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

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • 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. Parker
  • And 11 others
  • Jingjing Qu
  • Francesco Rosati
  • Sreevas Sahasranamam
  • Marcus A.Y. Salusse
  • Tomoki Sekiguchi
  • Nicola Thomas
  • Olivier Torrès
  • Mi Hoang Tran
  • Michael K. Ward
  • Amanda Jasmine Williamson
  • Muhammad Mohsin Zahid

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
JournalEntrepreneurship: Theory and Practice
Volume47
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)682-723
Number of pages42
ISSN1042-2587
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 05.2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.

    Research areas

  • adversity, agility, COVID-19 pandemic, crisis, entrepreneurship, life satisfaction, resilience, stress, subjective vitality, wellbeing
  • Management studies