Michael Frese

NUS Business School and Leuphana University Lüneburg · Management and Organization at NUS

Errors may be a safety hazard, yet all organizations and managers have to deal with errors. Error management and high reliability are strategies for dealing with errors. While these strategies originate from different research approaches and have been well studied independently, they have not been directly compared in empirical studies. Based on a...

Do people learn from failure or do they mentally "tune-out" upon failure feedback, which in turn undermines learning? Recent research (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2019) has suggested the latter, whereas research in educational and work settings indicates that failure can lead to more learning than can success and error-free performance. We conducte...

An organizational climate of error management is associated with favorable organizational outcomes, including firm success, innovation, and safety. But how can an error management climate be induced? The present research used newly formed teams in a controlled setting as a model and tested the effect of two brief interventions on team climate and p...

There has been growing interest in approaches to business training that incorporate insights from psychology to develop soft skills associated with successful entrepreneurship. The empirical evidence on the causal effects of these approaches on entrepreneurs’ business outcomes is encouraging, but still not substantial enough to be conclusive. This...

Field studies indicate that error management culture can be beneficial for organizational performance. The question of whether and how error management culture can be induced remained unanswered. We conducted two experiments with newly formed teams, in which we aimed to induce error management culture and to explore whether we would also find benef...

Background: The central point of this study is team initiative, and we analyzed how the theoretical model of antecedents and consequents of personal initiative contribute to explaining the relationship between team initiative and its antecedents and consequents. Authentic leadership is proposed as the antecedent, and the consequent leads to two typ...

AUTHORUbfal, Diego; Arráiz, Irani; Beuermann, Diether; Frese, Michael; Maffioli, Alessandro; Verch, DanielDATEMar 2021DOWNLOAD:English (0 downloads)DOIhttp://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0003182There has been growing interest in approaches to business training that incorporate insights from psychology to develop soft skills associated with successful entrep...

Errors can be a source of learning. However, little is known to what extent learning from errors depends on error characteristics and the context in which the error was made. We tested the assumption that more learning occurs from errors with severe consequences and when the error was made by oneself. We further investigated if and how learning fro...

Research summary Entrepreneurship training is an effective means to promote business creation. We examine the effect of entrepreneurship training in conjunction with capital constraints, which entrepreneurs frequently experience in the context of developing countries and emerging economies. We develop a theoretical model that explains how entrepren...

Extant research on passion is replete with individual-level studies. Although team-level studies have emerged, these empirical studies have adopted a static approach. We pivot from the predominant static focus on passion by examining passion convergence, or the dynamic pattern of increasing similarity in passion among members of a team. Drawing on...

Organizational research has predominantly adopted the classic dispositional perspective to understand the importance of personality traits in shaping work outcomes. However, the burgeoning literature in personality psychology has documented that personality traits, although relatively stable, are able to develop throughout one's whole adulthood. A...

We adopt a self-regulation perspective to present a model of the development of passion in entrepreneurship. We argue that entrepreneurial self-efficacy and performance influence the two components of passion—positive feelings and identity centrality—over shorter and longer time horizons, respectively. Furthermore, we argue for the recursive effect...

Conventionally, identity centrality has been conceived of as a stable and transsituational construct, with situational variability in identity centrality treated as being of little informational value. In contrast to past research, we develop a theoretical model arguing that a portion of within-person variability in identity centrality is systemati...

In this chapter, we review theoretical and empirical research describing effort and success as predictors of passion for work, focusing on entrepreneurs’ passion for their work. We first present the theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for the causal effect flowing from people’s effort and success to their passion. We then investigate the u...

Previous research on dispositional optimism has predominantly concentrated on the selection effect of dispositional optimism on predicting work outcomes. Recent research, however, has started to examine the socialization effect of life experiences on fostering dispositional optimism development. Extrapolating primarily from the TESSERA framework of...

This article advances the understanding of when and how formal status of small-scale entrepreneurs can contribute to higher growth in comparison to their informal counterparts. Our integrative framework suggests that both formal status and personal initiative (PI) behavior have a common pathway to predict firm growth. More importantly, formal firms...

Personal initiative training is a promising way to increase entrepreneurial personal initiative, which is a key behavior for successful entrepreneurship. Although personal initiative training has been shown to promote personal initiative, little is known about how this proactive behavior can be maintained over time and what the consequences are. Th...

Two broad sets of activities underlie team innovation: the creation and the implementation of new ideas. Despite the prevalence of this distinction, the temporal dynamics of creativity and implementation in teams and their relation to successful team innovation are not well understood. Building on and integrating linear phase models and complexity...

Personal initiative training—a psychology-based mindset training program—delivers lasting improvements for female business owners in Togo. Which types of women benefit most? Theories of dynamic complementarity would suggest training should work better for those with higher pre-existing human capital, but there are also reasons why existing human ca...

Background: Two popular concepts, work engagement and personal initiative, are different but related constructs. This study is based on and extends the Frese and Fay (2001) model of personal initiative (PI) by including work engagement (WE) and self-efficacy as antecedents of PI, and performance as a consequence. Method: Two studies (study 1, wi...

This article seeks to advance our understanding of successful women entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa by examining how husbands contribute to women's entrepreneurial activity and performance. Little is known about husbands’ influence in this region, although sub-Saharan women entrepreneurs are deeply embedded in their families and are importan...

To innovate at work is risky as every new endeavour is also error-prone. Therefore, the way errors are managed in organisations may be related to organisations' innovativeness. We studied error management culture as one important and often overlooked organisational culture factor hypothesised to be related to organisational and individual innovativ...

Action regulation theory explains individuals’ goal-directed behavior as well as its antecedents and consequences in work and organizational contexts. The aims of this chapter are to review foundational and current knowledge on action regulation theory, and to outline directions for future research. We first describe basic concepts of action regula...

Small business growth is critical for economic development and poverty reduction in emerging markets, yet there remains an over $2 trillion gap in financing these entrepreneurs. This study explores the potential of personality assessments to help lenders solve this problem and lend to more entrepreneurs and contributes to psychological selection re...

Helping people and their businesses grow Many lower-income people in developing countries do not receive a wage but instead are self-employed in small firms of fewer than five workers. Helping entrepreneurs to grow small businesses by teaching them formal business skills has yielded mixed results. Campos et al. show that teaching entrepreneurial sk...

We use the theory of Einstellung to examine individual differences in business opportunity identification. Einstellung is the tendency to habitually rely upon existing cognitive frameworks even when they become redundant. This study examined the relationship between individuals' proclivity toward Einstellung and the number and innovativeness of bus...

Symposium on Evidence-based leadership and how it can improve the success rate of innovation. Quantitative review of empirical evidence of effectiveness of different leadership styles.

Work motivation is a topic of crucial importance to the success of organizations and societies and the well-being of individuals. We organize the work motivation literature over the last century using a meta-framework that clusters theories, findings, and advances in the field according to their primary focus on (a) motives, traits, and motivation...

Unemployment among youths is a serious problem in many African countries. Researchers and politicians alike consider entrepreneurship to be part of the solution to the high unemployment rates. In this study, we present the conceptual basis of an action-oriented entrepreneurship training program and provide evidence for its positive impact on traine...

The goals of this article are to integrate action regulation theory with the lifespan developmental perspective and to outline tenets of a new meta-theory of work and aging. The action regulation across the adult lifespan (ARAL) theory explains how workers influence, and are influenced by, their environment across different time spans. First, the b...

We seek to contribute to evidence-based teaching for management by providing an example of translating a theory into an evidence-based intervention by developing action principles; moreover, our work here shows how such an intervention affects the success of firms by way of changing managers' actions. The concept of action principle is central to t...

Entrepreneurship is one of the most effective means to alleviate poverty in developing countries. Effective entrepreneurship requires psychological approaches—in particular, active (i.e., agentic) approaches. We introduce an action-regulation training approach, focusing on self-regulation and active behavior in entrepreneurship as a bottom-up solut...

Informal learning activities are increasingly acknowledged as significant for learning and development in modern workplaces. Yet, systematic research on effects of informal learning on work-related outcomes remains scarce. The present research focuses on deliberate practice-a construct from cognitive-psychological expertise research that describes...

In this commentary I use as a starting point the differences between As Is (cultural practices) and Should Be (cultural values) scores of the GLOBE study to argue that As Is is related to norms, and Should Be to values. Norms are input as well as output variables in the development of practices: As norms prescribe behaviors and as they become routi...

Stress in organizations is common: “A recent study conducted on behalf of the American Psychological Association showed that between 2007 and 2010 about 70% of surveyed Americans perceived “work” to be one the major causes of stress.”

Personal Initiative (PI) is a behavior characterized by its self-starting nature, its proactive approach, and by being persistent in overcoming difficulties that arise in the pursuit of a goal.

Errors are unintentional deviations from a goal, caused by some act or omission that is in principle avoidable. Because of negative consequences of errors, avoiding errors is a principle goal of organizations and individuals. However, errors cannot be completely avoided because cognitive capacity of humans is limited, whereas the amount of informat...

The increasing complexity, dynamism, and interconnectedness of contemporary business environments demand that organizations cope with simultaneously contradicting requirements and paradoxical tensions. However, paradoxical tensions are complex and challenging. To date, we still lack a clear understanding of what and how would help organizations and...

Effectuation changed the way we think about entrepreneurship. Until recently, most research in entrepreneurship conceptualizes new venture creation as a rational, goal-driven, and mostly linear process. Sarasvathy’s work (2001, 2008) though suggests that entrepreneurs employ a different logic when pursuing opportunities. Despite the perceived growi...

We develop a new look on leadership for innovation and propose that effective leaders alternate between a broad range of behaviors and tune their approach to the changing demands of innovation. This is referred to as ambidextrous leadership. As the importance of different leader behaviors varies not only across time but also across contexts, ambide...

We seek to contribute to evidence-based teaching for management by providing an example of translating a theory into an evidence-based intervention by developing action principles; moreover, our work here shows how such an intervention affects the success of firms by way of changing managers' actions. The concept of action principle is central to t...

Every organization is confronted with errors.Most errors are corrected easily, but some may lead to negative consequences. Organizations often focus on error prevention as a single strategy for dealing with errors. Our review suggests that error prevention needs to be supplemented by error management-an approach directed at effectively dealing with...

This article considers determinants of innovative performance of entrepreneurs in developing countries. Innovation is viewed from a personal initiative perspective. We distinguish two mechanisms through which entrepreneurs who show personal initiative are innovative. The first mechanism is business planning. The second mechanism is the acquisition...

Building on conceptual frameworks of entrepreneurial discovery, we argue that active information search compensates for a lack of entrepreneurial experience and enhances the effects of divergent thinking and general mental ability (GMA) on opportunity identification. We sampled 100 business owners in South Africa. Results confirmed the hypothesised...

In this review of the psychology of entrepreneurship, we first present meta-analytic findings showing that personality dimensions, such as (general) self-efficacy and need for achievement, and entrepreneurial orientation are highly associated with entrepreneurship (business creation and business success). We then discuss constructs that were develo...

Previous proactivity research has predominantly assumed that proactive personality generates positive environmental changes in the workplace. Grounded in recent research on personality development from a broad interactionist theoretical approach, the present article investigates whether work characteristics, including job demands, job control, soci...

We examine whether organizational climate for personal initiative (PI climate) is conducive to firm innovation in small and medium-sized firms. Employees with PI are self-starting, proactive, and persistent, and a PI climate is characterized by common norms of encouraging PI at the workplace. A climate that fosters PI among employees would enhance...

Most theoretical frameworks in entrepreneurship emphasize that entrepreneurial passion drives entrepreneurial effort. We hypothesize that the reverse effect is also true, and investigate changes in passion as an outcome of effort. Based on theories of self-regulation and self-perception, we hypothesize that making new venture progress and free choi...

There are more than a billion people who live in poverty (Collier, 2007; Reynolds, 2012). Twenty-one percent of the population in developing countries (1.22 billion people) can only spend $1.25 or below a day in the year 2010 (Olinto, Beegle, Sobrado, and Uematsu, 2013). In addition to poverty, a major problem for developing countries is the high r...

This study tests the cross-cultural validity of the relationship between innovation and growth in a sample of 857 business owners from five different countries: China, Germany, the Netherlands, Peru and Russia. We found that innovation is effective in each country, suggesting universal relationships. In addition, cultural variables moderated the in...

Although considerable research has been conducted on a variety of cross-cultural management topics, we still know very little about how organizations can effectively manage people involved in global work or how cross-cultural differences impact individuals and groups at work. To address this gap, we edited a special issue of Personnel Psychology th...

High levels of personal initiative will be required to unlock the potential offered by the many untapped resources in Africa in terms of business opportunities. Significant resources are ploughed into the development of the small business sector by governments in Africa, particularly in South Africa. However, there is little evidence that these eff...

Theoretical models of the antecedents and outcomes of work–home interference (WHI) suggest that work characteristics (e.g., job stressors, working hours) increase the probability that an individual experiences work–home interference. Since work–home interference is considered as a role stressor, these experiences should be detrimental for long-term...

We validate, extend, and empirically and theoretically criticize the cultural dimension of humane orientation of the project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program, House et al., 2004). Theoretically, humane orientation is not just a one-dimensionally positive concept about being caring, altruistic, and...

Action plays a central role in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. Based on action regulation theory, we developed an action-based entrepreneurship training. The training put a particular focus on action insofar as the participants learned action principles and engaged in the start-up of a business during the training. We hypothesized...

We validate, extend, and empirically and theoretically criticize the cultural dimension of humane orientation of the project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program). Theoretically, humane orientation is not just a one-dimensionally positive concept about being caring, altruistic, and kind to others as di...

We argue that creativity is influenced by the dynamic interplay of positive and negative affect: High creativity results if a person experiences an episode of negative affect that is followed by a decrease in negative affect and an increase in positive affect, a process referred to as an “affective shift.” An experience-sampling study with 102 full...

It is normal to pursue multiple goals at work and in our everyday life. Consider the case of college professors, who may set themselves several specific, difficult goals: publishing three articles in one year in high-impact journals with a high rejection rate, earning course evaluations from students of say 5.0 on a 7-point scale, and serving on tw...

The road from intentions to actions and new venture creation is long. So far, the literature has provided insights into action-regulatory factors that contribute to new venture creation. However, the literature has neglected to take into account the temporal dynamics underlying these relationships. We contribute to action-regulation theories in ent...

The overall goal of the meta‐analytic review of the most frequently studied proactivity concepts—personal initiative, proactive personality, taking charge, and voice—was cleaning up the number and overlap of proactivity constructs and examining their construct validity. We provide a unifying framework for proactivity theory and a nomological net. W...

Covers sociodemographic factors, entrepreneurial orientation, personal initiative, and other psychological (as well as environmental) factors that are supposed to contribute to entrepreneurial success. The study of entrepreneurs who had at least 1 and at most 50 employees was carried out in Kampala, the major urban center and capital of Uganda. The...

The concept and aim of an evidence-based entrepreneurship (EBE) is discussed as a strategy to overcome the divide between knowledge developed in the field of entrepreneurship and its use in practice. Evidence constitutes the best summary of knowledge based on several sources of information (several studies, several different research groups, severa...

We employ two study designs for a more detailed examination of creativity in the opportunity identification process. We employ a correlational field study to test the hypothesis that divergent thinking affects venture growth through business idea generation. We use an experimental design to test the hypothesis that diversity of information moderate...