Juggling Act: Waged time investments and the health–wealth trade-off

Abstract

Research on hybrid entrepreneurship—the process of founding and operating a business while retaining a primary “day job” in an established organization—has burgeoned in recent years, indicating its importance for entrepreneurial effectiveness. This study investigates how an entrepreneur’s waged time investments, or the number of hours hybrid entrepreneurs commit to a job that provides compensations outside their entrepreneurial role, as a percentage of their total working hours, affects work tension and venture performance. We find mixed support for our theoretical model by applying and testing the tenets of conservation of resource theory on a sample of entrepreneurs. Specifically, we find evidence that increases in waged time investments accelerate work tension but not venture performance. Further, we find that the effect of waged time investments on these outcomes differs across entrepreneurs’ experience. This study offers implications for researchers and practitioners interested in multiple jobholding and time management strategies in underexplored entrepreneurial contexts.