A study of entrepreneurs' resilience process in the face of persistent adversity

While prior research has often assessed resilience as a personality trait or state-like resource capacity, this study aims at understanding how entrepreneurs build resilience in the face of persistent adversity. In order to do so, we examine the resilience process of seven entrepreneurs faced with prolonged venture distress over a period of three years. Through our inductive analysis and drawing on insights from appraisal theory, we develop a theoretical model that describes how consecutive functioning episodes translate into different (non-)resilience trajectories over time. A functioning episode reflects entrepreneurs' appraisals of the distress situation and the coping strategies they undertake to manage it. The perceived impact of these coping strategies on the distress situation (i.e., no/small gain or breakthrough/breakdown) in turn shapes new episodes of reappraisal and coping strategies. Eventually, entrepreneurs either move from a threat to a challenge appraisal, hereby building resilience, or evolve from threat to loss appraisal, thus losing resilience. We identify the temporal depth of threat appraisals alongside the sequence and accumulation of gains as important factors in the resilience process. Our study has important contributions to entrepreneurial resilience literature and appraisal theory and has relevant practical implications.