Entrepreneurship: An Auspicious Context for Examining Its Connection to Wellbeing

Entrepreneurship research has focused on traditional firm-level outcomes such as firm performance or growth. Yet, the pursuit of entrepreneurship is for deeply personal reasons. Thereby, as a self-organized human pursuit, how entrepreneurship relates to personal wellbeing or personal fulfillment is important but frequently overlooked. It is of utmost importance to examine the connection between entrepreneurship and wellbeing as entrepreneurs face various challenges and have to make quick decision facing uncertainty but how they experience and appreciate their work and how their work impacts their wellbeing is still nascent. While non-academic outlets have examined work burnout, stress, and fatigue of entrepreneurs and their causes and ways to overcome them, the academic literature is just starting to examine this important research area. Throughout this book chapter, we cover the concepts of wellbeing and how it relates to research on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial pursuit. The concept of psychological wellbeing plays a vital role in scholarly work and policy debates. Entrepreneurship pursuit, which is an integral part of living for a fulfilled life, is closely related to an individual’s capacity to work and maintain positive relationships. An entrepreneurial pursuit can be a source of satisfaction and personal fulfillment and can push the entrepreneur in achieving their goals and persisting with their entrepreneurial endeavors under conditions of uncertainty. The sense of satisfaction derived from an entrepreneurial pursuit can be the driving force for positive social change. We emphasize the importance of investigating wellbeing as a crucial outcome in entrepreneurship research. Further, we draw upon the important role of wellbeing as being a driver for entrepreneurial pursuits (whether the antecedent to entrepreneurial pursuit is the lack of wellbeing or on the contrary positive affect). The emotional aspect is important for entrepreneurship researchers to consider since entrepreneurs are driven by their emotional state as they are constantly facing uncertainty and time pressures in their entrepreneurial journey. Entrepreneurship research has started to examine wellbeing as a critical psychological antecedent, yet most studies have focused on positive emotions often disregarding the role of negative emotions being an equally important driver to entrepreneurial pursuit and actions.