Appraisals matter: relationships between entrepreneurs' stress appraisals and venture-based outcomes

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how stress appraisals (i.e. cognitive evaluations) influence entrepreneurial outcomes like expected financial well-being, life satisfaction, business growth and exit intentions.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a mixed-methods approach to provide methodological triangulation by analyzing data from two independent samples (qualitative data from 100 entrepreneurs in Study 1; quantitative regression analysis of a sample of 142 entrepreneurs in Study 2).FindingsResults from the qualitative exploration (Study 1) show that entrepreneurs appraised venture-related stressors differently as a challenge, threat or hindrance. The quantitative study (Study 2) found that challenge stress appraisals were positively related to expected financial well-being and expected life satisfaction, threat stress appraisals were negatively related to expected financial well-being and positively related to business exit intentions, and hindrance stress appraisals were positively related to expected business growth and negatively related to business exit intentions.Originality/valueMost entrepreneurship research focuses on stressors rather than appraisals of the stressor. Drawing upon the transactional theory of stress that explains how stress appraisals are an important consideration for understanding the stress process, these two studies showed that stress appraisals differ for each entrepreneur (Study 1) and that stress appraisals explain more variance in many entrepreneurial outcomes than stressors (Study 2).

What does it take to start a business? Constraint appraisal as predictor of taking entrepreneurial action among nascent entrepreneurs

“…First, we provide further evidence to support the contribution of cognitive appraisal to our understanding of the stress phenomena in the entrepreneurial context (Bennett et al, 2021;Chadwick & Raver, 2019;Jumelet et al, 2020). The consideration of how entrepreneurs appraise constraints allows to unravel the unfolding nature of the entrepreneurial stress (Lerman et al, 2020) and reconciles the conflicting findings of prior studies (Bennett et al, 2021). Second, we expand the recent developments on constraint appraisal in the context of entrepreneurship by proposing and testing a theoretical model that links constraints appraisal to entrepreneurs' action.…”

Job challenges are hindrances too: examining experiences of managers and employees in Finnish SMEs

“…While scholars seem to agree that demands can be experienced as either challenging or hindering, the a priori assumption of relevant demands in specific contexts (Downes et al. , 2021) and their categorization into challenges or hindrances has been problematized (Bennett et al. , 2021; Downes et al.…”

“…While scholars seem to agree that demands can be experienced as either challenging or hindering, the a priori assumption of relevant demands in specific contexts (Downes et al, 2021) and their categorization into challenges or hindrances has been problematized (Bennett et al, 2021;Downes et al, 2021;Jumelet et al, 2020). First, the analysis of job demands and their relationship with work engagement, strain and motivation is itself challenging, as demands may vary significantly over the course of an individual's work experience (Downes et al, 2021;Rodell and Judge, 2009).…”

“…Work drawing on the transactional theory of stress and coping developed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), emphasizes that individuals' perceptions of the same event may vary significantly and that the appraisal of the potentially stressful factor is more important than the factor itself in determining attitudes and behaviors arising from stressful situations (Searle and Auton, 2015). Thus, scholars have increasingly focused on exploring appraisals of job demands and the determinants of these (Bennett et al, 2021;Jumelet et al, 2020) as well as the impact of those appraisals (Searle and Auton, 2015;Webster et al, 2011).…”

Nascent entrepreneur characteristic predictors of early-stage entrepreneurship outcomes

“…Brandst€ atter, 2011;Zhao and Seibert, 2006), stress appraisals (e.g. Bennett et al, 2021), well-being (e.g. Lanivich et al, 2021) and neurodiversity (e.g.…”