that he has a lot of competitors that will like to take advantage of his misbehavior or mismanagement.
He should know the difference between business money and personal money and try not to be spending his business money without appropriate record as it will seriously affect the business
2.2       Classifications of Entrepreneurship
In the early phases of economic development entrepreneurs will have initiative to start ventures and find innovative way to start an enterprise. (Badi and Badi 2005), noted the following classifications of entrepreneur.
a.         Innovation Entrepreneur: He finds out new products, and techniques and new market. The enterprising spirit in innovative entrepreneur enables him to open new market and develop enterprise.
b.         The imitative entrepreneur: The imitative entrepreneur copy or adopt suitable innovations made by the innovation entrepreneur. He brings industries to the poorer countries.
c.         The Fabian entrepreneur: These entrepreneurs by nature are shy and lazy. They follow set procedures, customs, traditions and religious. The Fabian entrepreneur does not venture to take risks.
d.         Drone entrepreneur: He refuses to copy or use opportunities that comes on his way. They are conventional in their approach and stick to their set practices products, production method and ideas; so the organization looses market and may be pushed out of the market.

CHAPTER THREE
3.0                                                  SUMMARY
3.1                   CONCLUSION/SUMMARY
Entrepreneurship is the willingness and ability of an individual to seek out investment opportunities in an environment and be able to established and run an enterprise successfully based on the identifiable opportunities.
            Entrepreneurship is a term used broadly in connection with the innovative modern industrial business leader. Personal characteristics that can influence the performance and success of the entrepreneur is traced to the concept of personal characteristics. Personal characteristics help is either promoting or demoting the performance and success of the entrepreneur in any business sector. Also, personal characteristics that can inference the success of the entrepreneur include existence of a good business opportunity, Communication, motivation, good human relation and creativity.
3.2                   RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on this seminar study I recommend that:
1.         Conductive environment: Entrepreneurs can effectively perform in the conducive environment unlike un-conducive environment. That is to say good working environment should be provided with the entrepreneurs by the management.
2.         Provision of loan facilities with low interest rate loan with low interest rate will encourage the entrepreneurs to obtain credit facilities from commercial banks for the purpose of business expansion.
3.         Good infrastructural development:
Government should provide good infrastructural facilities such as good road, power supply clean water supply etc with entrepreneurs for effective and efficient performance.
4.         Embark on specialized business
Entrepreneurs should go into the businesses they have good knowledge for the purpose of acquiring higher productivity.


5.         Regular seminars/workshops
Regular seminars/workshops should be organized for the entrepreneurs to enable them know the dos and don’ts of business rules and regulations.
Problems of youth entrepreneurship development in Nigeria
            Onwubiko (2008) noted that irrespective of the benefits associated with entrepreneurship, there are a lot of barriers that have prevented youth from fully realizing their potentials and assuming leadership position in the society:
1.         Inadequate working capital: the availability of capital is central to the establishment and continued existence of any enterprise irrespective of the size, focus and objective. It is known that for an entrepreneur to start up a business, he must have adequate fund. In a situation where the working capital is inadequate or unavailable, it becomes a problem.
2.         Lack of adequate training: the absence of adequate training for students on a particular skill to enable them meet the future challenges of as leaders of business and change agents is another problem that affect development of entrepreneur since it have been observed that the educational curriculum in Nigeria focuses more on the theoretical without a corresponding practical approach.
3.         Low standard of education: the fact that education is the key to knowledge and that it plays a strong role in forming burgeoning entrepreneur. The word today is a global village and an entrepreneur must be in tune with event around and about him.
4.         Absence of infrastructural facilities: it is a universal believe that certain infrastructural facilities aid the development of the mind and body and assist productivity in any environment. The facilities are good road, good water supply, and constant power, access to information and communication technology.

5.         Lack of adequate security:
The inadequate security of lives and property and the helplessness fostered on the citizens by the police that has most often than not proved incapable of addressing the security challenges over the years. 

6.         Other Economic, social and political factor:
Economic factors such as policy reversals, high and double taxations, difficulty in procuring business approval, high inflation and instable exchange rates are some of the areas of concern for the potential entrepreneur.

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