Feeling successful as an entrepreneur: a job demands — resources approach

Abstract

This cross-sectional study among 277 Dutch entrepreneurs investigates how entrepreneurs’ job demands relate to their work-related strain and work engagement, as well as their feelings of subjective success. As such it contributes to the literature firstly by focusing on psychological rather than business outcomes of entrepreneurship, and secondly by contextualizing demands and resources for entrepreneurs, e.g. capturing the general but also the specific factors that are demands and resources in entrepreneurial work. Results of the study show that work-related strain is related to both less personal and less financial subjective business success. Work engagement is related to higher personal, but not financial subjective business success. As predicted by the JD-R Model, both high job demands and low job resources predicted work-related strain. In contrast to findings of other studies, high job demands are not related to low work engagement, only having low job resources did. The practical implication of these findings is that entrepreneurs can achieve an important competitive advantage over other entrepreneurs if they can learn to deal effectively with job demands and work-related strain. The challenge for policy makers is to get more information about how to assist business owners in eliminating and preventing work-related strain in order to achieve higher subjective financial and personal success.