Are work stressors and emotional exhaustion driving exit intentions among business owners?

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurial exit and exit intentions are emerging areas of research, yet psychological antecedents of such intentions are understudied. We build on organizational behavior and human resource management theories to explain the role of work stressors (role ambiguity and work–family conflict) as antecedents of business owners’ emotional exhaustion and subsequent exit intentions. We tested the model in two studies from the United States and Australia. The results were consistent in both studies such that role ambiguity and work–family conflict predicted emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion was associated with exit intentions. Post hoc analysis also revealed that women experience a stronger detrimental effect of work–family conflict, influencing emotional exhaustion, and subsequently exit intentions.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prof Don Kuratko and Prof Herman Aguinis for their help with this paper.

Notes

¹ It should be noted that in management research, the terms entrepreneur and small business owner are sometimes used interchangeably. Although some situations encompass both terms, the difference usually falls within the entrepreneur’s principal objectives of innovation, profitability, and growth (Kuratko, 2014). Therefore, while we refer to the entrepreneurship literature to draw on extant knowledge, our study focuses on small business owners and henceforth refers to them accordingly (Kuratko, Morris, & Schindehutte, 2015).