Stephan U., Zbierowski P., Pérez-Luño A., Wach D., Wiklund J., Cabañas M.A., Barki E., Benzari A., Bernhard-Oettel C., Boekhorst J.A., Dash A., Efendic A., Eib C., Hanard P.J., Iakovleva T., Kawakatsu S., Khalid S., Leatherbee M., Li J., Parker S., Qu J., (2022)

Act or Wait-and-See? Adversity, Agility, and Entrepreneur Wellbeing across Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Revista : Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Tipo de publicación : ISI Ir a publicación

Abstract

How can entrepreneurs protect their wellbeing during a crisis? Does engaging agility (namely, opportunity agility and planning agility) in response to adversity help entrepreneurs safeguard their wellbeing? Activated by adversity, agility may function as a specific resilience mechanism enabling positive adaption to crisis. We studied 3162 entrepreneurs from 20 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that more severe national lockdowns enhanced firm-level adversity for entrepreneurs and diminished their wellbeing. Moreover, entrepreneurs who combined opportunity agility with planning agility experienced higher wellbeing but planning agility alone lowered wellbeing. Entrepreneur agility offers a new agentic perspective to research on entrepreneur wellbeing.