Crafting through financially demanding times: An entrepreneurial perspective

Abstract

Income loss is an ever-existing threat for entrepreneurs that may decrease their well-being and goal attainment. This study suggests that four crafting strategies (i.e., seeking resources, optimizing demands, seeking challenges, and leisure crafting) may buffer those negative effects. A weekly diary study (N = 189 weeks, N = 69 entrepreneurs) confirmed that in weeks with high income loss, the strategy seeking resources mitigated the negative effect of income loss on entrepreneurs’ goal attainment and optimizing demands helped with their well-being. However, weekly crafting behavior was not always effective. In weeks with high income loss, seeking challenges and seeking resources strengthened its negative effect of income loss on entrepreneurs’ well-being and optimizing demands did so for goal attainment. Thus, we demonstrated that crafting strategies may help entrepreneurs deal with weekly income loss peaks, but different strategies are needed to improve either their weekly well-being or weekly goal attainment.