TY - JOUR
T1 - What does not kill you makes you stronger
T2 - Entrepreneurs’ childhood adversity, resilience, and career success
AU - Yu, Wei
AU - Zhu, Fei
AU - Foo, Maw Der
AU - Wiklund, Johan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Childhood adversities, such as neglect, abuse, and poverty, lead to negative career outcomes. Anecdotal stories of entrepreneurs, however, present a contrasting picture, showing that many successful entrepreneurs had a difficult childhood. Building on the underdog framework of entrepreneurship and the stress inoculation model, we resolve the puzzle by hypothesizing the inverted U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurs’ childhood adversities and career success that is mediated by resilience. Using data from a representative sample of 573 U.S. entrepreneurs from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, we find support for the hypotheses. We further find resilience is more important for less-successful entrepreneurs. Our results are robust to various checks, including an additional study based on a sample of U.S. entrepreneurs from the Qualtrics online panel. Our study indicates the need to consider nonlinear and context-specific implications of childhood adversities and examine performance-related outcomes, thus enriching existing research on childhood adversities and entrepreneurship.
AB - Childhood adversities, such as neglect, abuse, and poverty, lead to negative career outcomes. Anecdotal stories of entrepreneurs, however, present a contrasting picture, showing that many successful entrepreneurs had a difficult childhood. Building on the underdog framework of entrepreneurship and the stress inoculation model, we resolve the puzzle by hypothesizing the inverted U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurs’ childhood adversities and career success that is mediated by resilience. Using data from a representative sample of 573 U.S. entrepreneurs from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, we find support for the hypotheses. We further find resilience is more important for less-successful entrepreneurs. Our results are robust to various checks, including an additional study based on a sample of U.S. entrepreneurs from the Qualtrics online panel. Our study indicates the need to consider nonlinear and context-specific implications of childhood adversities and examine performance-related outcomes, thus enriching existing research on childhood adversities and entrepreneurship.
KW - Career success
KW - Childhood adversity
KW - Entrepreneurship
KW - Resilience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133260493&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.06.035
DO - 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.06.035
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133260493
SN - 0148-2963
VL - 151
SP - 40
EP - 55
JO - Journal of Business Research
JF - Journal of Business Research
ER -