Rebel Rebel: do juvenile delinquents make good…| Dr. Seyi Olubadewo
A juvenile justice facility might not seem the most promising place to look for future business owners. Yet this unlikely location is exactly where several researchers on entrepreneurship have turned their attention in recent years, with surprising results. Juvenile delinquency, it seems, predicts future entrepreneurship.
As startling as this finding may seem, it is not a new one. As early as 1969, Leroy Gould explored the relationship between entrepreneurship and delinquency in his article, The Juvenile Entrepreneur, finding that boys with the greatest delinquency rates also had the highest “achievement motivation” scores. Gould observed that subjects with high achievement motivation “are more likely to be inquisitive and aggressive, they are more likely to be successful in their work, and they are likely to choose entrepreneurial occupations.” This relationship was especially pronounced in boys from the lowest socioeconomic levels. Gould concluded that “high achievement motivation…causes boys to commit delinquent acts.”
More recent research bears this out. In 2009, researchers Zhen Zhang and Richard Arvey found that delinquent behaviors during adolescence were related to future business ownership. Using longitudinal data from 165 businessmen who were either managers or entrepreneurs, Zhang and Arvey found that participants who reported being involved in delinquent activities in high school (defined as “modest rule-breaking” activities such as expulsion and property damage) were more likely to become entrepreneurs. These participants also exhibited a strong propensity for high-risk behaviors. The researchers found that participants’ willingness to engage in risky behaviors explained the relationship between delinquent behavior and a subsequent entrepreneurial career, which typically involves a willingness to take risks.
Critically, these findings did not extend to criminal activity (defined as “severe rule-breaking” activity such as drug use and robbery), which was uncorrelated to both entrepreneurship and future managerial status.
In 2013, a group of Swiss researchers led by Martin Obschonka replicated the Zhang & Arvey study, and extended the research to address several limitations in the original study, including the lack of women participants. Obschonka and his colleagues analyzed longitudinal data from roughly 1000 men and women. In addition to delinquency and job status, they also studied additional factors such as parental socioeconomic status, intelligence, creativity, adult criminal behavior, and antisocial attitudes.
For men, delinquent behavior during adolescence significantly predicted entrepreneurial status as an adult. In an interview in Popular Science, Obschonka commented,
The same urge to innovate, think outside the box, take risks and break rules that helps an entrepreneur later in life might lead them to more destructive behavior as a teenager.”
Moreover, for men the relationship between moderately delinquent adolescent behavior and later entrepreneurship was stronger than for any other factors – including intelligence, creativity, adult criminal behavior and antisocial attitudes.
Interestingly, for women subjects, delinquent activity was not related to entrepreneurship status.
But how surprised should we be? After all, characteristics of successful business teams often include non-conformity, autonomy, risk-taking, and challenging the status quo. Indeed, rule breaking expressed in a positive, pro-social manner is a hallmark of both innovation and change management. Juvenile delinquents and young adults who engage in deviant behaviors (e.g., smoking marijuana) consistently score higher on measures of creativity, originality, independence, and adventurousness when compared to their non-deviant counterparts. As Obschonka and his colleagues note, a successful entrepreneur is someone who “seeks social distinction, thinks out of the box, has an inner drive to innovate, and is willing to break through traditional structures and to challenge the accepted way of doing things.”
Harvard business professor and psychologist Abraham Zaleznik may have put it best when he opined, “To understand the entrepreneur, you have to understand the psychology of the juvenile delinquent.”
For more on this subject, see:
Gould, L.C. (1969). Juvenile Entrepreneurs. American Journal of Sociology, 74(6), 710-719.
Zhang, Z., & Arvey, R.D. (2009). Rule breaking in adolescence and entrepreneurial status: An empirical investigation. Journal of Business Venturing, 24, 436-447.
Obschonka, M., Andersson, H., Silbereisen, R.K., & Sverke, M. (2013). Rule-breaking, crime, and entrepreneurship: A replication and extension study with 37-year longitudinal data. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 83, 386-396.