How Entrepreneurs’ Identity Influences Their Well-being in Entrepreneurial Process

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Background

Identity research focuses on how an entrepreneur answers the question of “who I am” or “who I want to be”. Researchers find that entrepreneurs’ identity has a significant influence on entrepreneurs’ individual characteristics, such as passion, persistence, and self-efficacy. Evidence also shows that identity can influence entrepreneurs’ psychological status such as well-being. O’Neil et al. (2020) suggested that if entrepreneurs are not able to assure their own identity, it would harm their well-being. Entrepreneurial well-being refers to the experience of satisfaction, positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and psychological functioning in the relation to developing, starting, growing, and running an entrepreneurial venture. In 2009, Shepherd and Haynie proposed the intensive connection between entrepreneurs’ identity management and psychological well-being. However, there is little research investigating how entrepreneurs’ identity influences their well-being.

Entrepreneurs’ well-being is important not only to a firm’s performance and survival, but also to entrepreneurs’ opportunity recognition and exploration, which are the core dimensions of entrepreneurship. Therefore, we argue that the relationship between entrepreneurs’ identity and their psychological status is a promising topic in the fields of both entrepreneurship and psychology and that explaining this relationship in theory and data is an urgent task for researchers. In this Research Topic, we aim to gain a better understanding of how and why entrepreneurs’ identity influences their well-being during the entrepreneurial process. It is noteworthy that, during the COVID-19 crisis, entrepreneurs are facing enormous pressure. Further research about identity and well-being can be beneficial for entrepreneurs to keep a healthier psychological status in a hostile environment. Hence, we encourage scholars to conduct more empirical research about identity and well-being.

We welcome studies regarding entrepreneurs’ identity and well-being in the entrepreneurial process including, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Dynamics of entrepreneurs’ identity (e.g., from employee to being an employer; serial entrepreneurs)
- Role identity for different groups in the entrepreneurial community (e.g., founders; managers; innovators, etc.)
- Entrepreneurs’ Social identity/identification and their actions which further affect the entrepreneurial process
- Entrepreneurial team identity/identification, team heterogeneity and well-being of team members
- Interaction of entrepreneurs’ different identities in the process of opportunity recognition and exploitation
- Internal or external identification motivation which leads to different psychological status and different levels of well-being.
- The mechanisms of how entrepreneurs’ identity influences their well-being, especially in a dynamic environment
- The boundaries of the relationship between entrepreneurs’ identity and well-being for different types of entrepreneurs (e.g., novice entrepreneur, portfolio entrepreneur, or serial entrepreneur)
- Other topics related to entrepreneurs’ identity or well-being in the entrepreneurial process.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Identity, Well-being, Entrepreneurial Process, Psychological Process

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