Resilience Entrepreneurship Stress Life Satisfaction Wellbeing Agility Crisis Subjective Vitality Covid-19 Pandemic Adversity

External authors:

• Ute Stephan ( King's College London , Technische Universitat Dresden )
• Przemyslaw Zbierowski ( King's College London , University of Economics in Katowice )
• Ana Perez-Luno ( Universidad Pablo de Olavide )
• Dominika Wach ( Technische Universitat Dresden )
• Johan Wiklund ( Syracuse University )
• Marisleidy Alba Cabanas ( Konrad Lorenz Univ )
• Edgard Barki ( FGV EAESP Fundacao Getulio Vargas Escola Adm Empr )
• Alexandre Benzari ( Montpellier Business School )
• Claudia Bernhard-Oettel ( Stockholm University )
• Janet A. Boekhorst ( University of Waterloo )
• Arobindu Dash ( Leuphana University Luneburg )
• Adnan Efendic ( University of Sarajevo )
• Constanze Eib ( Uppsala University )
• Pierre-Jean Hanard ( King's College London )
• Tatiana Iakovleva ( Universitetet i Stavanger )
• Satoshi Kawakatsu ( Kyoto University )
• Saddam Khalid ( University of Hyogo )
• Jun Li ( University of Huddersfield )
• Sharon K. Parker ( Curtin University )
• Jingjing Qu ( Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Lab )
• Francesco Rosati ( Technical University of Denmark )
• Sreevas Sahasranamam ( University of Strathclyde )
• Marcus A. Y. Salusse ( Insper )
• Tomoki Sekiguchi ( Kyoto University )
• Nicola Thomas ( University of Liverpool )
• Olivier Torres ( Universite de Montpellier , Montpellier Business School )
• M. K. Ward ( Zipline Io )
• Amanda Jasmine Williamson ( University of Waikato )
• Muhammad Mohsin Zahid ( Neuron Business & Dev Solut )

Abstract:

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.