تجدید مفهوم ترس از عدم موفقیت در کارآفرینی

ABSTRACT A reconceptualization of fear of failure in entrepreneurship

We introduce this open and honest quotation from an entrepreneur to make three points. First, the quotation highlights the potentially pivotal and ubiquitous role played by fear of failure in entrepreneurship and the need to account for this construct in explanations of entrepreneurial decision making and behavior (Cacciotti and Hayton, 2015; Morgan and Sisak, 2016). Second, contrary to prior research on the topic (Arenius and Minniti, 2005; Langowitz and Minniti, 2007; Minniti and Nardone, 2007; Vaillant and Lafuente, 2007), fear of failure needs to be viewed as not only having an inhibiting effect on entrepreneurial behavior, but also as potentially having a motivational effect. And as the entrepreneur seems to suggest, the effect of fear of failure is situated in a larger social context and can depend on the entrepreneur’s point in the entrepreneurial process (Mitchell et al., 2014). Third, based on these prior two points, we suggest that fear of failure is an ideal construct of study for understanding the richness of the entrepreneurial motivation—a broad topic that has seen increased interest and focus in recent years (e.g., Asiedu and Nduro, 2015; Chua and Bedford, 2015; Frese and Gielnik, 2014).

Research in the area of entrepreneurial motivation has, for example, highlighted how need for achievement, self-efficacy, optimism, and passion have been found to motivate behavior toward venture emergence (e.g., Bird, 1989; Cardon et al., 2009; Frese and Gielnik, 2014; Hmieleski and Baron, 2009; Shane et al., 2003). Likewise, lack of confidence and aversion to business risk have been demonstrated to inhibit entrepreneurial behavior and to act as barriers to entrepreneurship (e.g., Asiedu and Nduro, 2015; Bosma et al., 2007; Chua and Bedford, 2015; Hatala, 2005; Henderson and Robertson, 1999). But evidence suggests that fear of failure can result in both inhibiting and motivating effects (Ray, 1994; Mitchell, 1996; Mitchell and Shepherd, 2011; Morgan and Sisak, 2016), indicating why this construct has received considerable attention (Arenius and Minniti, 2005; Cacciotti and Hayton, 2015; Langowitz and Minniti, 2007; Minniti and Nardone, 2007; Mitchell and Shepherd, 2010; Wood et al., 2014). Indeed, this research on fear of failure has demonstrated how this construct can obstruct nascent entrepreneurial activities (Arenius and Minniti, 2005), help shape the opportunity identification process (Mitchell and Shepherd, 2010; Wood et al., 2014), negatively influence entrepreneurship as an occupational choice (e.g., Arenius and Minniti, 2005; Kihlstrom and Laffont, 1979), and distinguish between nascent entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs (Arenius and Minniti, 2005; Minniti and Nardone, 2007; Langowitz and Minniti, 2007; Wagner, 2007).

But as previously noted, notwithstanding the negative connotation generally attached to the fear of failure construct in entrepreneurship, prior empirical work also suggests the possibility of both inhibiting and motivating responses to fear of failure in entrepreneurial action (Ray, 1994; Mitchell, 1996; Mitchell and Shepherd, 2011; Morgan and Sisak, 2016). Consistent with psychological theory on avoidance and approach motivation (Atkinson, 1957; Birney et al., 1969; Elliot, 1999; Elliot and Church, 1997), these tentative findings demonstrate that individuals may also avoid failure by working harder to achieve success.

In other words, fear of failure may drive both approach and avoidance behavior. Although evidence of the dualistic behavioral impact of fear of failure is consistent with psychological research, these findings highlight a potential opportunity to focus on fear of failure as exemplifying the richness of entrepreneurial motivation research and in doing so to deepen our understanding of the fear of failure construct.

A thorough examination of the existing entrepreneurship literature on fear of failure reveals substantial concerns regarding the nature of this concept and its relationship with the entrepreneurial process (Cacciotti and Hayton, 2015). These concerns include the fact that prior research has investigated fear of failure from perspectives that are potentially in conflict, leading to multiple definitions of this construct (e.g., a dispositional trait [cf. Arenius and Minniti, 2005] versus an affective state [cf. Li, 2011]). As a result of these multiple conflicting perspectives, the actual conceptual meaning of the construct in entrepreneurship research remains underspecified. Likewise, it is not clear whether methods used in prior research even capture the same construct, which may limit the potential validity of existing findings on the relationship between fear and failure in entrepreneurship (Cacciotti and Hayton, 2015). Finally, existing literature is dominated by a more static approach to the study of this construct (cf. Smith and Semin, 2006), one that views fear of failure and action in terms of being stable trait that is a barrier to entrepreneurship only (e.g., Ravindra and Wajid, 2013) instead of seeing it as being situated in a larger social context and dependent on the entrepreneur’s point in the entrepreneurial process. Such an approach leads to a somewhat limited understanding of the dynamics of how people experience fear of failure throughout the entrepreneurial process. In this sense, the ambiguity and diversity that characterize the existing entrepreneurship literature on fear of failure hinder the potential progress in understanding the impact that this construct has on action and outcomes within the entrepreneurial setting.

Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to more precisely delineate the nature of fear of failure in entrepreneurship.

Specifically, we use an exploratory and inductive qualitative approach to examine fear of failure as it is experienced in the entrepreneurship. To do this, we look at fear and failure in terms of socially situated cognition (Mitchell et al., 2014), by which we mean the interactive psychological processes that connect individuals to their environments and environments to individuals (Smith and Semin, 2006). In doing so, we adopt an approach that captures a combination of cognition, affect and action as it relates to the challenging, uncertain, and risk-laden experience of entrepreneurship (Mitchell et al., 2011; Morris et al., 2012; Sarasvathy, 2004). This approach, which focuses on failure in the subjective experience of entrepreneurship at various points in the entrepreneurial process, highlights temporal and situational dynamics in the processes of appraising external situated social cues and internal cognitive evaluations. It moves away from categorizations of fear of failure as a discrete emotion or a discrete trait about a potential outcome of entrepreneurial action, and moves toward a reconceptualization of fear of failure as a socially situated psychological state that is embodied in the cognition and affect of individuals who consider engaging in the social and interactive process of acting to create a venture.

We make three primary contributions. First, we provide a unified perspective of fear of failure in entrepreneurship. We suggest fear of failure to be a phenomenon involving cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses and to be distributed over the entrepreneurial process. To accomplish this, we develop a socially situated conceptualization of fear of failure, as it is experienced in entrepreneurship, that connects threat cues, cognitive evaluations, affect, behavioral responses, and outcomes of fear of failure (cf. Mitchell et al., 2011; Smith and Semin, 2004). With this conceptualization, we begin to outline a description of the process through which these components are associated with entrepreneurial activity characterized in terms of both approach and avoidance, as opposed to avoidance alone. Second, we explore the unfolding experience of fear of failure within the entrepreneurial setting and support the theoretical interpretation of fear of failure as a situated and context-sensitive phenomenon (Cacciotti and Hayton, 2015; Whetten, 2009). This moves the discussion beyond key assumptions and implications of current literature: that fear of failing only inhibits behavior; that those pursuing entrepreneurial actions do not experience such fears. Third, we embed our theorizing in the existing entrepreneurship and psychology literature and use our reconceptualization of fear of failure to bridge this disparate work on fear of failure in entrepreneurship. As part of this, we propose an agenda for future research on fear of failure in entrepreneurship.

We proceed as follows. To begin, we briefly provide the background of existing research on fear of failure as a foundation, highlighting opportunities for further development of this construct. Next, we present our research design in which we pursued a systematic inductive process involving 65 open-ended interviews (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) with entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom and Canada. This design enables us to accurately describe the phenomenon from the point of view of the entrepreneur. We then present the findings from a systematic, thematic analysis, which involved an examination of the elicited data for coherent, contextualized insights, and which enabled us to interpret fear of failure from the perspectives of our research participants. Finally, we apply socially situated cognition theory to the results of our analysis to support the conceptual development of the fear of failure construct. In doing so, we offer a series of propositions that integrate the existing literature with our results and establish a foundation for future research and practice in the area of fear of failure.