The impact of emotional self-management on benefit offerings and employment growth: an analysis of the fastest growing businesses in the United States

Abstract

Increases in the cost of benefit offerings have led organizations to cut back benefits in an effort to reduce overall labor costs. Since benefits are difficult to change within an employment contract, we investigated how entrepreneurs reconcile the need to stay fiscally competitive while retaining top talent. Using Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of “Hot 500” fast-growth firms, we surveyed the founders of these firms on their emotional self-management and combined these self-reported responses with objective firm-level data on employment and benefit offerings, gathered using Entrepreneur Magazine’s in-house experts, Princeton Review. Based on a review of the literature, we hypothesized that entrepreneurs’ emotional self-management moderates the relationship between the size of the firm and the total number of benefits offered to employees. Our results with 134 respondents supported this hypothesis. In addition, results showed that the total number of benefits offered to employees was positively related to employment growth as a short-term outcome.