Against Great Odds: Towards an Understanding of the Roles of Entrepreneurial Resilience and Entrepreneur's Well-Being in Venture Growth Intentions
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Date
2019-03-28
Department
Business and Management
Program
Doctor of Philosophy
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Abstract
Until recently, research in entrepreneurship did not pay much attention to the well-being of entrepreneurs (Shir, 2015) despite the propensity of entrepreneurs to encounter stressful conditions in the course of starting and running their businesses (Morris, Kuratko, Schindehutte, & Spivack, 2012). Existing research has also primarily focused on the antecedents of well-being among entrepreneurs, leaving a gap in the literature on the effects of well-being on entrepreneurial outcomes. This study aims to bridge that gap by particularly examining the impact of an entrepreneur’s well-being on their entrepreneurial intentions.
Specifically, the three dimensions of an entrepreneur’s well-being—subjective, psychological, and entrepreneurial–are argued to impact the intention of entrepreneurs to grow their ventures. In addition to the proposed direct effects of well-being on entrepreneurial intentions, two mediating variables were proposed to impact the relationships. Entrepreneurial resilience, the ability to positively adapt and recover from high impact challenges in entrepreneurship (Awotoye & Singh, 2017), is proposed to mediate the positive relationship between well-being and growth intentions. Additionally, entrepreneurial self-efficacy was also expected to mediate the well-being-growth intention relationship.
This dissertation was done in two phases. Given that no suitable entrepreneurial resilience scale exists, an attempt was made to adapt and validate an entrepreneurial resilience scale based on the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Campbell-Sills & Stein, 2007). In the second phase, the hypotheses of the dissertation were empirically assessed. The findings showed that each dimension of well-being is positively related to entrepreneurial resilience, and entrepreneurial resilience mediates the well-being-growth intention relationship. Although entrepreneurial self-efficacy was found to directly impact growth intentions, the hypothesized mediating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy was not supported (in the replication study). Entrepreneurial resilience was also found to positively impact entrepreneurial self-efficacy.
The first chapter of this dissertation is the introduction while chapter 2 includes a
detailed review of literature on variables of interest in the study. In chapter 3, the hypotheses are developed. Chapter 4 discusses the methodology, chapter 5 covers the results which are followed with a discussion of findings, limitations, practical implications, and future research suggestions in chapter 6, and a brief conclusion in chapter 7.