The Impact Of Entrepreneurial Emotions On New Venture Performance

The pathway from emotions to new venture performance is still poorly understood.To address this,I have developed an empirical study in which I further evolvethe relationship that positive emotions(such as happiness or satisfaction)and negative emotions(like fear and anxiety)exert on new venture performance.In addition,it is known that emotions impact directlythe entrepreneurs' psychological wellbeing,and entrepreneurs' psychological wellbeing is critical to understanding entrepreneurial action,decision making,and motivation.In fact,entrepreneurs value psychological wellbeing and see it as an indicator of their success,which is linked to new venture performance.For this reason,along with the impact that emotions exert on new venture performance,it is necessary to study the mediation effect of psychological wellbeing between these two variables.To further understand how important it is the impact of emotions on the entrepreneur's psychological wellbeing,entrepreneurial cognition is added to the studyas a moderator variable.This is significant for the research as well because entrepreneurial cognition addresses the aspects of what goes into an entrepenreur's mind and explores entrepreneur's knowledge,motivation,attention,identity and emotions as he considers to pursuit a potential goal,such as his own positive psychological wellbeing and even the success of his new venture.I test the hypotheses developped with data collected from a sample of 130 entrepreneurs,(both males and femalesthat come from different places all over the world and with different ages and educational backgrounds)throughan elaborated questionnaire that includes different validated scales to measure positive and negative emotions(Positive and Negative Affect Scale,PANAS),psychological wellbeing(Flourishing Scale by Diener)new venture performance(Entrepreneurs sense of success scale byFisher).and entrepreneurial cognition(The Passion Scale by Vallerand).This data is then processed,validated,analysed and discussed about.Theoretically,this study offers the opportunity to identify the theoretical contours of the problem of how positive emotions and negative emotions have an impact on new venture performance,the mediation effect of psychological wellbeing and the moderator effect of entrepreneurial cognition.It also contributes to the entrepreneurial emotions literature,by differentiating theoretically positive and negative emotions and psychological wellbeing and contributes to the understanding of the impact of positive and negative emotions on new venture performance.Additionally,by addressing multiple measures of new venture performance(business goals,turnover,return on investment),this study adds to the literature on these critical components of new venture performance.The results of this thesis offer in addition,a managerial contribution to the entrepreneurial cognition theory by studying the effect of entrepreneurial cognition(or self-regulation process)to change entrepreneurs thoughts and behaviours in order to approach a more harmonious relationship with the entrepreneurial process(Bandura,1991;Vallerand et al.,2003).In addition,according to the results obtained,this paper offers practical insights for entrepreneurs on why they should work towards managing their emotions and psychological wellbeing,since the combination of these two factors,will help determine the path the entrepreneur's new venture will take,and the ultimate goal of entrepreneurs is,to make their new venture succeed.Contributions from this study may also be utile for educators,whom should consider including emotion regulation strategies as they design and assess entrepreneurial curriculum(D'Intino,Goldsby,Houghton&Neck,2007).Therefore this study sheds a new light on why emotions are in fact a critical factor for new venture performance,and its main goal is to invite entrepreneurs to learn to regulate their daily life stressors and to avoid entrepreneurial burnout if they want to attain positive results in their new venture,and urges them to seek for positive emotions such as happiness,or emotion regulation skills that will increase their overal psychological wellbeing and peace of mind and that will ultimately warrant them to make better decisions towards their new venture,allowing it to move towards avoiding failure.