The search for explanatory mechanisms: psychological capital does not mediate the relations of entrepreneurial personality with its outcomes

Entrepreneurial Personality (EP) is a collection of traits that make someone entrepreneurial and result in an inclination toward entrepreneurship. Due to its nascency, the explanatory mechanisms linking EP to its outcomes remain undiscovered, hampering scholarly investigations and practical applications. To resolve this tension, the current article heeds the calls of recent authors to integrate Psychological Capital (PsyCap) into the study of personality and entrepreneurship across the different stages of the entrepreneurial process (e.g. entry and management). By administrating two three-wave surveys, one to non-business owners and the other to business owners, our results show that both EP and PsyCap relate to entrepreneurial outcomes, but PsyCap is surprisingly not a viable explanatory mechanism for the relations of EP with its outcomes. While both EP and PsyCap are important to the entrepreneurial process, they play independent roles. Our discussion points researchers toward other theoretical lenses for the study of EP and PsyCap, namely behavioral learning theories. We also recommend that our investigation should be utilized as a template for leveraging nonsignificant results to advance theory-building and transparency, which has been a repeated call across many disciplines to strengthen both research and practice.