Valuable learning experience or stigmatizing event? - Three studies exploring entrepreneurs’ lives subsequent to business failure

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a detailed examination of the business failure phenomenon and to contribute to this important stream of research by formally investigating how business failure affects the subsequent lives of entrepreneurs. Building on an attributional perspective, diverse literature streams, and multiple methodological approaches, I seek to provide some new insights on this emerging stream of literature. Entrepreneurs’ lives after business failure can be studied as a process consisting of multiple stages uniting a great variety of phenomena ultimately resulting in affective, cognitive and behavioral outcomes for failed entrepreneurs. This thesis attempts to reflect and account for this process by exploring three selected phenomena determining entrepreneurs’ lives after business failure in depth. More specifically, I will explore and analyze selected immediate effects (i.e. the social costs and potential stigma associated with business failure), intermediate effects (i.e. the way entrepreneurs make sense of and explain their previous entrepreneurial endeavor), and finally long-term effects (i.e. how the sensemaking efforts of failed entrepreneurs could signal their future decision making and behavior). Overall, this dissertation provides a balanced and comprehensive picture of entrepreneurs’ lives after business failure. The results presented may represent an important step in the theory building process to better understand entrepreneurs’ reactions in response to the failure of their business. I am confident that the contributions of this dissertation pave the way for further empirical studies investigating the diverse effects of business failure on entrepreneurs’ subsequent lives.

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a detailed examination of the business failure phenomenon and to contribute to this important stream of research by formally investigating how business failure affects the subsequent lives of entrepreneurs. Building on an attributional perspective, diverse literature streams, and multiple methodological approaches, I seek to provide some new insights on this emerging stream of literature. Entrepreneurs’ lives after business failure can be studied as a process consisting of multiple stages uniting a great variety of phenomena ultimately resulting in affective, cognitive and behavioral outcomes for failed entrepreneurs. This thesis attempts to reflect and account for this process by exploring three selected phenomena determining entrepreneurs’ lives after business failure in depth. More specifically, I will explore and analyze selected immediate effects (i.e. the social costs and potential stigma associated with business failure), intermediate effects (i.e. the way entrepreneurs make sense of and explain their previous entrepreneurial endeavor), and finally long-term effects (i.e. how the sensemaking efforts of failed entrepreneurs could signal their future decision making and behavior). Overall, this dissertation provides a balanced and comprehensive picture of entrepreneurs’ lives after business failure. The results presented may represent an important step in the theory building process to better understand entrepreneurs’ reactions in response to the failure of their business. I am confident that the contributions of this dissertation pave the way for further empirical studies investigating the diverse effects of business failure on entrepreneurs’ subsequent lives.