Act or wait-and-see? Adversity, agility, and entrepreneur wellbeing across countries during the Covid-19 pandemic

Stephan, Ute and Zbierowski, Przemyslaw and Pérez-Luño, Ana and Wach, Dominika and Wiklund, Johan and Cabañas, Marisleidy Alba and Barki, Edgard and Benzari, Alexandre and Bernhard-Oettel, Claudia and Boekhorst, Janet A. and Dash, Arobindu and Efendic, Adnan and Eib, Constanze and Hanard, Pierre-Jean and Iakovleva, Tatiana and Kawakatsu, Satoshi and Khalid, Saddam and Leatherbee, Michael and Li, Jun and Parker, Sharon and Qu, Jingjing and Rosati, Francesco and Sahasranamam, Sreevas and Salusse, Marcus Alexandre Yshikawa and Sekiguchi, Tomoki and Thomas, Nicola and Torrès, Olivier and Tran, Mi Hoang and Ward, M.K. and Williamson, Amanda and Zahid, Muhammad Mohsin (2022) Act or wait-and-see? Adversity, agility, and entrepreneur wellbeing across countries during the Covid-19 pandemic. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 47 (3). pp. 682-723. ISSN 1042-2587 (https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587221104820)

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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 3,162 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.

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