Different Strokes for Different Folks: Entrepreneurial Narratives of Emotion, Cognition, and Making Sense of Business Failure

Orla Byrne and Dean A. Shepherd

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2015, vol. 39, issue 2, 375-405

Abstract: This multiple case study of eight entrepreneurial narratives of failed businesses examines how narratives that express different emotional states (folks) reflect different efforts to make sense of failure experiences (strokes). Our comparisons of the narratives’ emotional content (describing emotional states at the time of business failure and presently) revealed some new insights. First, high negative emotions motivate making sense of a loss, while high positive emotions provide cognitive resources to facilitate and motivate making sense of the failure event. Second, emotion–focused coping helped deal with negative emotions. Finally, sensemaking was also facilitated by cognitive strategies that focused attention on the failure event and promoted self–reflection.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (51)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/etap.12046 (text/html)

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:sae:entthe:v:39:y:2015:i:2:p:375-405

DOI: 10.1111/etap.12046

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().