What does not kill you makes you stronger: Entrepreneurs’ childhood adversity, resilience, and career success

Wei Yu, Fei Zhu, Maw Der Foo and Johan Wiklund

Journal of Business Research, 2022, vol. 151, issue C, 40-55

Abstract: Childhood adversities, such as neglect, abuse, and poverty, lead to negative career outcomes. Anecdotal stories of entrepreneurs, however, present a contrasting picture, showing that many successful entrepreneurs had a difficult childhood. Building on the underdog framework of entrepreneurship and the stress inoculation model, we resolve the puzzle by hypothesizing the inverted U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurs’ childhood adversities and career success that is mediated by resilience. Using data from a representative sample of 573 U.S. entrepreneurs from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, we find support for the hypotheses. We further find resilience is more important for less-successful entrepreneurs. Our results are robust to various checks, including an additional study based on a sample of U.S. entrepreneurs from the Qualtrics online panel. Our study indicates the need to consider nonlinear and context-specific implications of childhood adversities and examine performance-related outcomes, thus enriching existing research on childhood adversities and entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Childhood adversity; Entrepreneurship; Resilience; Career success (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:151:y:2022:i:c:p:40-55

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.06.035

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