IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/entthe/v44y2020i2p315-338.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Can Problems Be Turned Into Something Good? The Role of Entrepreneurial Learning and Error Mastery Orientation

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca Funken
  • Michael M. Gielnik
  • Maw-Der Foo

Abstract

How can problems be turned into something good? We develop and test a theoretical model suggesting that error mastery orientation influences whether problems have positive or negative outcomes. We argue that problems increase or decrease entrepreneurial learning and venture progress depending on error mastery orientation. We tested our theoretical model using a longitudinal design with one baseline measurement and 11 weekly measurements. Analyses were based on 1,016 lagged observations from 168 individuals, who engaged in venture creation as part of entrepreneurship training courses. The results suggest that error mastery orientation functions like a switch, turning problems into something good.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca Funken & Michael M. Gielnik & Maw-Der Foo, 2020. "How Can Problems Be Turned Into Something Good? The Role of Entrepreneurial Learning and Error Mastery Orientation," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 44(2), pages 315-338, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:entthe:v:44:y:2020:i:2:p:315-338
    DOI: 10.1177/1042258718801600
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1042258718801600
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1042258718801600?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Uy, Marilyn A. & Sun, Shuhua & Foo, Maw-Der, 2017. "Affect spin, entrepreneurs' well-being, and venture goal progress: The moderating role of goal orientation," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 443-460.
    2. Maria Minniti & William Bygrave, 2001. "A Dynamic Model of Entrepreneurial Learning," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 25(3), pages 5-16, April.
    3. Diamanto Politis, 2005. "The Process of Entrepreneurial Learning: A Conceptual Framework," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(4), pages 399-424, July.
    4. Unger, Jens M. & Rauch, Andreas & Frese, Michael & Rosenbusch, Nina, 2011. "Human capital and entrepreneurial success: A meta-analytical review," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 341-358, May.
    5. Richard A. Bettis & Sendil Ethiraj & Alfonso Gambardella & Constance Helfat & Will Mitchell, 2016. "Creating repeatable cumulative knowledge in strategic management," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 257-261, February.
    6. Marco Gelderen & Lidewey Sluis & Paul Jansen, 2005. "Learning Opportunities and Learning Behaviours of Small Business Starters: Relations with Goal Achievement, Skill Development and Satisfaction," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 97-108, August.
    7. Davidsson, Per, 2015. "Data replication and extension: A commentary," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 3(C), pages 12-15.
    8. Nicola Breugst & Dean A. Shepherd, 2017. "If you Fight with Me, I'll Get Mad! A Social Model of Entrepreneurial Affect," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 41(3), pages 379-418, May.
    9. Davidsson, Per & Honig, Benson, 2003. "The role of social and human capital among nascent entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 301-331, May.
    10. Dean A. Shepherd & Melissa S. Cardon, 2009. "Negative Emotional Reactions to Project Failure and the Self‐Compassion to Learn from the Experience," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(6), pages 923-949, September.
    11. Yasuhiro Yamakawa & Mike W. Peng & David L. Deeds, 2015. "Rising from the Ashes: Cognitive Determinants of Venture Growth after Entrepreneurial Failure," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 39(2), pages 209-236, March.
    12. Uy, Marilyn A. & Foo, Maw-Der & Ilies, Remus, 2015. "Perceived progress variability and entrepreneurial effort intensity: The moderating role of venture goal commitment," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 375-389.
    13. Gielnik, Michael M. & Uy, Marilyn A. & Funken, Rebecca & Bischoff, Kim Marie, 2017. "Boosting and sustaining passion: A long-term perspective on the effects of entrepreneurship training," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 334-353.
    14. Cope, Jason, 2011. "Entrepreneurial learning from failure: An interpretative phenomenological analysis," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 604-623.
    15. Susan S. Harmeling & Saras D. Sarasvathy, 2013. "When Contingency is a Resource: Educating Entrepreneurs in the Balkans, the Bronx, and Beyond," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(4), pages 713-744, July.
    16. Linlin Jin & Kristen Madison & Nils D. Kraiczy & Franz W. Kellermanns & T. Russell Crook & Jing Xi, 2017. "Entrepreneurial Team Composition Characteristics and New Venture Performance: A Meta–Analysis," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 41(5), pages 743-771, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chen Zhou & Huatao Peng & Bingbing Li, 2022. "How Risk Prevention Mechanisms Regulate Serial Entrepreneurs to Achieve Sustainable Entrepreneurship—A Policy Text Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Kuckertz, Andreas & Bulut, Cagri & Brändle, Leif, 2024. "Unobserved heterogeneity in firm performance: The alignment of entrepreneurial orientation and organizational error management culture," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    3. Stela Ivanova & Theresa Treffers & Fred Langerak & Markus Groth, 2023. "Holding Back or Letting Go? The Effect of Emotion Suppression on Relationship Viability in New Venture Teams," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(4), pages 1460-1495, July.
    4. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang & Quang-Loc, Nguyen & Nguyen, Loan & Le, Tam-Tri & Phi, Xuan-Tuan & Vuong, Quan-Hoang, 2023. "How does the knowledge accumulation process affect Vietnamese entrepreneurs’ success likelihood?," OSF Preprints tgfr5, Center for Open Science.
    5. Bohlayer, Carina & Gielnik, Michael M., 2023. "(S)training experiences: Toward understanding decreases in entrepreneurial self-efficacy during action-oriented entrepreneurship training," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 38(1).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parker, Simon C., 2013. "Do serial entrepreneurs run successively better-performing businesses?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 652-666.
    2. Bohlayer, Carina & Gielnik, Michael M., 2023. "(S)training experiences: Toward understanding decreases in entrepreneurial self-efficacy during action-oriented entrepreneurship training," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 38(1).
    3. Huatao Peng & Chen Zhou & Yang Liu, 2020. "Entrepreneurial Experience and Performance: From the Aspect of Sustainable Growth of Enterprises," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-24, September.
    4. Vivianna Fang He & Charlotta Sirén & Sheetal Singh & George Solomon & Georg von Krogh, 2018. "Keep Calm and Carry On: Emotion Regulation in Entrepreneurs’ Learning from Failure," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 42(4), pages 605-630, July.
    5. Marvel, Matthew R. & Wolfe, Marcus T. & Kuratko, Donald F., 2020. "Escaping the knowledge corridor: How founder human capital and founder coachability impacts product innovation in new ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(6).
    6. Jared Allen & Regan Stevenson & Tang Wang, 2021. "Creative and resourceful: How human, social, and psychological resources affect creative workers’ ability to rebound after failure," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 705-719, August.
    7. Brandon A. Mueller & Dean A. Shepherd, 2016. "Making the Most of Failure Experiences: Exploring the Relationship between Business Failure and the Identification of Business Opportunities," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(3), pages 457-487, May.
    8. Pérez, Víctor Centeno & Kansikas, Juha, 2019. "Emotions and entrepreneurship education: State of the art and future research agenda," Working Papers 02/19, Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IfM) Bonn.
    9. Lattacher, Wolfgang & Gregori, Patrick & Holzmann, Patrick & Schwarz, Erich J., 2021. "Knowledge spillover in entrepreneurial emergence: A learning perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    10. Farhad Uddin Ahmed & Louis Brennan, 2019. "The impact of Founder’s human capital on firms’ extent of early internationalisation: Evidence from a least-developed country," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 615-659, September.
    11. Liu, Yiran & Li, Yong & Hao, Xiling & Zhang, Yuli, 2019. "Narcissism and learning from entrepreneurial failure," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 496-512.
    12. Stephanie Duchek, 2018. "Entrepreneurial resilience: a biographical analysis of successful entrepreneurs," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 429-455, June.
    13. Gottschalk, Sandra & Greene, Francis J. & Höwer, Daniel & Müller, Bettina, 2014. "If you don't succeed, should you try again? The role of entrepreneurial experience in venture survival," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-009, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    14. Lin, Tse-Chun & Pursiainen, Vesa, 2023. "Gender differences in reward-based crowdfunding," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    15. Patel, Pankaj C. & Tsionas, Mike & Oghazi, Pejvak & Izquierdo, Vanessa, 2022. "No entrepreneur steps in the same river twice: Limited learning advantage for serial entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 1038-1052.
    16. Pankaj C. Patel & Yoav Ganzach, 2019. "Returns to balance in cognitive skills for the self-employed: evidence from 18 countries," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 89-109, January.
    17. Rocha, Vera & Carneiro, Anabela & Amorim Varum, Celeste, 2015. "Serial entrepreneurship, learning by doing and self-selection," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 91-106.
    18. Kim Klyver & Benson Honig & Paul Steffens, 2018. "Social support timing and persistence in nascent entrepreneurship: exploring when instrumental and emotional support is most effective," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 709-734, October.
    19. Nizar Mtibaa & Sami Boudabbous, 2023. "The Realities of Learning through Failure in Entrepreneurship: Results of Qualitative Research," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 13(2), pages 19-27, March.
    20. Onetti Alberto & Odorici Vincenza & Presutti Manuela, 2008. "The Internationalization of Global Start-Ups: Understanding the Role of Serial Entrepreneurs," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf0802, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:entthe:v:44:y:2020:i:2:p:315-338. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.