Thesis
Understanding the well-being of technology start-up entrepreneurs in university ecosystems : a qualitative multi-level analysis
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2022
- Thesis identifier
- T16219
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201584505
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Entrepreneurship scholars have highlighted the importance of furthering the field of entrepreneurs’ well-being. With the recent world-wide efforts to utilize entrepreneurship as a policy tool for job creation and economic development, this is an urgent and timely issue for the field. The review of extant literature demonstrates that the studies employ one or more set of predictors (for e.g., gender, family-support, uncertainty, and competition in the business environments) which dominated the academic inquiry on entrepreneurs’ well-being. There has been very limited qualitative research on holistically exploring the nature of entrepreneurs’ well-being, and how entrepreneurs in a particular context perceive their own well-being. The purpose of this thesis is to holistically understand entrepreneurs’ well-being in a particular context of university entrepreneurial ecosystems. In order to achieve this purpose, the three main objectives are (1) ‘To understand how entrepreneurs perceive their own well-being’, (2) ‘To identify and study the drivers responsible for the construction of entrepreneurs’ well-being related experiences in the initial venture creation stage’ and (3) ‘To understand how context affects well-being of entrepreneurs?’ This research employs qualitative methods where four phases of data-collection have been conducted. Each phase involved interviewing the same 25 entrepreneurs, resulting in a total of 100 interviews (four interviews with each entrepreneur). These participants were technology start-up entrepreneurs of Indian or British descent, based in the incubators or university ecosystems of University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) or Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi, India). They were full-time entrepreneurs at the time of the interviews, majority of whom (70%) were full-time students at one of the two universities, before they started their entrepreneurial careers. The other 30% of the participants had corporate careers before they entered their entrepreneurial careers. All the 25 entrepreneurs were in the university ecosystem by virtue of fulfilling at least one of the three conditions. They were either based full-time at the technology incubators at one of the universities, they were taking financial support or business mentorship from university entrepreneurship hubs or were alumni of one of these two universities. Systematic and timely-iterated protocols were used to collect data in all the four phases of data collection. The first phase accounted for a grounded exploration of the phenomenon, with the latter two phases being inspired by theoretical underpinnings of the Capabilities Approach (Nussbaum & Sen, 1983) and the Social Support theory (Cohen & Wills, 1985). Finally, the last stage was a final follow-up with participants using reflexive interviews. Based on the present investigation, the well-being of entrepreneurs is understood to result from several factors operating at different levels of analyses, having varying degrees of positive or negative influence. Entrepreneurs perceive and describe well-being in terms of personal components, business components and external responses. In the early stage of venture creation, the transition stress, or the difficulty in making the ‘big jump’ from student life to entrepreneurial journey (for most of the participants) seemed to be very important. Next, co-founder dynamics seemed to be a very significant driver of their perceived well-being. At the co-founder level, well-being seemed to be a delicate balance of positive factors based on friendship, trust and support, and negative factors emanating from difficulty in playing the friend/cofounder dual role and resulting conflicts. Along with personal-business conflicts, the level of entrepreneurial stress was seen to increase because of the mismatching skills, motives, and personal orientations of the co-founders. At family level, the perceived well-being of entrepreneurs seemed to have been impacted in an overall negative way. Families seemed to support entrepreneurs as individuals but do not fully support them in their professional capacity. It was found that there may be multiple interpersonal stressors emerging between entrepreneurs and their families that has been metaphorically illustrated in the form of an ‘isolation wall’ in this thesis, further delineating reasons behind the same such as communication gaps, emotional support with a caveat, difference in professional backgrounds. This strong isolation wall between entrepreneurs and their families was understood to be due to multiple reasons emanating from lack of time and doubts in the mind of entrepreneurs regarding the genuineness of families’ support towards them. Owing to professional commitments of the entrepreneurs, they had less available time to spend with family, which seemed to result in reduced social interactions, increased miscommunication, deteriorated mutual understanding from both sides, and a lower appreciation of the entrepreneurial profession by the family. At incubator community level, being an entrepreneur in a university network, that was known for its pedagogical quality, brand and strong industry and business networks, seemed to have an overall positive influence on the perceived well-being of these entrepreneurs. The university entrepreneurial networks did not only support the start-up founders morally but also shared resources, knowledge, and expertise. At the same time, however, minor negative effects were observed in terms of increased competition inside the networks, increasing level of embeddedness which required additional time from young entrepreneurs, and high expectations, especially at early stages. The next level of analysis is the ecosystem level. Ecosystem level refers to the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem globally, beyond the local university networks. The impact of these values and norms that the entrepreneurs perceived to exist in these ecosystems, seemed to impact the entrepreneurs’ perceived well being in a negative way. Absence of entry barriers and entrepreneurs entering the profession due to its glamorized image, while not being aware of the demands of this profession, may perceive themselves to not ‘fit’ in this broader entrepreneurs’ ecosystem. They may also find various perceived norms and values of the ecosystem very demanding, and this may affect their perceived well being negatively. In fact, values and norms of the ecosystem may cast a negative shadow on the otherwise positive picture of community level well being. The pursued investigation has contributed to a multi-dimensional understanding of entrepreneurial well-being, where the levels of analyses were seen at an individual level, co-founder level, family-level, university community level and finally, at an ecosystem level. The thesis offers theoretical contributions in the field of occupational well being. These multi-level findings have been discussed in the light of the key occupational health models such as the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, the Job Demands-Control (JD-C) model, the Effort Reward Imbalance (ERI) model, the stressor-detachment model, and the person-environment fit model. The comparison of results to the existing literature provided a better understanding of entrepreneur’s well-being and also brought out some important points. Entrepreneurs’ well-being may be described in terms of a newer set of perceived demands and resources. The results indicate that the effect of higher autonomy and control as a resource need to be viewed differently in comparison to the existing research due to the sole responsibility and complete accountability falling on the shoulder of one person (entrepreneur). Excessive internal control comes out to be an important factor affecting entrepreneur’s well-being in a negative way. Person-environment fit model has been applied at a newer level of interaction between the perceived requirements of individuals and environment represented by values and norms of the ecosystem. Based on the results of the present study, the perceived well-being of entrepreneurs may be described as a constellation of positive and negative factors subject to personal attributes, business traits and external responses originating from the multi-level interaction of individual perceptions; friendship, support and belongingness at the co-founder level; connectivity and embeddedness within the incubator community level; emotional interactions with family members; and values and norms of the broader entrepreneurs’ ecosystem. Finally, the thesis suggests interventions for the university entrepreneurship hubs and incubators, assisting them to support their entrepreneurs holistically, so that these entrepreneurs can thrive personally during their venture creation journeys.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Dodd, Sarah, 1964-
- Morton, Alec (Writer on management science)
- Resource Type
- DOI
Beziehungen
Objekte
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PDF of thesis T16219 | 2022-10-18 | Öffentlich | Herunterladen |