Psychological resilience of entrepreneurs: A review and agenda for future research

Figures & data

Table 1. Overview of key features of the manuscripts included in this research.

	All	Quantitative	Qualitative
Studies	86^a	48 (56%)	35 (41%)
Sample Size	62,874	61,913^b	678
Countries	36^c	28^d United States (10), Spain (5), Afghanistan (3), China (3), Italy (3), Malaysia (3), Nigeria (3), Australia (2), Germany (2), India (2), Angola (1), Canada (1), East Africa (1), Ethiopia (1), Finland (1), Ghana (1), Indonesia (1,) Iraq (1), Ireland (1), Kazakhstan (1), Korea (1), Lebanon (1), New Zealand (1), Cyprus (1), Pakistan (1), Peru (1), Tajikistan (1), Turkey (1)	20^d United Kingdom (6), China (4), India (4), New Zealand (3), France (2), Indonesia (2), Lebanon (2), United States (2), Afghanistan (1), Australia (1), Brazil (1), Canada (1), Chile (1), Costa Rica (1), Finland (1), Germany (1), Iraq (1), Oman (1), Pakistan (1), Tunisia (1), Not Identified (1)
Theories	12	Theory of Planned Behavior (5), Conservation of Resources Theory (2), Attraction Selection Attrition (1), Broaden-and-Build Theory (1), Contingency Theory (1), Ethics of Care Perspective (1), Resource-Based View (1), Signaling Theory (1), Social Cognitive Theory (1), Social Exchange Theory (1), Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (1)	Broaden-and-Build Theory (1), Conservation of Resources Theory (1), Effectuation Theory (1)
Analytical Focus		Outcomes of ER (26), Antecedents of ER (7), ER as Moderator (7), ER as Mediator/Antecedents and Outcomes of ER (7)^e	Antecedents of ER (20), Process of ER (9), Outcomes of ER (6)

Note. ER = entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience

^aThree studies were identified as mixed-methods.

^bOne study (Sun et al., 2011) contributed a large portion of this sample size (n = 38,890).

^cOne of the mixed-methods studies was conducted in South Africa.

^dSome studies were conducted in several countries (for example, Renko et al., 2021).

^eOne study developed a measure.

Figure 1. Overview and categorization of existing research on psychological resilience of entrepreneurs. Solid arrows illustrate empirical research reviewed in this manuscript; Dashed arrows illustrate feedback loops that are likely to exist, but have not been investigated yet; gray arrows illustrate the entrepreneurial process based on Shepherd et al. (2019).

Table 2. Overview of future research directions.

Research directions		Current limitations and/or arising opportunities	Example research questions
Theoretical advancements
	Conceptualization	Some extant studies either do not clearly define psychological resilience or provide a vague definition that fails to clarify whether a trait, capacity, or process perspective was adopted. Providing a clear conceptualization in line with the chosen empirical method is vital to advance our understanding of entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience.	How can different conceptualizations inform the study of entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience?
	Social cognitive theory	Social cognitive theory is well suited to explore how the exposure to adversity, entrepreneurship-specific characteristics, and entrepreneurs’ capabilities and behaviors interplay in building entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience and how entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience influences entrepreneurial outcomes in a given context.	How do the personal factors of the entrepreneur interact with exposure to adverse events and behaviors within the specific entrepreneurial phases (that is, initiation, engagement, performance) to predict the development of psychological resilience? How will psychological resilience dynamically change over time based on the conditions, personality, experiences, and behaviors of the entrepreneur?
	Integrated resources theory	More work is needed to understand the potential of resilience as a personal resource to maintain and foster well-being and to reduce the negative impact of challenges during entrepreneurial endeavors.	What roles do resource gains and losses play in the resilience process? How can entrepreneurs draw on resilience as a personal resource to reduce stress levels and increase their well-being when initiating, engaging in, and performing entrepreneurial endeavors?
	Effects of emotions	As research considering the role of emotion when studying entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience is scarce, there is a need to integrate affect-based theories (for example, broaden-and-build theory, affect-as-information theory) in future research studies to advance our understanding of entrepreneurial resilience.	What role(s) do emotions play in developing resilience, and how does resilience, in turn, foster positive emotional states? How can emotions help (or hinder) entrepreneurs assess and respond to threats when initiating, engaging in, and performing entrepreneurial endeavors?
Empirical advancements
	Empirical research designs and methods	Prior research studying resilience has relied upon existing measures that were developed in domains other than entrepreneurship. A measurement scale that acknowledges the specific domain of entrepreneurship provides an opportunity for a more nuanced understanding of entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience. Extant research has largely used cross-sectional designs and measured resilience at only one point in time. Thus, current research misses the opportunity to study the dynamic nature of entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience. As most ventures are founded by teams, future work should study the psychological resilience of entrepreneurial teams.	What are the context specific characteristics of entrepreneurs' psychological resilience? How does entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience develop over time and prior, during, and after adverse events? How can entrepreneurial teams develop a collective resilience to help them respond to adversity?
	Role of adversity	Most studies did not specify the role of adversity in resilience. There is a need to better understand how the characteristics of adversity affects entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience.	How does the type, severity, and duration of adversity affect entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience? How do several adverse events (for example, the interplay between chronic contexts and acute events) exacerbate the entrepreneur’s perception of adversity and entrepreneur’s perception of adversity and the ability to adapt positively despite these adverse conditions?
	Boundary conditions	Research on entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience has pointed to important personal and environmental contingency factors, and suggests that the study of resilience is applicable to a variety of countries and cultural contexts. Future studies should explore the role of cultural and country-specific elements as important boundary conditions.	How do cultural and country-specific factors (for example, values) influence the relationship between psychological resilience and outcomes? How can country-specific responses to the same global adversity affect an entrepreneur’s psychological resilience?
	Link to start-up resilience	Because entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience is seen as vital for the survival of a new venture, researchers may consider how entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience relates to organizational resilience of ventures.	How can psychological resilience during initiation, engagement in, and performance of entrepreneurial endeavors help to facilitate the sustainable functioning of the new venture?
	Dark side of entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience	Entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience has been described as a positive phenomenon, with research remaining silent about the potential dark side of resilience. To develop a more holistic understanding of entrepreneurs’ resilience, we need to advance our understanding of potential negative effects.	Does successfully coping with adversity result in entrepreneurs perceiving themselves as invulnerable when exposed to future adverse conditions and events? Can entrepreneurs’ capacity for resilience have negative effects in the absence of adversity? Can highly resilient entrepreneurs negatively affect a new venture?

Figure 2. A typology of entrepreneurial adversity based on severity and duration.

*Sun, J., Buys, N., Wang, X., & McAuley, A. (2011). Using the concept of resilience to explain entrepreneurial success in China. International Journal of Management & Enterprise Development, 11(2/3/4), 182–202. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMED.2011.044637

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*Renko, M., Bullough, A., & Saeed, S. (2021). How do resilience and self-efficacy relate to entrepreneurial intentions in countries with varying degrees of fragility? A six-country study. International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship, 39(2), 130–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/0266242620960456

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Shepherd, D. A., Wennberg, K., Suddaby, R., & Wiklund, J. (2019). What are we explaining? A review and agenda on initiating, engaging, performing, and contextualizing entrepreneurship. Journal of Management, 45(1), 159–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318799443

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