احساسات منفی از حرفه کارآفرینی: رفتارهای خود اشتغالی و سازگاری نظارتی

Although we know a great deal about the relationship between self-employment and the experience of positive emotions such as passion, excitement, happiness, satisfaction, and flow, there is some research that suggests that the self-employed may be more susceptible than employees to negative emotions such as stress, fear of failure, loneliness, mental strain, and grief. We draw on the literature on role requirements to develop a model of career pursuit based on individuals' willingness and abilities to regulate these emotions. Using a nation-wide survey of more than 2700 US citizens we show that over and above the effects of positive emotions, the self-employed experienced fewer negative emotions than those who are employed, contingent on their regulatory coping behaviors. We discuss implications of these results for the literature on entrepreneurial emotions.

There is a substantial literature that links self-employment with positive emotional outcomes. For example, various scholars (Baum and Locke, 2004, Cardon et al., 2005, Cardon et al., 2009 and Smilor, 1997) have emphasized that the self-employed often experience high levels of passion — “a consciously accessible, intense positive feeling” (Cardon et al., 2009: 7). Further, self-employment can lead to experiences of excitement, happiness, and flow (Komisar, 2000, Rai, 2008 and Schindehutte et al., 2006). Studies have also found that the self-employed display greater levels of job and life satisfaction than those who are employed (Blanchflower et al., 2001, Bradley and Roberts, 2004 and Thompson et al., 1992). However, while these studies provide considerable information about positive emotions, this does not necessarily inform our understanding of the negative emotions experienced by the self-employed. Positive and negative affect are relatively independent dimensions (Mroczek and Kolarz, 1998, Tellegen and Watson, 1999 and Watson and Tellegen, 1985) and individuals can be high or low on both at the same time. For example, George and Zhou (2007) found that employees display particularly high levels of creativity when they experience high levels of both positive and negative affect, and Larsen and colleagues described several events that trigger the experience of positive and negative emotions simultaneously (Larsen et al., 2001 and Larsen et al., 2004). Others have also found that positive emotions do not exclude the experience of negative emotions at the same time (Fong, 2006, Fong and Tiedens, 2002 and Williams and Aaker, 2002). This suggests that although self-employment may be associated with the experience of positive emotions, the self-employed may also experience high levels of negative emotions. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that the tasks associated with self-employment could be sources of considerable negative emotions for those that pursue this career path over and above the effects of positive emotions. Tasks and responsibilities that are specific for self-employed individuals include the screening for, and recognition of, new business opportunities, business planning, acquisition of financial and non-financial resources, managing and leading employees, creative problem solving, and quick decision making in situations characterized by high levels of uncertainty and change (Douglas and Shepherd, 2000 and Eisenhardt, 1989). Because of the nature of these tasks, self-employment is often associated with high levels of risk taking, income and job uncertainty, required work effort, decision autonomy, and responsibility (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983, Covin and Slevin, 1991, Douglas and Shepherd, 2000 and Wiklund, 1999) which may result in the experience of negative emotions. For example, high levels of job demands can provoke mental strain and dissatisfaction (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983, Harris et al., 1999, Jamal, 1997 and Kets de Vries, 1980). Risks and uncertainties about the future of the business can cause fear and anxiety about the owner's own personal future (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983). Further, long working hours of the self-employed can lead to feelings of loneliness and social isolation (Akande, 1994, Gumpert and Boyd, 1984 and Hannafey, 2003). Moreover, one study found that for many self-employed the responsibility for their business and employees is a burden and causes high levels of stress and mental strain (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983). It can also lead to elevated levels of frustration (Du Toit, 1980) and grief (Shepherd, 2003). If the negative emotions expected from self-employment are so high, then why would people have this career? Research suggests that entrepreneurs' motivation to overcome such obstacles includes fulfilling their high need for achievement (Collins et al., 2004, Johnson, 1990 and Shane et al., 2003) and desire for independence/autonomy (Douglas and Shepherd, 2000), experiencing passion (Cardon et al., 2005 and Cardon et al., 2009), and gaining considerable financial return from self-employment (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983, Kuratko et al., 1997 and Naffziger et al., 1994) which can all yield positive emotions that may more than compensate for the ‘negatives’ of self-employment. Rather than following an indirect approach of counter-balancing negative with positive emotions, in this paper we directly investigate negative emotions and behaviors to regulate these negative emotions. Drawing on the literature on role identities (Ashforth and Kreiner, 2002 and Ashforth et al., 2000), we develop a model of the regulation of the emotions of career pursuit and suggest that the self-employed more readily accept the negative emotional consequences of their career choice and/or learn to cope with these emotional consequences. Further, our model acknowledges that individuals differ in their regulation of negative emotions and suggests how problem-focused and emotions-focused coping behaviors influence the career-emotions relationship. We test the resulting hypotheses using a large-scale, nation-wide survey that includes more than 2700 US citizens. In testing our theoretical model, we make the following contributions. First, while role differences between employment and self-employment are well established in the literature (Hoang and Gimeno, 2009 and Shepherd and Haynie, 2009), there is insufficient theory linking these role differences to the experiencing of emotions. This is surprising given that the role of self-employment often involves dealing with tasks that are highly uncertain (McGrath and MacMillan, 2000), dynamic (Ensley et al., 2006 and Hmieleski and Ensley, 2007), and complex (Hoang and Gimeno, 2009) — tasks that are associated with the generation of negative emotion (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983 and Karasek, 1979). While studies have focused on the investigation of positive emotions as “off-setting” motivating factors (e.g., Baron, 2008, Cardon et al., 2005 and Cardon et al., 2009) to explain why individuals choose self-employment, we offer a novel and complementary perspective by analyzing the generation of negative emotions and the coping behaviors used to recover from them. Our result that over and above the effect of “off-setting” motivating factors and positive emotions the experience of fewer negative emotions can explain individuals' decision to pursue self-employment suggests that theoretical models of entrepreneurial motivation and career pursuit should consider negative emotional career outcomes as an explanatory variable. Second, entrepreneurship theory has focused on how emotions impact motivation and cognitive processes of entrepreneurs (Baron, 2008, Cardon et al., 2005 and Cardon et al., 2009), but few studies have investigated the emotional outcomes of self-employment. Of those that have, the investigations have either been anecdotal (Boyd and Gumpert, 1983, Du Toit, 1980 and Gumpert and Boyd, 1984) or focused on the specific emotion of grief (e.g., Shepherd, 2003). To the best of our knowledge, to date no theoretical model exists that links career choice (self-employment vs. employment) with the experience of negative emotions at a general level, and identifies contingencies explaining to what extent career choice can translate into emotional experiences. We extend entrepreneurship theory by offering such a model integrating emotions, career choice, and regulatory coping behaviors of individuals. Finally, entrepreneurship theory so far provides little insight how the self-employed can use coping behaviors to regulate negative emotions. While existing studies have acknowledged that regulatory behaviors can help the self-employed to cope with negative emotional outcomes of work, they have focused on the particular case of business failure (Shepherd, 2003). We provide a more general theory of entrepreneurial coping behaviors suggesting that problem-focused and emotions-focused coping may help the self-employed to balance negative emotions associated with self-employment (e.g., stress, loneliness, fear of failure) while their business is ongoing. The paper proceeds as follows. First we build on identity theory and the entrepreneurship literature to develop a model of the emotions of career pursuit and hypothesize how the negative emotional experiences of the self-employed are contingent on their coping behaviors. Second, we describe our research method for testing these hypotheses. Third, we present our results, discuss those results, and finally highlight the study's theoretical and practical implications.

Our study showed that role differences between employment and self-employment can explain, to a certain extent, individuals' experiences of negative emotions. Although scholars have often claimed that self-employment causes stress, loneliness, fear, and other negative emotions (the “dark side” of entrepreneurship, Kets de Vries, 1985), we hypothesized that the self-employed experience, on average, fewer negative emotions than employees, over and above their experiences of more positive emotions. An analysis of a large data set representative of the US population supported these arguments. Further, our study found that this effect is contingent on individuals' use of problem-focused and emotions-focused coping approaches. Our findings extend the work on role characteristics and emotions of the self-employed and provide insights into the effectiveness of emotion regulation approaches for entrepreneurs.