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

Ute Stephan*, Przemysław Zbierowski, Ana Pérez-Luño, Dominika Wach, Johan Wiklund, Marisleidy Alba Cabañas, Edgard Barki, Alexandre Benzari, Claudia Bernhard-Oettel, Janet A. Boekhorst, Arobindu Dash, Adnan Efendic, Constanze Eib, Pierre Jean Hanard, Tatiana Iakovleva, Satoshi Kawakatsu, Saddam Khalid, Michael Leatherbee, Jun Li, Sharon K. ParkerJingjing Qu, Francesco Rosati, Sreevas Sahasranamam, Marcus A.Y. Salusse, Tomoki Sekiguchi, Nicola Thomas, Olivier Torrès, Mi Hoang Tran, M. K. Ward, Amanda Jasmine Williamson, Muhammad Mohsin Zahid

*Corresponding author for this work

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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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104225872211048
JournalEntrepreneurship: Theory and Practice
Volume47
Issue number3
Number of pages42
ISSN1042-2587
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Keywords

  • Adversity
  • Agility
  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • Crisis
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Life satisfaction
  • Resilience
  • Stress
  • Subjective vitality
  • Wellbeing

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