LITERATURE REVIEW

INTRODUCTION

Openness is behavior related to asking and listening in a communication. In entrepreneurship attributes of a successful entrepreneur are, to be open to new ideas, to search for information and to have willingness to learn (Wickham, 2006). Some examples are openness to change (Howell and Higgins, 1990; Wanberg and Banas, 2000), openness to innovation and new ideas (Caldwell, 2003; Blumentritt, 2004), openness to facing conflicts (van Dierendonck et al., 2002) and openness to information exchange (Maccoby, 1995).

The factor openness to experience has further been seen to be a constantly recurring personality variable that is positively linked to successful performance (Jordan and Cartwright, 1998) and has been identified as being able to explain a majority of the variance in behavioural outcomes (John and Srivastava, 1999). Kickul and Neuman (2000) found for example that

openness to experience was a reliable predictor of emergent leadership behaviour. Openness has to do with curiosity and information seeking. Rogers (1987, p. 59) developed a test to measure communication openness and stated that Open communication behaviours involve asking for information, listening to information, and acting on information received. Accordingly, the concept of openness linked to communication includes the ability to be alert in a communicative situation, ask for information and actively listen to the answers, so as to be able to act on the information. Adaptation. Adaptation stands for flexible behaviour and the entrepreneurs ways of adapting her/his behaviour in a current situation. Adaptability is a concept that has its roots in biology and relates to the ways in which living systems achieve fit (Stoica and Schindehutte, 1999). In the entrepreneurship literature we find this adaptive behaviour as an important entrepreneurial skill (Shane, 2003; Timmons and Spinelli, 2003). Social adaptability has been used in measuring communicative or social skills (Baron, 2007). Further, in the small business context, adaptation has been referred to as the entrepreneurs willingness and ability to change or adjust the business concept as the venture develops (Stoica and Schindehutte, 1999). In the leadership literature, adaptation has been used in several studies. Some examples are adaptation related to leadership training (Askling and Stensaker, 2002; Kutschera and Byrd, 2005), choices of strategy (Watkins, 2004), changes in technology (Rosenbloom, 2000) and organizational evolution (Ma Valle, 2002). Adaptive behaviour is seen as an important skill for leaders (Hughes et al., 2006) and adaptive thinking has been studied in relation to the changing of products and/or processes (Kirton, 1987). A derailment profile of leaders was found to reflect a leaders inability to adapt to new managers, businesses, cultures or structures (Hughes et al., 2006). Altogether, adaptation is related to the contingency model (Fiedler, 1967) which proposes that leaders should act in a

flexible manner relevant to the situation. In the present study, adaptability or adaptation is studied as a behavioural flexibility that is involved in communication. The contingency approach is obvious since the focus is on the specific situation, as both the leadership and entrepreneurship literatures show. The competent communicator is capable of adapting his behaviour as the situation [y] changes (Wiemann, 1977, p. 211).