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Self-reports and CEO Locus of Control Research: A Note

Department of Management Science, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Bert de Brabander

Faculty of Applied Economics, University of Antwerp, Belgium

The body of knowledge in organizational and management research is based, to a large extent, on same-source self-report data. Although several scholars seriously doubt the validity of such findings, this methodology has also been used, without exception, in a specific research area focusing on the relationship between the locus of control of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and firm-level entrepreneur ship. In the present study, we try to evaluate the validity of these findings by using multiple sources (i.e., respondents) to obtain data on the independent and criterion variables. We present empirical evidence that the published correlations between the CEO locus of control and firm-level entrepreneurship cannot be interpreted unambiguously due to two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, methodological problems, that is: (1) a fallacy of the wrong level and (2) common method variance.

Key Words: Descriptors: common method variance • cross-level research • Chief Executive Officer • locus of control

Organization Studies, Vol. 18, No. 6, 949-971 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/017084069701800603


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