Proactive Personality and Entrepreneurial Leadership: Exploring the Moderating Role of Organizational Identification and Political Skill

Abstract

INTRODUCTION In this present article, I will explore the possibility that organizational identification and political skill moderates the relationship between proactive personality and leadership. Research has begun to move from merely examining personality as a main effect (Barrick, Parks, & Mount, 2005) to focus on the moderating or mediating effects that explain how personality influences dependent variables. This approach can also be taken to examine the relationship between proactive personality and leadership and to investigate whether organizational identification and political skill moderates the relationship. The ability for practitioners to identify individuals that will successfully lead innovation and take risks in the workplace is very beneficial for organizations. Leadership research indicates that the trait approach facilitates the selection of leaders. Viewed from a selection perspective, organizations can determine the desired employee profile to meet their needs (Naquin & Holton, 2002). ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP The concept of leadership involves fusing the concepts of (Schumpeter, 1934), entrepreneurial orientation (Miller, 1983; Covin & Slevin, 1988), and entrepreneurial management (Stevenson, 1985) with leadership (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). It emphasizes taking a strategic approach to entrepreneurship, so that the initiatives can support development of enhanced capabilities for continuously creating and appropriating value in the firm (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). Thus, entrepreneurship can form a basis for competitive advantage and technological growth in all types of firms that are oriented towards leadership and excellence in the new global economy (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). Entrepreneurial leadership is defined as leadership that creates visionary scenarios that are used to assemble and mobilize a 'supporting cast' of participants who become committed by the vision to the discovery and exploitation of strategic value creation (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). This definition emphasizes the challenge of mobilizing the resources and gaining the commitment required for value creation that the leader faces, which involves creating a vision and a cast of supporters capable of enacting that vision (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). The two challenges of forging a vision and building a cast of competent and committed supporters are interdependent since the former is useless without the latter (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). Thus, leaders envision and enact a proactive transformation of the firm's transaction set (Venkataraman & Van de Ven, 1998). Entrepreneurial leadership has much in common with transformational leadership in that the leader evokes super-ordinate performance by appeals to the higher needs of followers (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). However, the leader's ability to evoke such performance is founded in the context of the firm's need to adapt to emerging environmental contingencies (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). Thus, the basic challenge is to create a willingness in followers to abandon current conventional but career-secure activities for creative, action (Gupta, McMillan & Surie, 2004). Entrepreneurial leadership can also be thought of as leading, through direct involvement, a process that creates value for organizational stakeholders by bringing together a unique innovation and package of resources to respond to a recognized opportunity (Darling, Keeffe, & Ross, 2007). In fulfilling this process, entrepreneurs function within a paradigm of three dimensions: innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness (Morris, Schindehutte & Laforge, 2004). Innovativeness focuses on the search for creative and meaningful solutions to individual and operational problems and needs (Darling, Keeffe, & Ross, 2007). …

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