Type E Personality

Entrepreneurs top satisfaction survey.

We've long supposed that small-business owners are more satisfied with their work than their corporate executive counterparts, but a recent study seems to prove it. Both small-business owners and top-level executives at large corporations agreed overwhelmingly that small-business owners reap more business satisfaction, according to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and Murrysville, Pennsylvania-based research firm Cicco and Associates Inc.

"We figured the small-business owners would be pretty happy," says Tom Robinson, market research director for The Wall Street Journal. "But the missing ingredient was how the big-business guys would react. We were surprised by the number who think the grass is greener on the other side."

More than 62 percent of corporate executives surveyed felt small-business owners boasted "the more satisfying business experience"--a number that carries even more weight considering the position of these respondents. "You'd expect the number to be fairly high among people on a midmanagement level," says Robinson. "But [our respondents were] people with top management titles at large companies, so the assumption is that [they] are the ones who are paid well and have a lot of responsibility."

Given that fact, the survey results "may suggest a secret desire on the part of a lot of executives to run their own shop," says Robinson. "I don't know if the head-line can read `Corporate America Is Not Happy,' but [this survey] is certainly an indicator."

Robinson points out that the survey did not ask corporate executives whether they had any firsthand experience in a small business or whether their answers were based purely on perception. Regardless, those who do have firsthand experience with entrepreneurship are even more enthusiastic: Almost 80 percent of the small-business owners surveyed were confident that their satisfaction levels were superior. --J.C.

This article was originally published in the January 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Type E Personality.