Individual responses to firm failure: Appraisals, grief, and the influence of prior failure experience

Business Failure and Entrepreneurship: Emergence, Evolution and Future Research

“…However people respond to failure in different ways, some are overcome with feelings of guilt and shame attached to failure whilst others recover quickly. Similarly, embarrassment and grief can adversely affect self-esteem and confidence for some, whilst others are only momentarily affected [Boss and Sims Jr, 2008, Shepherd and Kuratko, 2009, Jenkins et al, 2014. Emotion regulation is the process individuals engage to influence the emotions they have, when they have them and the way in which they are expressed/experienced [Gross, 1998, Boss andSims Jr, 2008].…”

“…Since then it has been explored and studied by a range of disciplines with researchers using disparate methodologies and various lenses (see Beaver, 1966 -finance;Freeman et al, 1983 -sociology;Dunne et al, 1989 -economics;Moulton et al, 1996 -management;Yamakawa et al, 2015 -entrepreneurship). The most recent resurgence of interest in the subject has occurred in the past decade, with a noticeable and sustaining increase in studies related to business failure emerging from the entrepreneurship literature [see , Ucbasaran et al, 2010, Wennberg et al, 2010, Cope, 2011, Cardon et al, 2011, Mantere et al, 2013, Jenkins et al, 2014, Wolfe and Shepherd, 2015, Hsu et al, 2015. The renewed interest on business failure within the entrepreneurship domain has led to a focus on individuals' experiences of failure [Franco and Haase, 2010, Simmons et al, 2014, Byrne and Shepherd, 2015, thus departing from the comparatively detached approaches, such as analytical modelling, that were commonplace when the topic first debuted in the finance literature.…”

Entrepreneurial Cognition

“…Indeed, failure can make individuals begin to doubt their knowledge and ability to successfully undertake certain tasks (Gatewood et al 2002;Hoang and Gimeno 2010) as well as make them question their self-worth (Jenkins et al 2014;Laguna 2013), have lower self-esteem , and start to doubt the control they have over important aspects of their lives Stanton et al 2002). In turn, entrepreneurs are likely to weigh financial costs more when they fear that failure will negatively affect their self-estimation about their own capabilities and talent.…”

Motivation and Entrepreneurial Cognition

“…Indeed, failure can make individuals begin to doubt their knowledge and ability to successfully undertake certain tasks (Gatewood et al 2002;Hoang and Gimeno 2010) as well as make them question their self-worth (Jenkins et al 2014;Laguna 2013), have lower self-esteem (Shepherd and Cardon 2009), and start to doubt the control they have over important aspects of their lives (Folkman and Moskowitz 2004;Stanton et al 2002). In turn, entrepreneurs are likely to weigh financial costs more when they fear that failure will negatively affect their self-estimation about their own capabilities and talent.…”