IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp18204.html

Decline in Job Satisfaction and How It Relates to Investment Decisions of the Self-Employed

Author

Listed:
  • Block, Jörn

    (University of Trier)

  • Gnad, Miriam

    (University of Trier)

  • Kritikos, Alexander S.

    (DIW Berlin)

  • Stiel, Caroline

    (DIW Berlin)

Abstract

Despite substantial research on job satisfaction in self-employment, we know little about the consequences for the venture when job satisfaction declines after an external shock. Taking the pandemic as an example of an external shock and drawing on 7,000 self-employed in Germany, we investigate how declines in job satisfaction are related to their investment decisions. Having separated job satisfaction into its financial and non-financial aspects, we build in our analysis on two perspectives to predict how reductions in financial and non-financial job satisfaction relate to investments in venture development. Our results show that decreasing financial job satisfaction is positively related to time investments, providing support for the performance feedback perspective. Negative performance, in terms of reduced financial job satisfaction, induces higher search efforts to improve the business situation. Moreover, we observe that reductions in non-financial job satisfaction are negatively associated with both time and monetary investments. This supports the broadening-and-build perspective in that negative experiences narrow the thought-action repertoire, thus hindering resource deployment.

Suggested Citation

  • Block, Jörn & Gnad, Miriam & Kritikos, Alexander S. & Stiel, Caroline, 2025. "Decline in Job Satisfaction and How It Relates to Investment Decisions of the Self-Employed," IZA Discussion Papers 18204, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp18204.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Graeber & Alexander S. Kritikos & Johannes Seebauer, 2021. "COVID-19: a crisis of the female self-employed," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 1141-1187, October.
    2. Hansemark, Ove C., 2003. "Need for achievement, locus of control and the prediction of business start-ups: A longitudinal study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 301-319, June.
    3. Irene Bertschek & Joern Block & Alexander S. Kritikos & Caroline Stiel, 2024. "German financial state aid during Covid-19 pandemic: Higher impact among digitalized self-employed," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1-2), pages 76-97, January.
    4. Henrich R. Greve, 2003. "Investment and the behavioral theory of the firm: evidence from shipbuilding," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 12(5), pages 1051-1076, October.
    5. Cédric Gutierrez & Randolph Sloof & Donal Crilly, 2024. "Time Is Not Money! Temporal Preferences for Time Investments and Entry into Entrepreneurship," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 622-643, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Joern Block & Miriam Gnad & Alexander S. Kritikos & Caroline Stiel, 2025. "Decline in Job Satisfaction and How it Relates to Investment Decisions of the Self-Employed," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2142, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Block, Joern & Kritikos, Alexander S. & Priem, Maximilian & Stiel, Caroline, 2022. "Emergency-aid for self-employed in the Covid-19 pandemic: A flash in the pan?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 93, pages 1-41.
    3. Michael Christl & Silvia De Poli & Viginta Ivaškaitė-Tamošiūnė, 2025. "Correction: The rising tide lifts all boats? Income support measures for employees and self-employed during the COVID-19 pandemic," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 32(6), pages 1932-1933, December.
    4. Thomas Pave Sohnesen, 2019. "Are you what you consume?: Impact of food, soft drinks, and coffee on cognitive and non-cognitive test scores," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-117, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Bickenbach, Frank & Dohse, Dirk & Liu, Wan-Hsin, 2014. "An inquiry into the determinants of graduate entrepreneurship in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Mainland China)," Kiel Working Papers 1940, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    6. Caliendo, Marco & Künn, Steffen & Weißenberger, Martin, 2016. "Personality traits and the evaluation of start-up subsidies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 87-108.
    7. Michael Christl & Silvia Poli & Tine Hufkens & Andreas Peichl & Mattia Ricci, 2023. "The role of short-time work and discretionary policy measures in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 crisis in Germany," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(4), pages 1107-1136, August.
    8. Eileen Peters & Merle Pohlmeyer & Karin Schulze Buschoff, 2025. "Diverging Paths? The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Subjective Well-Being of the Solo Self-Employed and Employees in Germany (2019–2023)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 183-204, October.
    9. Verheul, Ingrid & Thurik, Roy & Grilo, Isabel & van der Zwan, Peter, 2012. "Explaining preferences and actual involvement in self-employment: Gender and the entrepreneurial personality," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 325-341.
    10. Geels, Frank W. & Ayoub, Martina, 2023. "A socio-technical transition perspective on positive tipping points in climate change mitigation: Analysing seven interacting feedback loops in offshore wind and electric vehicles acceleration," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    11. Bryan, Mark & Bryce, Andrew & Rice, Nigel & Roberts, Jennifer & Sechel, Cristina, 2022. "Exploring mental health disability gaps in the labour market: the UK experience during COVID-19," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    12. Kritikos, Alexander, 2022. "Personality and Entrepreneurship," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1137, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    13. Simon Parker, 2014. "Who become serial and portfolio entrepreneurs?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 887-898, December.
    14. Saeed Saadat & Muffatto Moreno & Yousafzai Shumaila, 2014. "A Multi-level Study of Entrepreneurship Education among Pakistani University Students," Entrepreneurship Research Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 297-321, July.
    15. Radityo Putro Handrito & Hendrik Slabbinck & Johanna Vanderstraeten, 2023. "Stuck in short-term, daily operations, or not?: Unraveling SME’s long-term orientation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(4), pages 1723-1745, December.
    16. Kyuho Jin & Joowon Lee & Sung Min Hong, 2021. "The Dark Side of Managing for the Long Run: Examining When Family Firms Create Value," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-20, March.
    17. Guido Cozzi & Paolo Giordani, 2011. "Ambiguity attitude, R&D investments and economic growth," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 303-319, May.
    18. Bostjan Antoncic & Jasna Auer Antoncic & Matjaz Gantar & Zhaoyang Li & Marja-Liisa Kakkonen, 2015. "Chance Non-Control And Entrepreneurship," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-13, September.
    19. Terrence Sebora & Sang Lee & Nittana Sukasame, 2009. "Critical success factors for e-commerce entrepreneurship: an empirical study of Thailand," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 303-316, March.
    20. Axenbeck, Janna & Bertschek, Irene & Breithaupt, Patrick & Erdsiek, Daniel, 2023. "Firm digitalisation and mobility - Do Covid-19-related changes persist?," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-011, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp18204. 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    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.