Negative emotions of an entrepreneurial career: Self-employment and regulatory coping behaviors

Holger Patzelt and Dean A. Shepherd

Journal of Business Venturing, 2011, vol. 26, issue 2, 226-238

Abstract: Although we know a great deal about the relationship between self-employment and the experience of positive emotions such as passion, excitement, happiness, satisfaction, and flow, there is some research that suggests that the self-employed may be more susceptible than employees to negative emotions such as stress, fear of failure, loneliness, mental strain, and grief. We draw on the literature on role requirements to develop a model of career pursuit based on individuals' willingness and abilities to regulate these emotions. Using a nation-wide survey of more than 2700 US citizens we show that over and above the effects of positive emotions, the self-employed experienced fewer negative emotions than those who are employed, contingent on their regulatory coping behaviors. We discuss implications of these results for the literature on entrepreneurial emotions.

Keywords: Identity; Emotions; Problem-focused; coping; Emotions-focused; coping; Career; choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (81)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883-9026(09)00083-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:26:y:2011:i:2:p:226-238

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().