Community Cultural Values and Personality Traits as Factors Associated with Entrepreneurial Motivation. The Case of Entrepreneurs in Collective and Privatized Kibbutzim

Entrepreneurial antecedents have been a subject of investigation for many decades. While entrepreneurial characteristics and personality traits have been explored in-depth, cultural contexts have gained less attention. The current study explores how the tension between different community values impacts the motivation to establish a new business. The research is focused on the Israeli kibbutz, which is a unique type of community established under the ideology of socialism and collectivism. At the end of the last decade, many kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) faced an economic crisis which led some of them to privatize their properties. These changes were also accompanied by a transformation in the kibbutz’s ideology toward more individualistic values. Thus, kibbutzim represent a unique case study that enables us to understand the contribution of the cultural context to the individual’s motivation to become an entrepreneur. In this study, motivation is measured in accordance with the pull and push theory. Self-efficacy is suggested as a mediator between the type of kibbutz (collective or privatized) and the motivation factors, with the proactive personality acting as a moderator of the connection between kibbutz type and self-efficacy. Overall, 256 entrepreneurs participated in the survey, of whom 83 are entrepreneurs from collective kibbutzim, 92 are privatized kibbutz members, and the rest are not kibbutz members. The results indicate that although entrepreneurs from both types of kibbutzim do not show high pull motivators compared to non-kibbutz members, privatized kibbutz entrepreneurs demonstrate a higher level of push motivation compared to the other groups. In addition, self-efficacy serves as a mediator between collective kibbutz members and pull motivation and between privatized kibbutz members and push motivation, but only for entrepreneurs who are low in proactive personality traits. The results highlight the effect of the tension between cultural context and values on entrepreneurial behaviors