Enterprise success and entrepreneur’s personality traits: An analysis of micro- and small-scale women-owned enterprises in Uganda’s tourism industry

Abstract

This study focuses on the concept of business enterprise success and the role of personality traits towards success of women entrepreneurs in business. We show that women entrepreneurs have capacity to start and sustain business enterprises as more than 80% of them were able keep their enterprises up and running for more than 10 years. We also find that women are capable of increasing the capital stock in their enterprises by big proportions even if their enterprises remain micro. We find that even small enterprises can be successful and note that women define success both in terms of economic and non-economic measures, in almost equal proportions. We find that conscientiousness (reliability, hard work and perseverance) and extraversion (being talkative, outgoing and social) are very strongly associated with success in business. These traits are learnable and appear the most significant to women success in business than other traits.