Entrepreneurial fear of failure: Scale development and validation

By G. Cacciotti, James C. Hayton, J. Mitchell, David G. Allen. Journal of Business Venturing, 2020

129 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Fear of failure is an important part of the experience of entrepreneurship. Yet past research has mainly investigated fear of failure in entrepreneurship among non entrepreneurs or nascent entrepreneurs and has done so by asking for reactions to hypothetical future failure. This approach to operationalizing the construct limits our capacity for understanding how entrepreneurs actually experience fear of failure while practicing entrepreneurship. In this paper, we conceptualize entrepreneurial fear of failure as a negative affective reaction based in cognitive appraisals of the potential for failure in the uncertain and ambiguous context of entrepreneurship. We use multiple samples to develop and validate a multidimensional, formative measure to assess entrepreneurial fear of failure as a state that is both cognitive and affective in nature. In addition to evidence of the psychometric properties of the new scale across multiple studies, we present a nomological network analysis with respect to measures of theoretically derived psychological outcomes and perceived behavioral tendencies of entrepreneurial fear of failure. We then discuss the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of this new measure of entrepreneurial fear of failure with an eye towards use of this scale in future research.

Subfields: Business and International Management, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e29feea614c65598cfc14c01bd7cbdbcf5b470ac

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Business and International Management

  1. M. van Gelderen

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

  1. Afra Spoelder
  2. Stephany Noordijk
  3. M. van Gelderen
  4. Yuval Engel

In Management of Technology and Innovation

  1. Afra Spoelder
  2. Stephany Noordijk
  3. M. van Gelderen
  4. Yuval Engel
  5. Ewald Kibler

Citations in the corpus