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Entrepreneurs often experience rejection, criticism and failure as part of the entrepreneurial journey – which can cause shame. This study examines the influence of shame on advice-seeking and advice-taking. Since advice is known to influence firm performance and entrepreneurs rely on the advice of mentors, advisors and investors, understanding the role of shame in influencing advice-seeking and advice-taking is essential.

We used an online experimental design on actual entrepreneurs working in business incubators. We asked all participants to evaluate a business idea and then induced shame and neutral emotion in the treatment and control groups, respectively. After emotion manipulation, we showed the expert advice and gave the choice to participants to revisit their earlier assessment.

We hypothesized that shame would make the entrepreneur less open to seeking advice but more open to utilizing the advice in decision-making. The results showed that we had no support for the impact of shame on advice-seeking and weak support for the impact of shame on advice-taking.

This paper is an original creation of the authors.

Evaluating and exploiting an opportunity is an iterative process, and one of the triggers for the re-evaluation is the feedback received from stakeholders. Most of the time, the feedback comes in the form of harsh comments, criticisms and rejections, which can cause shame. There is also a lack of studies on the impact of shame on the decision-making ability of the entrepreneur, which is addressed through this study.

The study uses an experimental design, which is considered the “gold standard” in establishing causality. By manipulating the emotions of 107 entrepreneurs and making them assess a hypothetical opportunity, the study finds conclusive evidence for the proposed hypotheses.

Using the appraisal tendency framework, the authors show that shame makes an entrepreneur assess an opportunity as lower in desirability and feasibility. Shame also makes an entrepreneur give more significant weight to feasibility (over desirability) when deciding on entrepreneurial action.

The study provides strong empirical evidence that shame is an important emotion and influences the decision-making ability of the entrepreneur. The study reveals that important stakeholders assessing entrepreneurs need to be careful about how they provide feedback. Since the emotion it can elicit has a bearing on the subsequent decisions made by the entrepreneur.

The purpose of the paper is to establish the need to study the shame-proneness trait of entrepreneurs – what is it and why is it important to study.

In this conceptual paper, the authors argue that shame-proneness is an important understudied trait of entrepreneurs and put up a case for further research. The authors argue that shame-proneness moderates the effect of social acceptability on opportunity exploitation decisions. The authors also argue that productive entrepreneurship can be promoted and unproductive entrepreneurship can be prevented through policy intervention, and the level of intervention can be determined by knowing the shame-proneness level of entrepreneurs.

The key argument is the following: an entrepreneur is homo economicus and homo sociologicus, i.e. she is driven both by rational economic value consideration and by the prevalent social norms, which influence opportunity exploitation decisions. Since shame enforces compliance with social norms, it is vital to study entrepreneurs' shame-proneness to understand entrepreneurial founding across different regions. Knowing the level of shame-proneness of entrepreneurs in a given region would help the government devise effective interventions to promote productive entrepreneurship and deter unproductive or destructive entrepreneurship.

This paper is an original creation of the authors.

Purpose: This introduction sets the stage for the book theme, “Emotions and Negativity,” by reviewing the early work on negative emotions and by discussing the impact of the COVID pandemic on people’s moods and emotions. It discusses how most of the chapters in this book were first presented as conference papers at the Twelfth International Conference on Emotions and Worklife (“Emonet XII”). It then highlights the key contributions from each of the chapters. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: This gives an overview of the organizational structure of the book and explains the four major parts of the book. It then relates each chapter to the theme of each part and discusses the key contributions of each chapter. Findings: The introduction concludes by observing that the chapters offer a variety of practical solutions to negative emotions that should be of use to both practitioners and academicians. Originality/Value: The chapters investigate underresearched topics, and thus make original and important new contributions. Although underresearched, the topics they explore have a major impact on people’s lives. Thus, these chapters add considerable value to the field.