Mr Mike Duffy Jr

The economic benefits of entrepreneurial activity are apparent; however, its effects on individual entrepreneurs and their wellbeing are conflicting. In comparison to organizational workers, entrepreneurs report higher levels of flourishing despite experiencing greater amounts of distress. How is it possible that entrepreneurs can sustain such satisfaction despite the surrounding stressors? To elucidate this question, this project will explore a topic that is underexplored in the entrepreneurship literature and overabundant in the entrepreneurship context – tensions.

In management and organizational studies, tensions refer to competing elements that can fuel feelings of discomfort, paralyze decision making, intertwine across domains, and intensify under conditions of resource scarcity (i.e., limited time and money). Blurred boundaries and time and financial constraints are common in the entrepreneurship context, suggesting that entrepreneurs are susceptible to an abundance of adverse tensions. In contrast, this project takes the perspective that tensions can support entrepreneurs' eudaimonic wellbeing through elevating levels of reflection, learning, and mastery. Thus, one could argue that entrepreneurs' can sustain satisfaction by engaging tensions and evoking elements of eudaimonic wellbeing. However, the entrepreneurship literature lacks a systematic understanding of these tensions, their sources, how entrepreneurs manage them, and how such tensions shape wellbeing.