Founders’ Social Identities, Work-Life-Balance, and Stress: A Stakeholder perspective

Abstract

Recent research on entrepreneurial well-being has shown that prosocial motivation and autonomy have significant impact on founders’ stress levels and life satisfaction. While the literature has identified stakeholders as both reference points for entrepreneurial ambitions as well as potential constraints for entrepreneurs’ autonomy, we know little about how founders’ sense-making of their stakeholders in relation to their own self-understanding shapes their well-being. This study applies a stakeholder perspective informed by social cognition theory and applies survey data from 110 German-speaking commercial and social start-up entrepreneurs to examine the effects of the interactions between founders’ social identities and perceived stakeholder power on work-life-balance and stress. Our results show that the influence of social identity on stress ultimately depends on founders’ perception of their stakeholders’ power. An altruistic Missionary identity is positively connected to stress via work-life-balance but only if they do not perceive their stakeholders as strong. On the other hand, a more self-centered Darwinian identity has a negative, indirect effect on stress but only if they perceive their stakeholders as having comparably little power. Accordingly, our research provides further arguments for the importance of examining individuals’ sense-making of both themselves and their social environment simultaneously when studying results of founders’ cognitive processes.