285 4 TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH (4 TH ICBER 2013) PROCEEDING 04 - 05 MARCH 2013. GOLDEN FLOWER HOTEL, BANDUNG, INDONESIA ISBN: 978-967-5705-10-6. WEBSITE: www.internationalconference.com.my ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS FROM POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY VIEW Noor Hasni Juhdi Faculty of Economics and Management Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Nurita Juhdi Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences International Islamic University Malaysia Abstract Entrepreneurial success should be viewed as a virtuous life mission that needs to be re-conceptualized. It was suggested in this study that entrepreneurial success should be more than just financially termed, based on positive psychology view. Psychological measures of success were asserted to be the next vital domain indicating entrepreneurial success besides financial measures. This study was essential because the findings could lead to more explorations of vital factors that lead to entrepreneurial success and to more comprehensive entrepreneurship theory in future research. Psychological states variables such as psychological capital and entrepreneurial work engagement were identified as the relevant factors to partly explain entrepreneurial success as conceptualized in this study. This research discussed entrepreneurial success from the perspectives of established entrepreneurs in Malaysia. The sample of entrepreneurs was drawn from a frame, which consisted of at least 502 small and medium service enterprises. The findings showed that both psychological capital and entrepreneurial work engagement were directly related to psychological measures of success but were moderately correlated to financial performance. The proposed domains, financial performance and psychological measures of success, were positively correlated as indicators of entrepreneurial success. Introduction In practice, entrepreneurial success is easily assumed as the ultimate goal of business venturing. However, entrepreneurial success as an area of study is complex in terms of it meaning and means (Csikszentmihalyi, 2003; Dvir et al., 2010; Shane, 2008; Sisodia et al., 2007). Entrepreneurial success needs to be re-conceptualized because it has been suggested to be more than just financially termed (Cooper & Artz, 1995; Dess & Robinson, 1984; Gorgievski et al., 2010; Ventkataraman & Ramanujam, 1986). Conversely, most entrepreneurship research has applied strategic management view for which financial performance is the measure of effectiveness at organization level. Such knowledge gap warrants more research to improve comprehension on entrepreneurial success and entrepreneurship theory. This research tried to provide an alternative in describing entrepreneurial success by applying psychology approach as an extension of previous study (e.g., Rauch & Frese, 2000). This research was to brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by The International Islamic University Malaysia Repository