Impact of Entrepeneurs’ Thinking Processes on their Entrepreneurial Decision-Making in the Ghanaian Creative Industry: The Influences of Personal Characteristics, Emotions, Core Competences and Perceived Status

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to provide an understanding on how creative entrepreneurs’ thinking processes affect their entrepreneurial decision-making, and how the effect is influenced by their personal characteristics, emotions, core competences and perceived status. Guided by literature on creative entrepreneurial decision-making and entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics, emotions, core competences and perceived status, a conceptual framework was developed to guide the conduct of the study. Using a cross-sectional design and a quantitative approach, a self-administering questionnaire was used to collect data from 750 creative artistes, as study respondents, from across four regions in Ghana namely, Greater Accra, Ashanti, Northern and Upper West Regions. The data was analysed both descriptively and inferentially. In the inferential analysis, both Pearson product moment correlation analysis as well as simple and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. Based on the analyses, it was found that the thinking processes of the creative entrepreneur is positively related and predicted their decision making, that is a change in a creative entrepreneur’s style of thinking influences their decision making. It was also found that the entrepreneurs personal characteristics, emotions, core competence and perceived status moderated the relationship between their thinking processes and entrepreneurial decision-making. Furthermore, the personal characteristics, core competence and perceived status were found to have mediated the relationship between thinking processes and entrepreneurial decision-making. It was concluded that creative entrepreneurs may possess different thinking processes that enable them to engage different entrepreneurial decisions. It was also concluded that the ability of creative entrepreneurs to make effective decisions in their day-to-day activities is influenced differently for each creative entrepreneur, even in similar situations, when issues of personal characteristics, emotions, core competence and perceived status of the creative entrepreneur comes up.