The moderating role of social ties on entrepreneurs' depressed affect and withdrawal intentions in response to economic stress

Abstract

We explored whether contact with business-related social ties would buffer entrepreneurs against the potentially deleterious effects of economic stress. Our proposed stress-buffering model builds on the premise that social ties with similar others can serve as both a source of valuable information and a source of empathic support. Findings from a sample of 262 entrepreneurs revealed that the relation between economic stress and intentions to withdraw from entrepreneurial opportunities was stronger among individuals reporting less contact with social ties and weaker among those who reported more contact with social ties. We further examined the indirect effects of economic stress and contact with business-related social ties on entrepreneurs' future intentions through depressed affect. Results showed that among those reporting less contact with social ties, the indirect effect is positive, meaning greater economic stress leads to higher depressed affect, which in turn results in greater intentions to withdraw from entrepreneurship. Among those with more contact with social ties, there is no evidence of this process at work. We interpret this to mean that social ties serve to buffer the impact of economic stress on depressed affect, which in turn reduces an entrepreneur's intention to withdraw from entrepreneurship. Those who seem most susceptible to the impact of economic stress are those with relatively limited contact with business-related social ties. We discuss implications and directions for future research.Economic stress and social ties were mean centered to render parameter estimates that are interpretable within the range of the data. All coefficients are unstandardized and based on models with all primary variables entered. 798J. M. POLLACK ET AL.

How leaders' emotional displays shape followers' organizational citizenship behavior

“…Perhaps participants saw the happiness as an encouragement when they performed subpar, which may have raised their motivation to perform OCB. Using the PROCESS method described by Pollack, VanEpps, and Hayes (2012), we tested whether changes in motivation mediated the interactive effect of leader emotion and appropriateness on the time participants spent on the task. We used a bootstrap procedure with 5000 resamples to test for moderated mediation (PROCESS Model 8).…”

“…Given the low means, this may be due to a floor-effect (i.e., participants disliked the angry leader regardless of the appropriateness of the anger). Again using the PROCESS method (Pollack et al, 2012), we tested whether changes in liking mediated the interactive effect of leader emotion and appropriateness on participants' motivation. We used a bootstrap procedure with 5000 resamples to test for moderated mediation ( −0.11]).…”

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“…Although creative industries have contributed to global economy, start-up firms in creative industries have been reported to suffer from the extraordinary high failure rate of venture creation (United Nations 2010). A considerable number of creative entrepreneurs have been found to have the intention to withdraw from their entrepreneurial career because the new venture outcomes are below expectation (Henry and De Bruin 2011;Pollack, Vanepps, and Hayes 2012).…”

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