ENTREPRENEURIAL ALERTNESS OF FOUNDER-MANAGERS ANDTHE MODERATING EFFECT OF THEIR FEAR OF FAILURE

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine entrepreneurial alertness as a process and theinfluence of fear of failure on this process in the context of small firms. The hypotheses are testedwithin a sample of 179 founder–managers from small manufacturing firms in Eastern Mexico usinga hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that the association and connection dimensionpartially mediates the relationship between the scanning and search dimension and the evaluation andjudgment dimension. Also, these relationships are negatively moderated by fear of failure. This studycontributes to the existing opportunity recognition research, specifically to better understandentrepreneurial alertness as a process that simultaneously crosses three different dimensions andincorporates the influence of fear of failure.

Keywords

• entrepreneurial alertness
• fear of failure
• founder-manager