Anna Jenkins

What is entrepreneurial failure? Implications for future research

Research into entrepreneurial failure is increasing in prevalence. However, there remains a lack of clarity surrounding how failure is conceptualized. This is an important issue because how failure is conceptualized influences the relevance of research questions posed and the comparability of findings across studies. In this article, we review conceptualizations of entrepreneurial failure including at two levels of analysis (firm and individual) and perspectives of failure (objective and subjective). We discuss the implications these conceptualizations have for future research, including the sampling frame and questions scholars ask.

Entrepreneurial exit: who, what or to where? Regional relocation as a form of exit

Contents: Introduction: Introduction to the Research Handbook of Entrepreneurial Exit Dawn R. DeTienne and Karl Wennberg 1. Perpetually on the Eve of Destruction? Understanding Exits in Capitalist Societies at Multiple Levels of Analysis Howard E. Aldrich 2. Re-evaluating Business Exit from a Gendered Perspective Susan Marlow and Janine Swail 3. When Silos Collapse, what Happens to the Seeds?: A Case Study of the Diffusion of People and Ideas when a Firms Research Programs are Cancelled Kelley Packalen 4. Survey about Venture Capital Financing Exit Stage Saloua el Bouzaidi 5. Event History Analysis using the Kauffman Firm Survey Joseph Farhat and Alicia Robb 6. An Entrepreneurs Perspective--Beginning and Exit Gary Salomon 7. The Role of Retirement Intention in Entrepreneurial Exit Sohrab Soleimanof, Michael H. Morris and Imran Syed 8. Psychological Barriers and Coping Strategies in Business Transfers Explored: Towards a Conceptual Model Edwin Weesie and Lex van Teeffelen 9. The Entrepreneurial Break-up: Disengaging from the Start-up Phase Christina Wicker and Per Davidsson 10. Social ventures: Exploring Entrepreneurial Exit Strategies with a Structuation Lens Yolanda Sarason and Grace Hanley 11. For the Greater Good: Why and how Social Entrepreneurs Exit Social Ventures Jason Lortie 12. Entrepreneurial Exit: Who, What or to Where? Regional Relocation as a Form of Exit Anna Jenkins, John Steen and Martie-Louise Verreynne Index

Understanding entrepreneurial success: A phenomenographic approach

Entrepreneurship research has predominately focused on firm-level conceptions of success and the personal factors that help predict them but has stopped short of investigating what it means to entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurial success has been studied at the individual level, the approach has been to identify common success criteria and examine the importance of these to the entrepreneur. However, criteria-based approaches overlook the possibility that entrepreneurs may ascribe different meanings to common success criteria, and this can influence how entrepreneurs develop their firms. In this article, we adopt a phenomenographic approach to explore what success means to entrepreneurs. Our analysis reveals four qualitatively distinct understandings of entrepreneurial success and shows that entrepreneurs interpret common success criteria differently depending on their underlying understanding of success. These findings extend the literature on entrepreneurial success by illustrating that entrepreneurs not only vary in the importance they place on different success criteria but also vary in how they understand these different success criteria.

Motivated but not starting: how fear of failure impacts entrepreneurial intentions

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how dispositional fear of failure moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions to understand why otherwise confident potential nascent entrepreneurs may not act on their entrepreneurial intentions. We found that a dispositional fear of the social consequences of failure dampens the otherwise positive relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions. The impact being more substantial for individuals with the stronger entrepreneurial self-efficacy beliefs. This suggests that the fear of the social consequences of failure that might prevent confident nascent entrepreneurs from acting on their entrepreneurial intentions. The study therefore shifts focus from the well-established relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions to understand what influences the magnitude of this relationship. It also unpacks fear of failure from predominately used single item measure found in GEM studies to a multi-item measure.

Who learns from failure and who fails again and again? Attributions, reflection, motivation

This study draws on attribution theory (Weiner, 1985, 1986) and experiential learning theory (Argyris, 1976; Kolb, 1984) to explain the interdependencies among attributions, learning, and motivation to start a new firm after experiencing failure. The hypotheses are tested using a unique sample of 122 Swedish entrepreneurs who had recently experienced firm failure. The results suggest that attributions for the causes of failure influence the types of knowledge and skills entrepreneurs gain from failure experiences. In turn, the nature of what is learned can influence entrepreneurial motivation. The results suggest that entrepreneurs who are motivated to re-enter self-employment after failure are unlikely to have learned from the experience while the entrepreneurs who learn from the experience are unmotivated to try again